What Were Playing January 29, 2012

Tom Orry, Edtior – Little Deviants, PS Vita

I've been off work all week with a bad back (jumped into the road to save a kitten if you must know), but I've been able to play a little bit of Little Deviants on Vita. All consoles seem to require a mini-game collection at launch, and this is what Vita users will have on February 22. The problem with games like this, released at £19.99, is that it offers the exact kind of experience common on Apple's App Store. While Deviants is priced in the budget category of Vita titles, its price tag is extortionate when compared to the top prices paid for iOS games. Sony should be developing pick-up-and-play titles like this for Vita as it's clear there is a market for them, but it can't then try to sell them at the traditional pricing model. I'm willing to pay high prices for games like Uncharted and WipEout, which offer experiences far beyond what my iPod can deliver, but Little Deviants is competing against a different range of titles, most of which cost 69p.

Neon Kelly, Deputy and Features Editor – Quarrel, iOS, XBLA

As someone who writes for a living, Quarrel is the gaming equivalent of a Pitcher plant. I'm lured in by the notion that I'll be able to show off my verbal prowess; once engaged, it slyly massages my ego by presenting me with easy opponents who I can bulldozer with ease. Then it presents someone like Malik – an AI rival who actually knows how to put up a fight. From here, it's only a matter of time until my ego takes a battering.

Quarrel plays out like a combination of high-speed Scrabble and Risk. It's a game about flexing your linguistic muscles, but also one that demand the foresight of a military tactician. While it certainly helps that the presentation is so immediately likeable, I think its real strength is the fact that it more or less forces you to show off. At anything beyond the most basic level of challenge, you're required to persistently make the most of your limited letters – to deliver the best possible combination, under duress, each and every time. Under such conditions, it's only natural that you'd start to feel cocky when you win... which in turn sets up the delicious agony of realising that you've made an unforgivable mistake, either in your attempts to look clever, or in spreading your forces too thinly across the map.

In short, it's excellent – and it's only 400 points on XBLA. I've yet to test myself against online opposition, so lord knows what humiliations still lie in wait for me.

Martin Gaston, Reviews Editor - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Xbox 360

Well, isn't this a surprise? And there was you thinking I might not be playing Skyrim again this week. Wrong. Bit of a problem here, though, as I've actually been playing so much Skyrim I don't know if I've actually got anything left to say about Skyrim. Isn't it funny how those horses can pretty much climb vertically, though? I've scaled the harshest mountains by holding forward and hitting jump every now and then. Edmund Hillary would have kicked himself if he knew it was this easy.

Anyway, I've started dabbling in the Daedric questlines and, boy, those guys sure are jerks. See you next week, friends!

Emily Gera, MMO Editor - Star Wars: The Old Republic, PC

God, sex in BioWare games. What's that about? I mentioned on the podcast that I managed to chat up an alien's mum and then go all the way with my companion in the room, but it just keeps getting more and more absurd. Looking through YouTube videos of other users' experiences, some of the stuff is baffling. You diddle an obsessive virgin, you diddle some old woman, you diddle your companion and then verbally abuse her. It's nearly as bad as The Witcher's sex cards feature...