25,358 community articles
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Ch-ch-ch-changes… 2021 was a year where a lot of things changed for me. I spent the first months of the year freezing my rear off in a warehouse. Then, I spent the rest sweating it off in Florida. I ultimately internalized that you can’t predict what’s going to happen – you just gotta roll with it. Not only did this very website see some big changes, but I stepped out of my comfort zone for try...
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Cruis’n Blast is uncut medical grade nostalgia and it need to be regulated by the FDA. It’s almost unbelievable that this thing actually exists. It’s an honest to goodness arcade port to home console of a venerable series and it plays like an N64 game while looking like a souped up Dreamcast title but it’s…good? It feels like falling down some kind of time hole into the bargain bin section of a...
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Preamble You will certainly never see me call The Dig an ugly game. Hello everyone, and welcome to a new blog series I plan to do in-between my usual JRPG content on Giant Bomb. In 2021 I decided to play around with an assortment of "classic" adventure games, each with a reputation for having some butt-ass puzzles. This time around, I will be looking at The Dig, a 1995 release from LucasArts. N...
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Death’s Door manages to combine the formula of top down Zelda with a unique and darkly whimsical modern fairy tale setting to create a polished indie gem. In Death’s Door you take on the role of a nameless crow who works as reaper in a literal bureaucracy of death where other corvidae serve as clock punching office workers just doing the thankless and boring tasks of collecting the souls of the...
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Recently, I went to the Xbox museum thing. My top 5 games were Halo 3, Halo 5, Halo: Reach, Rock Band, and Xbox Back Compat (featuring a bunch of Halo). I love the series. I'm a huge, huge fan of Halo. It's my favorite FPS series, and I'll routinely go back to an old campaign and play through some of my favorite levels. And yes, some of my favorite levels are from 343's games (Infinity, Compose...
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There’s a lot going on in The Ascent. It’s an isometric twin stick shooter action RPG that takes place on an arcology on a planet far from earth where corporations govern and most people are indentured servants who sell themselves into near slavery just to get to this grim metal city, presumably because wherever they came from was even worse. This is an intriguing premise, and the Ascent blends...
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It's here, the first installment of my hopefully long-running series, the Ranking of (Modern) Roguelikes. I'll be looking at as many as I can, viewing them through the prism of four categories: improvisation and experimentation, risk/reward calculations, multiple solutions to problems, and teaching through failure . For more information on the what and why, check out the original blog here . Su...
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When thinking about games, we tend to sort them into two big piles, piles that we didn't really have twenty years ago. There are AAA games which we broadly describe as being high-budget and polished. And then there are indie games which we understand to have lower production values but more room for experimentation. Independent releases are able to satisfy niche interests and may not necessaril...
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Jess recently Tweeted a new logo for the Nuke Dot Com YouTube channel . She also said that she had to make sure it didn't look too much like a butt plug. This had to be done.
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During Jeff Bakalar's segment on the Giant Bombathon 2021 , we saw him play Bingo Poppidoppolous' Pinball-Golf Paradise. This had to be done.
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What better way to finish off a year of Indie game reviews, and especially this year in particular, than with something as relaxed and breezy as a slice-of-life-sim? My Time at Portia , originally released in 2019 by Chinese studio Pathea Games , takes the type of formula most recently championed by Stardew Valley (but has been around much longer) in that you operate your own business in a peac...
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The Gunk is not an exciting video game. It is essentially a 3D puzzle platformer, except the platforming isn’t difficult and the puzzles mostly involve some very basic moving of object A to point B and hitting switch C to open up path D. It’s about 4 and a half hours long or so and most of the mechanics are revealed in the first hour and a half, leaving you with some very gentle iteration on th...
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It’s time yet again for one of my favorite annual traditions: a look back at my favorite video game music of the year. And 2021 was another year full of varied, excellent, and just plain kick-ass video game music, including the 10 scrumptious soundtracks I’ve chosen to highlight below. Music is a huge part of what makes video games special to me, and each of these games were made much better by...
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Rogue is one of my favorite games, and the Roguelike is my favorite genre. The past decade or so has been very good to me. Developers large and small have embraced the roguelike design and refined it in creative and unexpected ways. Inspired by @mento and @imunbeatable80 and their semi-regular series, I want to put together my own "ranking of roguelikes." I'll talk about how the title uses the...
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I thought about it, and I decided we needed one more explormer this year for Indie Game of the Week's penultimate 2021 entry. It's definitely been their year - Metroid Dread , Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Nights , Unsighted , F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch , Grime , Astalon: Tears of the Earth , etc. - though I won't be discovering any of those until next year and beyond. This week's map-base...
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I turned the corner on Psychonauts 2 at the point where the hub area opens up and lets you explore the grounds around Psychonauts headquarters. Up until then I thought it was a decent follow up to the first game with better gameplay but less compelling story and characters. From that point, about a quarter into the game, to the end, I became convinced that it’s a masterpiece. Psychonauts 2 is t...
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When it comes to game releases every year has its big headliners and hidden gems, but none were more packed than 2017. As my backlog-related project for this year I'm looking to build a list of a hundred great games that debuted at some point in 2017, making sure to hit all the important stops along the way. For more information and statistics on this project, be sure to check out this Intro bl...
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To start things off, this blog entry is 100% inspired by Jeff's awesome review of Halo Infinite and also reviews in general , which I strongly encourage reading first. It got me thinking about how I prefer to consume video games-related critical works, as well as what I hope to get out of them when all is said and done. In the interest of avoiding a rambling post (EDIT: too late), I'm going to...
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Many video games live double lives. In one, they are a series of systems and levels that aim to provide the most fulfilling and fascinating interactions. In the other, they attempt to present objects and characters that adhere to real-world principles. One of the most common conflicts you see in video games is that they can't rectify that identity crisis. By attempting to pursue one of those pe...
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There are a lot of things to like about Octopath Traveler. It has fantastic music if you like the fantasy orchestral style, which I do. The combat is extremely tactical for a JRPG, focusing around enemy weaknesses and managing your character’s boost points to “break” enemies by damaging them with weakness sources until they get stunned and become vulnerable. This makes fights much more engaging...
