25,361 community articles
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Gotta say, all of Jan's gallivanting around Yharham put me in the mood for another Soulslike, even though it wasn't that long ago I completed The Surge . Fortunately, Death's Gambit is a bit shorter and less intense than most games of its type, following Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight 's approach of a side-scrolling 2D game that can throw in a few mechanics from the explormer sub-genre to...
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It’s not hard to determine that my favorite genre of game is the platformer. Especially in tough times such as these, I love jumping into something that simply asks for the player’s reflexes. The comparative merits of 2D and 3D styles of platforming have been endlessly debated. Both are great! However, a period in history that has always interested me is the overlap between them. As 3D technolo...
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I don't know what it is about these Gothic games I find so compelling. I suspect it's the excellent sense of structure and the character progression's perception of value in spite of or maybe even due to its 2003-era antiquated mechanics and high difficulty level. I've spent the better part of the last week traipsing across Gothic II 's island of Khorinis, probing into monster-infested areas to...
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Giant Bomb started around the time I'd begun a new stage of my life. It's hard to put it any other way, since my change in surroundings were pretty dramatic, and the last time I wrote on here was sort of the preamble to another major change. I've since reviewed a lot more games than I had reviewed anything in my entire life before that point and basically seen both sides, in a minor way, to the...
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Intro As the title says, just jotting down some thoughts for myself as I play through the Trails series games. Honestly not really meant for a wide audience, since it's just for my sake as a journal... or a blog, as one might say. Haven't been making much use of the community features on this site, so what better way to start doing so than writing about games?! I just need a place to exercise m...
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I've never played the original Final Fantasy VII. Readers may remember XV was the first one I ever played , and the only other Final Fantasy thing I had experienced was seeing Spirits Within in the theater. I say all this up front to make it clear that aside from the most basic of information that became part of popular culture, I knew almost nothing about Final Fantasy VII before playing the R...
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Two Worlds Fun Fact: The only games I played a decent amount of last week were this and Gears Tactics. Plz send help. Release Date : September 7, 2007 (PC, Xbox 360) Developer : Reality Pump Time Played : A little under 5 hours Dubiosity : 4 out of 5 Voice Acting : 10 out of 5 Would I play more? You know what? Yeah. Yes. The thing that always stuck out in regards to the original Two Worlds was...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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We're back with another early '00s CRPG banger from the archives. The banger archives. Also known as GOG. The game this time is Gothic II , the sequel to Gothic and the predecessor to Gothic III . Go ahead and check if you don't believe me. OK, so, there's this German development studio called Piranha Bytes (later Pluto 13 GmbH). Piranha Bytes likes making RPGs, but only in a very specific way:...
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One of the threads I keep returning to with the Indie Game of the Week feature, mostly incidentally, is how Indie adventure games are always experimenting with storytelling techniques. In particular those that are better served with the interactivity that video games bring, if not necessarily with the same reflex-intensive focus that an action game might have. A popular route, as it were, is th...
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Welcome back to the most horrifying, terrifying, mystifying, thing on the internet to feature a wheel of chaos since that ill-fated Giant Bomb feature where they pretended to play Donkey Kong 64! It's a bit of a short one for today, because it turns out I don't have much to say about Sacred Sacred is the living embodiment of a mid-2000s video game critic's 7/10 Release Date : March 19, 2004. Un...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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I'll be frank with you all: this was an inauspicious start to May Millennials this year, even putting aside the quarantine troubles. It felt like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura fought me every step of the way as I attempted to at first enjoy its more subtle strengths of an unusual setting and unique mechanics before tolerating everything else long enough to see what the later game was...
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Firaxis’s XCOM games are the modern touchpoint for the tactics genre, and for good reason. The balance between depth and accessibility has attracted droves of fans, each with a story about how a tragic missed shot destroyed a campaign. I have personally dumped an imposing number of hours into XCOM 2 and its expansion. Now, the studio aims to keep the flame going with XCOM: Chimera Squad. The bu...
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A truly gorgeous looking game that I couldn't quite see to the end. So, a while back now I thought I’d start a series of blogs on here about trying out various faming games, with a leaning towards the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games. After having a good go at Littlewood (which has had some great updates since that blog) my plan had been to dive head first into Doraemon: A Story of Seasons....
stantongrouse (Premium member)
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First of all this is not a "Giantbomb now sucks" blog. No way. Was it better back in the day? Yes. BUT it still is one of my favorite places to get entertained. I love every single member of both the Beast and West teams. I will always support them in any way I can. What I tune in almost religiously is the podcasts but I like using the podcast app on my iphone to consume them. I might switch to...
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I like Final Fantasy VII . To be honest, that statement probably goes without saying. FFVII played an integral part in how I earned my blogging crust on this website all those years ago, with my Enduring Final Fantasy VII series representing the biggest commitment I've made to any writing project I've ever pursued. That series, an epic undertaking that spanned thirty-five entries across almost...
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It’s nice to know that after being pleasantly surprised by Rise of the Argonauts’ mid-budget competence, this feature has already started to live up to its name. I might as well set out a couple more “ground rules” for the wheel while I’m here, because shoving more restrictions on myself is fun! I am obligated to play any game picked by the wheel for at least two streaming sessions. Thus far, t...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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May Millennials is back with a few more of the biggest CRPGs from the 2000s that I missed out on, starting with the last of the three major Troika releases I've yet to write about*: their fantasy steampunk-themed Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura . Like the other two Troika games, this was almost entirely resurrected by an accommodating community who saw what these overly ambitious deve...
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Hey there folks. Just to clarify, this blog was originally posted on a different site in February 2020. In the interest of keeping all my games-focused writing in one place, I've decided to copy it over to my Giant Bomb blog. I've spent the last few weeks playing through Marvel's Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4 . As far as open-world action games go, it's up there as one of the very best I've p...
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Talk about your blasts from the past. Ms. 'Splosion Man was Twisted Pixel 's second 'Splosion Man game, which instead followed the equally insane distaff version in a riff on Ms. Pac-Man (and, like Ms. Pac-Man, plays more or less identically to her male counterpart). It will be celebrating its tenth anniversary sometime next year, so what better time to finally start playing it? Ms. 'Splosion M...
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Hey there folks. Just to clarify, this blog was originally posted on a different site in January 2020. In the interest of keeping all my games-focused writing in one place, I've decided to copy it over to my Giant Bomb blog. The Portal Will Open in Three... Two... One... I'm not sure there's another video game whose first ninety seconds are as perfect as Portal 's. Fading from black, the player...
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First off, I want to thank anyone who tuned into my Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run streams and/or donated. It was (mostly) a lot of fun and I managed to raise $500 for COVID-19 relief. You can find a playlist of my archived stream here . Unfortunately, I forgot to hit record for part of it, and I still need to do some editing before I upload my day 2 stream, but if you really want to watch...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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Ah, the dregs of summer. That's what we're looking at with Part XVIII: an uninspired gaggle of sports games and licensed games. I wish I could say there were some highlights, but... not so much. Well, not for me at least, but then I knew what I was getting myself into when I started this g-d project. Seriously, we have three basketball games in this entry alone. What gives? And golf, tennis, ba...
