Amalur's user interface is designed much like a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, liberally sprinkling yellow exclamation points and markers all over your mini-map in order to show you where to quest next.
Most strikingly, 'World of Warcraft' allows you to live a veritable second life. Girls can pretend to be boys; boys can pretend to be girls; human accountants can pretend to be elven mages.
Sure, when you think 'World of Warcraft,' you might picture the nerdier set - those who may have sacrificed hygiene and sleep to reach one more experience level. But the truth is that 'WoW' is populated with players of all sorts of backgrounds, from rural housewives to NFL punters.
Unraveling the threads of a good game story is like solving a well-crafted puzzle. After a lengthy, sometimes difficult journey, the pieces click into place, and you're rewarded with the satisfying payoff of a job well done.
Modern video games like 'Mass Effect' and 'Uncharted' cost tens of millions of dollars and require the labor of hundreds of people, who can each work 80- or even 100-hour weeks.
Between 'The Godfather,' 'The Sopranos,' 'Goodfellas,' and the countless other mob stories that have been both critically and commercially acclaimed over the years, it's not hard to see why a game like 'Mafia Wars' works.
