Great, it's another Humble Bundle. These are going to be the death of me. This time, it's indie games for your Android phone, or tablet, or Kindle Fire if you don't think it counts as a tablet (it totally counts as a tablet). These are games that ahve been on the Humble Bundle site before, but the Android versions are new, or at least new for the Humble Bundle.

You know the deal. Spend as much money as you want and distribute it to the developers and Child's Play and EFF charities (and the Humble Bundle folks, because they have costs, too) as you see fit. If you spend more than the average, you get a bonus game. This time, the games are Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Osmos, and EDGE, and if you spend more than the average of currently $5.73, you get World of Goo, too. You don't just get the Android versions of the games, though. You also get the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions, including Steam keys. They're not available on iOS through the bundle, because Apple is terrible at making software actually accessible outside of its own store. There's a good chance the Humble Bundle will add more games to the group before the deal runs out, so keep checking the Humble Bundle site over the next two weeks.

I spent 40 minutes in an elevator in a video game last Tuesday. No, I wasn't playing through Mass Effect again. This was all in one go, and while I was in the elevator I saw aliens, dinosaurs, cats, war zones, storms, fire, and demons. Now, thanks to the magic of video and the idea of a longplay, you can, too.

The game, or rather, add-on to a mod of a game, is Elevator for Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2. It takes everyone's favorite machinima playground and turns it into an elevator ride through different worlds. The floors are random, and can be beautiful, nightmarish, mundane, or utterly bizarre. It's a simple and safe ride that is still freakier than going on Disneyworld's Tower of Terror ride after chugging a liter of Dimetapp. It's utterly mesmerizing, and worth at least one playthrough by anyone.

In one playthrough I fell down an elevator shaft, got attacked by a dinosaur, watched the world melt away into a black void, stood awkwardly next to a skeleton, watched someone blow his head off, and got shocked by a screeching anime catgirl witch hag. If I play again, it could be a completely different experience.

Elevator isn't a game as much as it is a ride. You stand there, in an elevator, trying to get to the top. Some floors people join you, and other floors nightmares threaten to claw at your brainholes. You can look at your watch, cough, and slap people, though the slap has a ten minute timer. That's it. You're there for the ride.

If you want to see it for yourself, watch my longplay of Elevator. It's pretty strange. If you like it, grab the free Elevator add-on for Garry's Mod. If you don't have Garry's Mod, get it for Half-Life 2. If you don't have Half-Life 2, then you better be reading this from 2003. The video has a few hiccups, probably because my computer doesn't like physics-heavy scenes happening when it's recording high definition footage. It's still very watchable, and really, really strange.

One click for a Roman orgy.

One click for a Roman orgy.

Congratulations, Call of Roma. You've made Evony's banner ads look tasteful. Click for the full banner ad. It doesn't show anything. Because it's for a browser game. Where I'm pretty sure there are no orgies you can witness or participate in outside of perhaps the purely textual and abstract, like it gives you construction points.

I'm 12 levels in on several characters on Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I'm still playing. It's still Star Wars as World of Warcraft, but Bioware has added a few interesting aspects that makes me stay with it and see it as a solid step forward. The gameplay isn't changed much from the World of Warcraft formula, but the storytelling (the RPG part of the MMORPG) is much better. Whether The Old Republic keeps going and digs into WoW's share or not, I hope Bioware's ideas continue in the world of MMOs.

All of Bioware's recent games from Knights of the Old Republic onward have had Bioware Morality. In most quests, they give you a choice on whether you want to do something good or bad. These choices can change how the story flows, what rewards you get, how characters react to you, and how you work with your companions. The choices tend to be binary, making you choose between good or bad, paragon or renegade, light or dark, puppy-saving or orphan-kicking, but they were at least choices, and often offered some interesting moral dilemmas beyond "do I want to have cool scars or a bright aura?"

Bioware put Bioware Morality in The Old Republic. In almost every quest, you can choose how you can solve it. It might be as simple as saying something different to a quest giver, or it might completely change your objectives. Each choice can give you light side points or dark side points, and make your companion like you or dislike you more. Some dilemmas are actually interesting, and whether you want to be a good guy or a bad guy they can make you question what your values are going to be.

For example, as a Jedi, I was told to investigate a group of savages who were brewing a chemical that made them more powerful. On my way, I was also told to look for the cache of weapons used by the savages. I was given the choice to destroy the chemical or recover it so the town the savages were attacking could use it to make their own people stronger and ready to fight back. I was also given the choice to destroy the weapons or recover them so the villagers could stand against the savages. The former choice was a straight good/evil decision, because the chemical also turned people into mindless berzerkers and the person who wanted to use it on his people offered to pay me more. The latter choice was a more complicated one, that didn't have any apparent benefits or drawbacks on either side. Both choices made me flesh out my character and decide whether I wanted to be pragmatic or idealistic, and whether I wanted to let the villagers defend themselves or trust the Jedi to defend them.

These choices are old news for Bioware RPGs and most other western RPGs in some form, but they're new for MMORPGs for a very distinct reason: MMORPGs, unlike other RPGs, aren't played mainly for the story or the adventure or the characterization. They're played for the community and the advancement.

Unless you're on an RP server and actively role play in chat windows, your character in an MMO isn't really a character. It's a paper doll for getting new clothes, weapons, and skills. You don't look at your character as someone who makes decisions that affects a story, but as a tool for seeing more of the world and getting better things in it. By offering something as simple as a choice when talking to a questgiver, Bioware is making The Old Republic an MMORPG with an actual RPG element. You have to actually think about what your character should do, and why he should do it. It's something we've taken for granted in single-player RPGs, but in MMOs it's new.

This is helped with voiced cut scenes for quests. How many of you have actually read all the text in a quest box? How many of you just scroll down to the bottom to see what you have to do and what your reward will be when you finally do it? This is part of the MMO character as a paper doll issue. You're not looking at the story as much as you are what you can do and what you'll get for it. With voiced cut scenes and choices in those cut scenes, you actually have to pay attention to what's going on and look at the game as a story with a plot. It puts you in the shoes of a character with a personality interacting with other characters with personalities, and not just text boxes.

Yes, you can just keep hitting space and 1 to get through these scenes and play The Old Republic like your average, don't-have-to-role-play MMO, but the opportunity is there to enjoy it like a single-player RPG as much as an MMO. It adds a layer of interaction and interest to a game genre that hasn't yet seen it. While the game's action is a lot like World of Warcraft, the simple adding of a ten-year-old Bioware storytelling mechanic has given The Old Republic a compelling new element we should see in more MMOs, to make them feel like more than scavenger hunts and dress-up games.

Well, against my efforts to break up with Star Wars and avoid MMOs, I've started Star Wars: The Old Republic. Star Wars meets World of Warcraft. That can't possibly be a life-destroying game. I've gotten to level 5, so I can't offer a full, or even remotely thorough review, but I can give my first impressions. No PVP, no advanced classes, no vehicles, just the bare basics of what the game is and how it looks.

For starters, this really is Star Wars meets World of Warcraft. The zone layout, the flow, the combat mechanics, the class selection, the quests, they all call back to the MMO I quit three years ago and is still crushing gamers' souls. There are melee, ranged, healing, and magic classes, with different quirks to make things interesting.

I was pleasantly surprised by the smuggler, who uses a cover-based mechanic to jump behind objects to enable other skills. It's a small twist that makes the guns-and-bombs-using smuggler feel distinct against more traditional classes. The Jedi consular is much more of a mage/priest with some melee skills, using their powers to throw debris at enemies and create shock waves to loosen them up before moving in to kill. They both play differently, and as they get more skills they branch out into even more unique styles, with two more advanced classes for each class at level 10. The Bounty Hunter mixes things up even more, taking what could have been a swap of the smuggler and making it much more heavy weapons and armor-based instead of pistols and tricks.

The classes and races are inexplicably limited, with certain classes not getting certain races. The races don't seem to make much of a difference in gameplay, so this is disappointing. I'd love to be a Chiss smuggler, but they're Sith-only.

The opening zones at split into four areas, with one for every two classes (Jedi Knight/Consular, Smuggler/Trooper, Sith Warrior/Inquisitor, and Bounty Hunter/Imperial Agent). The action in these areas seems similar for the pairs of classes, but you actually get slightly different "stories," with different quest areas limited to just one of the two classes. The quest scenes are all voiced, giving the game a cut scene feel and making you actually pay attention to why you're doing what you're doing instead of scrolling down to the bottom and finding the objective. These scenes even have conversation choices that let you actually role play what your character is doing. It's a great way to make you feel connected with your character and not think of him as just a loot magnet.

The graphics are good for an MMO, but not very impressive. Character models are attractive and locations are interesting and fairly detailed, but it doesn't have the depth or scope of Mass Effect and Dragon Age's worlds. There are lots of zones, but they're MMO zones, so don't expect everything to be packed tight with interesting things. There are plenty of side quests to get in every area, but it follows the WoW pattern. The presentation is good, but The Old Republic is still paced like an MMO, and it doesn't try to do a lot beyond that.

I need to play to level 10 to unlock the more specialized classes (Sage/Shadow for Consular and Gunslinger/Scoundrel for Smuggler), and I'll need to go beyond that to get my ship and companions. However, so far this looks like a very strong outing. The big issue is whether the endgame content will be as compelling, once players are done with their plots. We'll see how that goes, and whether The Old Republic can dig into the MMO market and make a lasting impression (and not fizzle, cough, sputter, and go out like Star Wars Galaxies).

The Humble Bundle is breaking my balls. It seems like every month gets a new one that gets more of my cash and, probably, more of yours. The Humble Indie Bundle 4 is now out, barely a week after the Humble Introversion Bundle finished. And this bundle is... awesome. Seven great games for just $5 (or more, or less, depending on how generous you're feeling).

First, the details if you're not familiar with the Humble Bundle. You can pay however much you want. If you pay more than the average, you get an extra game or two. The games have no DRM and you can get them on multiple platforms. You can decide how much of your money goes to the developers, the bundle people, or the Child's Play and EFF charities. That's it.

Now, the games this time around are a who's who of the best indie games of the last few years. There's Cave Story+, Super Meat Boy, Jamestown, Gratuitous Space Battles, Bit.Trip RUNNER, Shank, and NightSky. I can name four of those games that are worth $10 alone.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the best games of the year. It's also one of the most imperfect, buggy, and flawed games of the year. Since this is a Bethesda Softworks game, neither of these things should be surprising to you.

Skyrim takes place 200 years after Oblivion, and Tamriel has changed. It's now the Fourth Era, and the Empire has weakened. The Septim bloodline is gone, and the Empire has survived a bloody war with the Thalmor, an alliance of elves that broke away. Now they have  peace agreement that keeps the Empire under some rules, including banning the worship of Talos, the first Emperor and the Ninth Divine. The people of Skyrim aren't happy about that, so Ulfric Stormcloak killed the High King of Skyrim and started a bloody civil war in the region. Also, dragons are back, and no one knows why. You start as a prisoner who escapes and has to find out why he has the power to speak in the words of dragons and absorb their souls. Begin the game.

If you've played an Elder Scrolls game, Fallout 3, or Fallout: New Vegas, you know the deal. It's a first-person RPG that puts you in the middle of a big world and sends you on a vague quest you might or might not eventually get around to. It's a lot of freedom, little direction, and an absurd amount of things to do. The main quest is a small fraction of the content, which includes taking a side in the civil war, rising through different guilds and groups (the Mage Guild is gone, but the College of Winterhold serves as the mage guild quest line), finding shrines and ruins, getting famous and becoming nobility in the different parts of the game, and killing lots of things. We've talked about this before. If you want hand-holding and a single path through the whole world, pick up a Final Fantasy game. In Skyrim, you can go anywhere you want.

Of course, that's not always a good idea. While enemies grow with you and get better equipment and powers, the curve is much less linked than it was in Oblivion and Morrowind. In Skyrim, if you're a low level and you find a saber cat, an ice troll, or a hagraven without preparation, you're probably going to die. The combat feels more frustrating because of this less equal curve, but it also feels more rewarding, because the challenge is there and you get a real sense of power and growth as you play.

The character system has gotten an overhaul, with only three attributes (Magicka, Health, and Stamina) defining your character and everything else controlled by your skills and the perks in your skills. You get directly better at things as you do them, and the higher your skills go the more points you can put into their perk trees, which unlock very useful things. You can learn to cast destruction magic with both hands at once to make spells more powerful, make your favorite type of armor weigh nothing when you wear it, let you smith magical items, and brew more useful potions and poisons. If you want a class-specific benefit, you can look for the different Guardian Stones, which give you star sign powers, like turning invisible once a day or boosting your combat/stealth/magic experience rate. It lets you play the way you want and create your class while you do it, instead of pigeonholing you in a specific role and forcing you to put much more work into your off-class skills.

Crafting has become much more useful. You can still enchant items and brew potions, but now you can also smith your own items. More importantly, you can improve the equipment you already have based on your smithing skill, turning a good blade into a great one. It adds a new level of interactivity, giving you reason to search mines and toil at forges. When you have a (Superior) or (Legendary) piece of armor, it's something you didn't just find in a dungeon. It's something you made your own. Like all Elder Scrolls crafting systems, this is easily abused with an alchemy enchantment-smithing potion cycle that lets you build up your smithing very high and create overpowered weapons. You shouldn't do this, because it takes the fun out of the game. It's also not something the game forces upon you, so even though it's present it's not something that automatically makes the game too easy. If you want to break the game, it's your choice, and it's not pushed on you.

The world is huge, with several dozen caves, ruins, and keeps that you can explore. There are nine Holds in Skyrim, each with their own town, so there's plenty of urban adventure even if there aren't any cities as large as Imperial City or Vivec. Several groups have their own lengthy quest lines, and you're never more than a few minutes from a new lead on what to do. The Radiant Story system even nudges you towards parts of Skyrim you haven't explored, by giving you random quests based on where you've been and how you play. Most importantly, the different places you can explore feel different, and I didn't get any sense of the copy and paste repetition of caves and ruins I felt in Oblivion and Morrowind.

I talked about this before, but the story takes a back seat to the adventure in Skyrim, like most western RPGs. The story with the dragons is interesting, but it doesn't rise above the war between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, the intrigue of the College of Winterhold, or the secret of the Companions. There's less a "main quest" and more a "quest you should probably get through to say you 'beat' the game as you play dozens of other interesting quests." Unfortunately, most quests boil down to dungeon crawling and finding an item, but there's enough variety to keep things fun.

The biggest problem with the game is the menu system. It doesn't feel right for PC or consoles. While Morrowind's menus were clearly PC-oriented, and Oblivion's were console-oriented, Skyrim's menus seem to be a strange compromise that relies mostly on text, partitioned into arbitrary columns on the screen. Items, magic, skills, and the map are separated by directions, meaning you have to either leave the menu screen completely and come back or jump up through several levels of tabs through which you've sorted your spells and items to find something else. There are no tabs, except in the quest screen (which is puzzlingly not even part of the main menu, and instead tucked away with statistics and save and load screens). A favorites menu lets you bring up your most commonly used spells and items, but it still feels like a convoluted mess. A patch that returns Skyrim to Oblivion's menu system would be very welcome, even if Oblivion's wasn't particularly good.

Then there are the bugs. This is an Elder Scrolls game, so of course there are bugs. Lots of them. Quest triggers can sometimes fail to happen, NPCs can act confused, companions can act stupid, and Skyrim can sometimes simply freeze. It's not perfect, and you will have to save often (at 5 MB a save).

Skyrim is an immensely rewarding game if you can push through the awkward menus and numerous bugs. You're going to have to go through sections of dungeons more than once. You're going to have to reload. You're going to have to dive into menus more often than you should. Despite all of this, you're going to keep coming back if you like even a tiny bit of the western RPG genre. There's so much to do and so much to see in Skyrim that it's a great game, even with its flaws. And there are many, many flaws.

I reviewed the PlayStation 3 version, but if you have a computer that can handle it, pick up the PC version. You can mod and adjust the game to be visually spectacular beyond the consoles' abilities to show, and the inevitable mods from the community will add a lot of value to the game.

Angry Birds needs to stop. It's become a Simpsons-in-early-90s-level fad. Or tamagotchi-in-late-90s-level fad. Or pogs-for-that-one-week-in-the-mid-90s-level fad. It's not just a casual game that became popular like Bejeweled, Peggle, or your-Zynga-game-of-choice. It's a multimedia phenomenon. And I'm getting freaking sick of it. At Best Buy, they have Angry Birds iPhone cases, headphones, and speakers. At Toys R Us, they have giant plush Angry Birds. And at Forbidden Planet (and stores normal people shop at), they have Angry Birds Fruit Gummis. I'm getting tired of Angry Birds, but I love a good gummi candy, so I got a box.

These Angry Birds Fruit Gummis are made by Healthy Food Brands, manufactured in Mexico, and put in four collectible Angry Birds boxes with birds or a pig cut-out. The gummis themselves are red (cherry), red (strawberry), yellow (lemon), blue (raspberry), green (apple), and black (grape), all shaped like a different Angry Birds character. You get a generous handful in the $2 candy box.

I was going to describe each candy and give it a review, but I can't, because they all taste pretty much the same. These are the blandest gummi candies I've ever eaten. I'm not making a joke about casual gaming; these are genuinely bland. Each candy is just vaguely sweet with a slight aftertaste of the flavor it's supposed to be, or the color related to the flavor it's supposed to be. The apple gummi tastes like a holistically diluted shot of Pucker, the lemon candy tastes like a slightly lemony bit of rubber cement, and I thought the blue gummi was a somewhat recognizable candy blueberry until I looked at the box and saw that it was raspberry. These gummis are made with real fruit juice like Chef Boyardee has a full serving of vegetables in each can. It might be technically true based on our loose standards, but it's fundamentally wrong.

I usually love gummi candies, but these I didn't feel like finishing. Give me some Haribo gold bears, give me some Sour Patch Kids, give me generic drug store gummi worms, but at least they all have some kind of flavor. There's just nothing to the Angry Birds gummis besides the brand recognition.

The headline says it all. Steam usually has some pretty good deals, but they might have outdone themselves with this one. The sale runs through Sunday, so pick up these games while you can. Highlights include, for today alone:

• Fallout: New Vegas - $5
• Monkey Island Special Edition Bundle - $5
• L.A. Noire - $25
• Total War Mega Pack - $12.50

Other sales going on for the weekend include:

• Portal 1 and 2 - $17.50
• Orcs Must Die! - $7.50
• Mass Effect 2 - $10
• Dungeon Defenders - $7.50
• Sam and Max Complete Pack - $33.50

If you want some PC games, now's a great time.

This is pretty big, if not specifically useful yet. Jesse from Finland on Tumblr went to the edge of Skyrim and beyond, and found that the game has land masses modeled all the way to Morrowind and Cyrodil. You need to turn on no clipping after you go east of Stendarr's Beacon, but from there you can find the landscape of Morrowind, with Vvardenfell and the Red Mountain. If you go south of that, you can find Cyrodil, and even the island where the Imperial City should be located.

There's no content there, or even any foliage, but the fact that the land masses are modeled could indicate ambitions for remakes of Morrowind and Oblivion, or expansions into Morrowind and Cyrodil. Modders now have big land masses ready for them to get started with their own remake projects, and that could mean some great things for PC users (and me kicking myself for getting the PS3 version). Skyrim's already a massive game, but if you can move out to the other provinces? Best RPG ever. I want my Telvanni wizard tower back.

[Source: Destructoid]