10 public written reviews
The views here are this user’s only and are not representative of Giant Bomb's thoughts and opinions on the discussed video game. GB's official reviews reside at giantbomb.com/reviews.
Before I start, read t his article because it better lays out this argument with full research and facts. This game was $20 during the recent sale, and I finally gave in to my intrigue and jumped in. Jumping, swinging, webbing, seeing, speaking, and feeling - the verbs of person to person interaction in Insomniac's game are stellar. It feels otherworldly and natural to be Spider-Man, both in his role as hero and in…
I realized, when reviewing Witcher 3, that I had not reviewed DA:I and how unfair that was. As my first Dragon Age game and my first Bioware RPG, this game holds a rather important place to me. It showed me top-of-the-line character building that overwhelms any mistakes in world design or battle mechanics. The world is fascinating politically and socially, with clear questions of religious vs. political power,…
The Witcher 3 is not perfect. The pre-patches game had many technical oddities and difficulties. The combat becomes relatively rote after awhile. Breasts are displayed with reckless abandon, mostly not during sex. Roach can be a finicky horse. Some narrative threads seem to cut off early. The UI was a chore pre-patch and is now a bit better. And while all of that matters, it's still a deeply engaging and thoughtful…
Spoilers. Because of course. Buy the game if you haven't. It is worth experiencing. The game's best feature is the feeling of piecing together a story by focusing on key words and ideas in an interview. Combined with watching for a real person's tells (manufactured to be clear, but not poorly acted and obvious), this game is like an LA Noire interview that works. It's interesting to think about the progression here…
I waited until Bethesda fixed the PS3 version before buying Skyrim. And I bought it used just to spite their crappy handling of that situation. But I bought it out of devotion to the ideas of this sort of game. And that devotion was not, ultimately, ill-spent. Skyrim lives through its characters. While consistent voice actors and some blandness is held over from Oblivion, for the most part Bethesda appears to have…
In Thomas Was Alone, you control up to seven quadrilaterals with, as the narrator puts it, different relationships to gravity. Some jump higher, some jump lower, and some can even double jump. Some are tall, some are small, some are large, and some can float. You have to navigate every shape into its respective highlighted goal, using their abilities in tandem. The mechanics as developed in each new shape you…
Asssassin's Creed is the bravest goddamn game series in a long, long time. You play as a Muslim dude killing knights in the holy land, an Italian dude killing corrupt Catholics (and chilling with people of all cultures in Istanbul), and a conflicted Kanien'kehaka (or something close to that) dude figuring out how to protect himself, his people, and his ideals when all the white mother fuckers just want his land and…
This game has a story. I'm going to talk explicitly about it. Be warned. While Tokyo jungle is set in the 2030s, its real plot begins 200 years later when humanity has nearly wiped itself out with pollution and general stupidity. Rather than accept that fate, scientists create a time machine to transport current humans into the past and, presumably, not fuck up quite as badly. However, as the game explains, because…
Papo & Yo never rests on its laurels. The blocks that move houses puzzle at the beginning of the game is not drawn through many iterations to pad out the game. It happens once. Right there. There are common elements throughout the game. Mostly, you will be finding ways to exit an area by deconstructing the favelas around Quico, the main character, and remaking them into fordable paths. You do this while keeping…
At the end of Uncharted 2, peace is restored, love is found, and jokes are made. Uncharted 3 did not need to exist to finish any story arch. No henchman of Lazaravic got away. No shocking twist revealed a nuclear plot at the very end. Uncharted 2 ended and it was good. Uncharted 3, then, has to prove its existential necessity. It does so in the sophisticated arena of characterization. It tries to tell us who Nathan…
