Alright, strategy gamers. I finally got the chance to build a video of me playing Crusader Kings 2. Luckily, the video displays the game as it appeared on my monitor, and not what I looked like while playing it (which would be disturbing and not as much fun).

I spend a lot of time blabbing in voice-overs in these videos, but before you start watching, you should keep some things in mind. First, this was played on version 0.78 of the game engine. It’s still in beta; the current version floating around in press copies is 0.80. The game has already changed in some slight ways since I encoded this video and posted it. Second, it did have a glaring bug at the beginning, which has since been fixed. You see William the Conqueror ask Harold Godwinson of England for a white peace a few seconds after the start of the video. This kind of changes things, since the famous conqueror doesn’t even try to make good on his claims to the English throne. Aside from that, things proceed in a plausible way, but I don’t want to hear any complaints relating to William. I know he should have invaded England, the designers know it, and everyone with a high-school education in either the US or the former British Empire should know it. The AI just didn’t know it, but that has been fixed.

Oh, and don’t bother asking me why certain troop types do certain things, or why certain buildings cost a certain amount. These things are still changing, so don’t sweat that stuff. Instead, sit back, listen, watch, and then ask me intelligent things, such as “Why did the AI just send the entire Holy Roman Empire into the oblivion of a civil war?” or “Holy Machiavellian politics Batman, why did you just spend 10 years crushing your own vassals?”

The video is broken up into three separate chunks. They can be found here, here and here.

Despite the proliferation of games designed for mobile platforms, the casual computer games market continues to flourish. The personal computer, because of its openness and ubiquitous presence, remains a primary development platform. So, while many other game sites still focus their attention exclusively on conventional big-budget AAA retail offerings, for your playing pleasure I have unearthed the very best hidden PC treasures that casual gaming has to offer. This represents the latest in a series of annual awards articles that now has continued for well over a decade, by far the longest consecutive casual-games award series anywhere.

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Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7/Mac OS 10.6, 1.8 GHz Pentium IV or better CPU (2.0 GHz for Mac), 2 GB RAM, 256 MB graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, DirectX 8.1-compatible sound device, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now
Written by: Michael Smith

For years, game designers have been trying to merge cinematic storytelling with interactive gameplay. Developer Telltale, known mostly for comic point-and-click adventures such as the Sam and Max and Wallace and Gromit series, goes darker and more adult with Jurassic Park, their harrowing and occasionally infuriating attempt to reach gaming immersion nirvana.

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Written by: Chip Henson

Back in 2004, I had the pleasure of going to E3 and seeing new games like Silent Hunter 3 and Darkwatch, and consoles like the Phantom and the PSP. Hidden away in the basement area, Kentia Hall, a game called Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was being shown. It featured stunning graphics and seemed like it was made exclusively for fans of the space genre. The game’s creation went through a lot of problems, though, and a release was looking grim.

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Mass Effect 3. I’m not going to sugar coat it, or pretty it up with words. My most anticipated game of 2012 is, hands down, Mass Effect 3. Why the plain reveal? I feel ME3 is a very popular “most anticipated game” choice, and chances are, you are already feeling anything I could describe. I don’t want to leave you with nothing, though, so I’m going to change it up and report on my most anticipated gaming… thing of 2012.

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Written by: Ed Humphries

What goes around comes around. Two years ago, I was asked by my editors to kick-start the year by gazing ahead and predicting the one title I thought would be the best game I would play all year OR might be the biggest disappointment to come. I decided to open Door #2 and selected Bioshock 2 as a title I had yearned to play since completing my first trip through Rapture yet something in my bones told me a return visit would yield nothing but vacant, faded memories – the same feeling anyone gets when touring a beloved property gone to seed. Knowing that game had been given the fast track for a sequel purely based on the massive coin dropped in 2K’s coffers – and most importantly – knowing that Bioshock’s true father, Ken Levine, had nothing to with the sequel – I just felt a sinking dread wash over me. So, I called it out as the one title destined to disappoint me that year. And despite the earful I received from some ticked-off PR rep, my prediction came true. The sequel was a faint echo of a once compelling siren song; one I thought I would never fall for again.

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Written by: Jason Pitruzzello

In some ways, 2011 was the year that kept on giving. If you are a PC gamer with console playing friends (or a console jockey with PC gamer friends), it was the year of cross-platform fun. Love it or hate it, Skyrim became the common language of PC and console gamers. Limbo ported over to the PC this year, and I was even more impressed with playing it on PC than when I first saw my brother-in-law play it on Xbox. Aside from the common ground PC and console gamers shared, we had some much anticipated strategy titles appear on PC. Total War: Shogun 2 was a pretty good release for those who love tactical battle. Sengoku was a great budget title in the tradition of grand strategy games. 4X gamers found themselves finally getting the SOTS II (and all its problems). Heck, it wasn’t a new game this year, but new to me was Torchlight, which I purchased in May. This little gem reminded me why I invested hours in the original Diablo.

With all that being said, it almost seems anticlimactic to talk about the titles we can expect in 2012. But since gamers are insatiable in their appetites, and since developers and programmers need paychecks, new games are going to show up on our virtual doorsteps. What am I looking forward to? Let’s take a look.

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Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays to you and yours this holiday season. 2011 has been a big year for new games and sequels, and we here at the Vault thought we should share our top picks with you. Below this post you’ll find several Game of the Year entries to keep you busy during the holiday.

The blog posts below will give you plenty to read, so I’m going to keep my picks short.

Game of the Year
Batman: Arkham City
(Honorable mention: Skyrim)

Motion-Controlled GotY
Child of Eden
(Honorable mention: Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest)

Written by: Ed Humphries

Damn this assignment.

While I always look forward to these year end “Best Of” blogs, this year’s deadline put me at a slight disadvantage as my favorite game of the year wasn’t slated to hit shelves until three days before the Editors’ concrete due date. Yeah, that’s right – I’m planning on picking a game I haven’t played one second of as my favorite game of the year. I’ll get to that in a moment.

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Written by: Michael Rabalais

My Skyrim story starts with my inability to spend money wisely. I found Fallout 3 and New Vegas drab. Oblivion failed to grab my attention. Naturally, when I found myself paying $60 for Skyrim on day one, it seemed like another instance of my own piss-poor judgment. I had read A Song of Ice and Fire, and thought hanging out in the Arctic with dragons seemed like a pretty cool thing to do.

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Written by: Simon Moore

This is always a hard decision in my books – there were so many fun and great games released this year. I’ve decided to cheat a little. Being the iPad reviewer, I thought I could get away with telling you what my favourite two iPad games of 2011 were. iPad games are smaller than regular games, so I’m picking two. Ladies and gentlemen, cue the tiny iPad drum roll. In no immediate order, these are the games that keep me amused on my travels and between sessions in Skyrim:

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Written by: Mindy Hartman

I have to give my 2011 game of the year to Dragon Age 2. I have played through it 3 full times and I have enjoyed each and every moment of it. I liked playing as the witty noble, the heartless bastard, and the greedy, achievement whore. Now, I have to be perfectly honest. I didn’t go running to get the game on release day like I did with Dragon Age. The whole Awakenings disaster really turned me off to the Dragon Age series. There was also the problem of the reviews that cited dungeon crawling and map recycling as major negatives. However, Steam had the game on sale one weekend and I decided to give it a shot. I think the game is beautifully rendered, the cut scenes were very interesting (the first time through) and I really felt like my choices impacted the outcome of the story. Given the hours I’ve logged, let me formally say: Bioware, I forgive you for DA: Awakenings, and praise you for Dragon Age 2.

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Written by: Ian Davis

Interactive storytelling is the red-headed stepchild of the gaming world. Perhaps John Carmack (all devout of that ancient rite genuflect) was right: story is to games as plot is to porn. Despite how much we talk about it, only rarely is story the driving force that keeps gamers coming back. Strategy, socialization, acquisition, exploration, and sheer visceral thrill are gaming senses which seem more developed than storytelling. Outside of the decade-old Half Life and Bioware’s take on the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure formula, how far have we advanced from the static cutscene and babbling NPC?

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Publisher: Nicolas Entertainment Group
Developer: Intoxicate Studios
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2 GHz Intel Core2Duo/AMD Athlon 64 X2 or better CPU, 256 MB graphics card with Shader 3.0 support, 2 GB RAM (Windows XP)/3 GB RAM (Vista/Win 7), DirectX 9.0c
Genre: Third-person shooter
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now
Written by: Michael Smith

It looks like we’re not gonna survive December 2012 no matter what we do. If the end of the Mayan calendar doesn’t get us on 12/21/2012, then the accidental detonation of a fusion bomb on the same date will surely put most of us toes-up, according to indie developer Intoxicate Studios’ debut shooter, Afterfall: InSanity. This post-apocalyptic mashup of several FPS classics has high ambitions, but falls just short of delivering on its promises.

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz Core2Duo/Athlon 64 X2 4000+ or better CPU, 1.5 GB RAM (XP)/2 GB (Vista/Win 7), 256 MB Nvidia 7800/ATI X1800 or better graphics card with Shader 3.0 support, broadband Internet connection
Genre: MMO
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: December 20, 2011
Written by: Michael Smith

There really is no honor among thieves, even in a galaxy far, far away. Minutes after the smuggler arrived at her destination with a load of weapons stashed in her ship, someone at the spaceport hopped in and took off with it when the now-furious captain was off trying to collect her fee. The war between the Sith Empire and the Republic was heating up, so it wasn’t easy for her to finish her run, and there was no way that she was going to let some light-fingered bantha jockey deprive her of her hard-earned commission.

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