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It's April 1st! It's April 1st! And so that's why when Irrational said "our new game is Bioshock Infinite" I just laughed and laughed. Those guys are so funny! Ha! Man, I'm so glad it's not REALLY called that...

Many scoff at the console versions of Dragon Age: Origins, but they provide an experience far more accessible than that of the PC. The PC version's graphics and user interface easily trounce that of the Xbox 360 or PS3, and its combat is more tactical, but it is also significantly slower paced, which makes for a more laborious experience overall.

Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption is a highly rated game, one that will surely be considered for Game of the Year awards by many media outlets. But the question is, is it really as great as people claim? Does it really offer as much variety as we're lead to believe?

There are many great RPGs on the Xbox 360, but one stands above them all, the bleak, depressing, but ultimately amazing Fallout 3. It's a game that immerses you in its fiction, challenges you with its combat, but ultimately dazzles you with its fully realized world and abundance of entertaining content.

DeathSpank is an awesome action RPG, with a great sense of humor, beautiful art work, solid RPG trappings, and controls that generally work -- at least most of the time. But when you run up against a boss that takes real gamepad skills, it just gets too hard. At least for me.

For an RPG to offer replay value, it must incorporate several distinct elements. These elements may vary depending on who you ask, but for me they include relatively deep character development customization, strategic combat, robust inventory management, and a great story that truly gives the player choice.

Alpha Protocol offers solid RPG systems, plenty of weapons, stats-based shooting and stealth, and the flexibility to let you role play as you see fit. But most importantly, it charms you with a story that never takes itself too seriously. It entertains, amuses, and challenges, but keeps tongue firmly in cheek the entire time.

While Alpha Protocol is not the perfect stealth action game, it does provide deep customization that allows you to take Agent Thorton into harm's way and make it back out without having to kill twenty-two thousand enemies. If you prefer silent kills and non-lethal take downs over mass murder, you'll find a lot to like in this game.

Few RPGs find the sweet spot between offering lightweight game worlds and systems that require little to no understanding and completely overwhelming you with huge back stories and too much complexity. I maintain that Alpha Protocol does precisely this. Between it's tutorials & organic intel discovery and dialogue systems, it rarely overwhelms.

Is Alpha Protocol just a game that doesn't deliver on its promises? Or like the original Mass Effect, is it actually brilliantly flawed? It can be argued that evolution has passed Alpha Protocol by and other action RPGs better give people what they really want, but the fact is no other RPG delivers so well on the promise of giving players choice.

When Valve released The Orange Box on next-gen consoles back in 2007, it was seen as a massive commitment to consoles by one of the premiere PC developers. Since then things have slowed, though, and co-op and multiplayer games as well as Steam for PC and Mac appear to be its focus. Have we lost a great developer? Are they now a PC/Mac publisher?

While Mass Effect 2 has really resonated with gamers, it's done so at the expense of most of the RPG trappings of the original. Will this streamlined experience taint the RPG pool, forcing other developers and publishers to sacrifice a deeper experience for something that sells to a larger audience or is there still room for clunky RPGs?

Two big titles are battling for your gamer dollars right now: Alan Wake and Red Dead Redemption. Which one is right for you depends on whether you prefer emergent or directed gameplay. But what do those terms mean, and how do you know where you stand?

While Alan Wake is a well regarded action adventure it has received a fair amount of criticism. This Xbox 360 exclusive has garnered good reviews but its supposed flaws have tempered people's enthusiasm a bit. For me, though, Alan Wake is a great experience that entertains while also tickling my fancy for a good old fashioned thriller.

Most RPGs give us a single place to store saved games. If you want to start a new career you are forced to overwrite the previous one or sort through saved games to figure out which is which. But Bioware gives us multiple careers with its Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. This is a big win for gamers and others should follow their example.

The gaming world has changed but is it really for the best? Back in the day PCs were wholly different beasts than consoles but today games on either platform are quite similar. And while consoles seem to have replaced the venerable PC as the gaming device of choice, it wasn't always this way.

Where the original Mass Effect was a relatively deep and complex role playing game, Mass Effect 2 is more like an action adventure. Developer Bioware trimmed the fat, replacing the complex inventory management, character development, and combat systems with simplified versions that take little to master and leave this writer unsatisfied.

Microsoft promised the sky with Game Room, the virtualized arcade experience for the Xbox 360 and PC, but did they deliver? Well yes, they did! Great emulations, solid controls, the ability to rewind and save games, and cross-platform support make Game Room a resounding success.

I am a decidedly Western gamer. While I enjoyed some of the Japanese RPGs from the previous generation, games like Xenosaga, I've only liked one, Lost Odyssey, from the current. Is this a problem with me, an older gamer who grew up on computers not consoles, or is there something about the modern JRPG that just makes it hard to understand?