Gaming Gimmicks – Lockpicking

Hello everybody! I know I haven’t exactly been regular on here, but I wanted to push out a new series of articles that I think may help me get back into the swing of reviews. Gaming gimmicks are little things that occur in games that sometimes involve mini-games, but in many cases are a simple function of a game that we’ll see repeated time and time again and often differently within different games.

Grand Theft Auto Series

GTA has been an interesting series that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with for many years. For many, when they say GTA, they’re referring to GTA3, 4, or possibly something along the line of San Andreas or Vice City. To avoid any confusion, I’m looking at the series as a whole and dishing out what I think, for better or worse.

Top 5 GTA Clones

When people say GTA clone, it gets tired and old. Calling something a clone of something else makes you seem incredibly lazy as it’s merely a way of waving off any sort of merit the game might have otherwise that either sets it apart or makes it 10 times stronger than GTA3 (the one they’re usually referencing) and somehow allows them to dismiss the game entirely.

The sad fact is these same people would be missing out on otherwise incredible titles that, GTA or not, warrant your undivided attention. Titles such as…

Sleeping Dogs

General Overview

Imagine if you had a game that combined elements of Saints Row, True Crime, Batman Arkham Asylum, Max Payne, and Assassin’s Creed. Imagine if that same game was a sprawling action RPG hybrid being fronted by Square Enix. Sounds too good to be true, right? Strangely enough, Sleeping Dogs seems to combine all of these elements and more and with a few understandable bugs, but all the same manages to pull it off.

RPG of the Year – 2007

Surprisingly, there weren’t as many games this year, but all the same this year was AWESOME. There are 39 games. This was actually a tough year as far as deciding #4 and #5, though the top 3 was obvious even from the get-go. Let’s do this! Editor’s note: I recently had to go back and redo 2008 (thus why it was added first) because Wikipedia is SORELY lacking in information from this point on. It’s possible I may have missed some titles and if I did, I’m sorry in advance.

Just Cause 2

General Overview

A typical outing into Just Cause 2 will have you deliberately flying off cliffs with motorcycles, opening up your parachute, zipping down to another vehicle with your grappling hook, and doing it all over again. The sheer amount of craziness and mayhem you can enact with this title is enough to get any action aficionado’s blood pumping and the best part is the fun never stops.