Soul Calibur V is the latest in Namco Bandai’s long-running fighter franchise. Like the previous version, Soul Calibur V has built itself around accessibility, being just as easy and interesting for a beginner as a fighting game pro. To test this theory, I found a review from the darkest pits furthest from the light of gaming. Here’s a review of Soul Calibur V. Hollywood Chicago has the story.

The Final Fantasy series has suffered a peculiar disease, one common to artists and designers who go too long without criticism, who gather too many fans who adore the artist and not the art. That disease is creeping stylism. The work of the artist becomes more and more obscure, bizarre, more tied to the tropes and references of what came before. Eventually, no one save the artist himself can understand what in the hell is going on. To illustrate that point, here’s a review of Final Fantasy XIII-2. GameInformer has the story.

Bastion is a game and a story about a kid who finds himself rebuilding a fortress from a lost age. It’s also one of the better small games released in recent years, and you need to know about it. So here’s a review on Bastion, rising from the dark depths of MIT’s journalistic tradition. The Tech has the story.

The folks over at GameOgre recently asked me to take a look at Dungeon Defenders, a game that’s a cross between tower defense and Diablo. In Dungeon Defenders, you play one of four classes with their own powers and abilities, and your goal is to defend a giant crystal from the incoming hordes of evil. Also, levels and loot. Here’s the video.

The Entertainment Software Association, a lobbying group for the biggest companies in gaming, has dropped its support of the dangerous congressional bills, SOPA and PIPA. These two bills, should they pass, would effectively destroy the internet and give control over what remains to big media corporations. The ESA has previously supported the bills, but a massive internet protest campaign forced them to change their stance. The group’s announcement to this effect is especially interesting, as it implies a group full of lobbyists and lawyers had no idea what was in the bills they were championing. Kotaku has the story.

Normally, we here at Vox don’t get much into politics, because at the end of the day, the play’s the thing. Then, I came across a review of Bethesda’s Skyrim which started out, “As a conservative, I’m always a little bit wary when it comes to video game storytelling. Game development studios, if you ask me, have a decidedly liberal bias.” The article then goes on to consider Fallout 3: New Vegas as an indictment of the failure of democracy, and then finds time to consider Skyrim itself in a thoroughly political light. While Poe’s Law prevents me from making any judgements, I did find the review interesting enough to pass along. The Tech has the story.

A while back, I did a review of DC Universe Online for the four hit-dice humanoids over at GameOgre.com. The ogres liked what they saw, and so sent me back into the MMO mines to take a look at the grandfather of superhero MMORPGs, City of Heroes. Gaze in wonder as VideOgre punches hobos, falls into the Hollows, and dances in Atlas park.

Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 both released at roughly the same time, and both to the same audience, more or less. That left gamers with a question, which is better? Well, we can’t answer that, but I can say there’s a lot more people playing COD:BLOPs now than before. Either way, most reviews of these games came from veterans of the franchises, which skews their experience somewhat. Enter then, the total noob. IGN has the story.

Stranger’s Wrath was a somewhat unusual game for the Oddworld universe. A first-person shooter set in the Oddworld version of the old west, the game had you catching bounties and saving towns with a variety of weapons and cute, fuzzy living ammo. A great game, but a victim of the changing seasons in the console wars, so most people never heard about it. Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD looks to change all that with an appearance on the PlayStation Network. Check out the review. Gamesradar has the story.

The Nintendo 3DS has awakened as a terrible kraken, and the portable market is clutched in its tendrils. For all that, the mutant handheld has gazed out upon its prey with but a single eye, the eye of first-party games. It seems that new beasts are arising from the depths now, ones that herald the 3DS as a diverse polykraken of many eyes. Like Mighty Switch Force off the Nintendo eShop. Here’s a review. 1UP has the story.