25,362 community articles
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Welcome to “Gaming Memories,” a blog series where I reminisce about my favorite video games . I will slowly but surely get to every game on the list, and speak to why each holds a special place in my heart. That not only means I’ll talk about why I think each is a great game that speaks to my tastes, but also where and how it affected me in a larger context. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for rea...
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I have no clue whether I'm alone in this, but as a five or six-year-old child, games were incredibly mysterious to me. I remember playing Ocarina of Time with a friend and us stumbling our way through. I permanently handed over the controller after seeing and, more importantly, hearing the ReDead for the first time. I had no clue what I was doing and my friend only had a vague sense of what to...
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I've been pretty enamoured by Larian's latest, 2017's Divinity: Original Sin II , and especially with its combat system for the sheer breadth of options and forms its encounters have taken. I figured I'd write something that focused on that aspect, hopefully conveying just how elaborate it is. Getting Started An innocuous subheader, but also a surprisingly difficult one to broach: where, indeed...
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Hello and welcome to my 2019 EVO write up. EVO 2019 will once again be taking place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center from August 2nd to 4th. Who has joined and who has left Nine games will be featuring in an official capacity this year (with no charity fan-vote spot), five of which will be making their debut this year on the EVO main stage - Mortal Kombat 11 Samurai Shodown Soulcalibur VI Supe...
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Some games have tried to emulate it, but there's still nothing quite like Jet Set Radio's style. I was always a SEGA guy. Sonic the Hedgehog's vibrant colors, fast and dynamic gameplay, and market-researched persona hooked me in as a dipshit toddler, but what kept me attached to them as I grew into a dipshit adult was how creative they could be. As cynical as Sonic's focus-tested b-boy stance a...
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Kingdom Hearts will be discussed at some point in the near future. But not today. I’ve decided to keep writing. If nothing else, I’d like to keep in practice and celebrate a decade of me writing stupid internet blogs on Giant Bomb, which is a terrifying thing to fathom. June 29 marked 10 years since I wrote… whatever the hell those adolescent scribbles about Goldeneye were supposed to be about,...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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You may be happy to know that the recent Summer Steam Sale gave me plenty of ammunition for this feature for the foreseeable future. What you might be less stoked to hear is that I mostly bought more spacewhippers, which will not only produce many more reviews where I talk about how so-and-so ameliorates its backtracking or the adequacy of the in-game cartography but also many, many more instan...
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Nothing like a busy work week to make time fly, huh? Good thing it's supposed to be about 100 degrees this weekend! Entertainment Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Season 5 - I had started watching this season of the show weeks if not months ago but fell off of it. After deciding to get back to it I've been enjoying it. Not that it is the best Marvel series but it does have it's moments. Although I do qu...
dudewantshisrug (Premium member)
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One robot ninja's noble journey to see how far they can travel across this great cosmos of ours without spending any money or exerting too much effort. Part 7: Less is Moreframe I know, I know, everyone's talking about Empyrean this and Rapololyst that, but I'm never going to find out what are those are. Those, my friends, are raids and other activities for the discerning max-level, Mastery Rat...
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I remember first encountering the Genesis while spending either Thanksgiving or Christmas 1991 over at my older sister and brother-in-law’s house. I was only eight at the time, and remember being perplexed at the black gaming box and the thought that there could somehow be other systems than the good ‘ol NES. I did not subscribe to any gaming magazines at this point and I think I was still abou...
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Early last year , I decided to try out the first episode of Bear With Me : an adventure game eventually released in three parts. In retrospect, each of the three episodes are perhaps a little too short to require their own individual IGotW entries: you could probably get through one in an hour, contingent on how long the inventory puzzles stymied you. All the same, it didn't feel right to leave...
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The holiday was good but feels short-lived. Lucky for me I get to be on-call for work to help me forget about it though. Entertainment The Book of Eli - I wanted something I didn't have to pay a great amount of attention to but could still enjoy. Plus, Denzel Washington still kicks ass. 4.5/5 The Flash: Season 4 - It's ok, it is still about what I expect from The Flash but kept me interested en...
dudewantshisrug (Premium member)
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Author's Note: I would like to personally thank my close friend, Michael for taking a majority of the pictures in this blog. All pictures that are not watermarked with the EA or Cedar Fair logo are from him and his property. Why Is There A 4D Mass Effect Ride? I swear, this is a real thing that exists! Before we tackle the insanity that is "Mass Effect: New Earth," we must first discuss its hos...
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Hey so remember when I said I was going to run this series? Remember when I was like "hey see you in a month or two?" Well. Life, as it happens, had other plans. Namely, a bunch of other games came out and somewhere in there I upgraded my video card and look. Look . I love writing, and even writing about Video James , but sometimes finding time is hard, especially when I think November is when...
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Originally I wanted to write a review for each of the Trails games, but thought a retrospective blog was more appropriate. The thing about the Trails series is that each game builds upon the last one. Some of the games in the series feel incomplete and end with unsatisfying cliffhangers. For me, it doesn’t make sense to talk about each game individually when the whole series as a collective is...
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There are a lot of things that I could write about Judgment, the latest game from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the people best known for making the Yakuza games. I could ramble on comparing and contrasting it to the Yakuza games, I could spend paragraphs talking about all sorts of stuff, but I want to try to keep this one a bit shorter, and more focused than my usual fare. I really enjoyed Judgment, b...
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Look, I realize I play a lot of spacewhippers (which I'll be calling explormers for a change) for this piece, but that's only because people keep making them. What am I to do? Not explore the wonderful maps they've made and the particular flowchart they've designed for how each of the upgrades opens a path to the next? This particular phenomenon, which I don't just limit to platformers with thi...
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It feels like I didn't get a whole lot done in June for several reasons: It was hot as hell, I spent every morning playing about 30 minutes to an hour of frickin' Warframe, and I spent a similar amount of time reviewing 5-10 E3 trailers. June's always a madhouse between E3 and SGDQ, or a madsauna with how the humidity's been around these parts, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Actually, I...
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Busy! Over the last few weeks I have installed games, uninstalled games, finished games, and written about games. Most of them were excellent. Here are some words about them. Finished and Written Void Bastards What an amazing surprise this was . I knew nothing of Void Bastards' existence until a recent Beastcast, and thanks to its availability on Game Pass I was able to easily give it a shot. I...
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Welcome to the Bucketlog! It's going to be 2019's year-long blog series, focusing on games I've been meaning to play since forever. I've put together a list derived from a mix of systems, genres, and vintages because it's starting to look like 2019 might be the first "lean" year for games in a spell (though time will tell whether that pans out to be true) and I figured this would be a fine oppo...
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Hey there folks, and welcome to the first instalment in a series of blogs I'm calling 'Eleven Years of Xbox'. It's intended to be a celebration of the time I've spent within the Microsoft gaming ecosystem, having decided earlier this year to part ways with my Xbox consoles and streamline my video game collection. You can read more about it in the introduction to this series by following this li...
