52 public reviews
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The skeleton army is the first thing you're able to raise, and I always found myself going back to them as I built and rebuilt my necromancer. Diablo III has seen extensive post-launch support, beginning with a profound restructuring of its loot table and endgame. A real-money auction house was put to rest. An expansion added a new act, class and an entire new way to remix and re-experience the game’s content. Since…
Keep that catman away from that soup! Overcooked is an excellent co-op cooking game that goes well beyond the perfunctory “Hey, here’s a set of switches we need to both use” kinds of design. You need to think ahead, talk out duties and adapt to the ever-changing orders being sent your way — not to mention the literal shape of your kitchen. You can technically play Overcooked alone, but you’d likely never want to.…
Some great-looking boss designs stand out, but there's precious little else to fawn over in Final Fantasy Explorers. It’s important to take a game on its own merits as much as possible, but sometimes one comes out that so closely mimics an existing concept — and does such a middling job of that mimicry — that the comparison is inseparable. Practically everything about Final Fantasy Explorers is a low-rent version of…
Rhythm Heaven is like the Warioware of rhythm games - it’s developed by the same Nintendo internal team that made that series, actually. There’s a bunch of short songs in every game, each with its own set of graphics and unique hook on a simple core premise: pressing (mostly) the A button in time with certain rhythmic cues. The fun is mastering each hook quickly and discovering all the great backdrops and characters…
You spend a lot of the game's early hours with Mike and Jessica. Dense, horny Mike and Jessica. Eight teenagers hole themselves up on a remote BC mountain in the middle of a nasty winter storm. They’re trying to regain a piece of themselves in the shadow of a tragic death of some friends that happened there one year prior and, hey, hopefully get some solid partying in too. Such is the thought process of the horror…
FMV games are pretty silly. Often, in their more primordial days, this wasn't necessarily the intention. Therein lied a lot of the fun! The acting, editing and effects can be spotty at best, but there’s a strange and wonderful gratification in being able to feel what a labour of love a game is. Modern FMV games can sometimes feel like they're trying a little too hard to recapture that essence, but Contradiction!…
FMV games are pretty silly. Often, in their more primordial days, this wasn't necessarily the intention. Therein lied a lot of the fun! The acting, editing and effects can be spotty at best, but there’s a strange and wonderful gratification in being able to feel what a labour of love a game is. Modern FMV games can sometimes feel like they're trying a little too hard to recapture that essence, but Contradiction!…
Theathrhyhm is essentially a Final Fantasy themed touch-based music game - not unlike the modern DS classic, Elite Beat Agents - with a few RPG elements incorporated into your progression through the game's many challenges. Like that game, you'll tap, swipe, and follow along a winding track on the touch screen in concert with the beat and melody of various songs that happen to be from the thirteen main instalments…
Like any music-heavy video game, Sound Shapes really must been seen and heard to be fully appreciated. What is mechanically a simple platforming game becomes an original, momentous overload for the senses, a game that shows you tons of possibilities and memorable moments in a short timespan, and then hands the reigns over to you to continue its infectious creative spirit. This is a game you need to play. As you may…
World Gone Sour has an alright premise, but any good will from it is lost in its crummy gameplay and lack of care. Licensed video games are usually pretty lousy, and World Gone Sour is no exception. It at least it tries to branch out and be a different with an amusing premise and inexplicable Method Man tie-in, but token gestures like these can't make up for the lousy gameplay, muddy graphics, broken controls, and…
Although it's all great, Act III stands out as the big highlight for me. It occurred to me a couple days before the release of Diablo III - Blizzard's latest entry into its action RPG franchise - that I have been at least thinking about the possibility of a new Diablo title for over half of my life. It can often feel like a game so high profile - and in development for so long - couldn't possibly live up to the…
Zombie wrastlin' is a big part of The Walking Dead. This review is also posted at my game writing portfolio, Visual Memory Unit. Would you kindly pay a visit? Telltale Games may be known for puzzle-driven adventure games with lots of humour, but that's far from what you get in their latest episodic adventure, The Walking Dead. Based on the series of comics that also spawned the AMC TV show, this game is likewise…
All sorts of wild mysteries lie behind Gomez's cute visage in Fez. This review is also posted at my game writing portfolio, Visual Memory Unit. Would you kindly pay a visit? Fez has been a long, long time coming. And after playing through it, I can definitely see how that time was spent. What at first appears to be a clever puzzle game ends up being something much bigger. Beyond its moment-to-moment perspective…
A buncha new boards and mini-games come with Mario Party 9, of course, but some smart improvements make this one more enjoyable than you might think. This review is also posted at my game writing portfolio, Visual Memory Unit. Would you kindly pay a visit? It says Mario Party 9 on the box, but that's not including several portable versions of the game over the last thirteen(!) years that this series has been going.…
Dodododododododododo..... This review is also posted at my game writing portfolio, Visual Memory Unit. Would you kindly pay a visit? Sometimes it's hard to imagine that pinball machines used to be pretty well everywhere. My town had a couple arcades littered with them. I even remember some restaurants with a machine or two to play around with while you waited for a table. But now, in these joyless, pinball-less…
Get ready to maim, chop, and build the galaxy to safety in yet another solid LEGO Star Wars entry. TT Games has the formula for LEGO-themed adventure games pretty well down pat by now – and if you've been following this series for any length of time, you probably know what to expect, too. The good news is that, despite being based on more modern and tepid Clone Wars material, LEGO Star Wars III is pretty good.…
Match some jewels and protect your fellow man in the excellent Puzzle Quest 2. If you have never looked into D3's Puzzle Quest franchise , picture a role-playing game with character classes, quests, loot, economy, a classic fantasy setting, and so on. Fuse that with a combat system akin to PopCap 's casual game mecca Bejeweled , and you have the basic structure of this strange and fresh series. Puzzle Quest 2 is…
DeathSpank's his name, and he's not going to take any guff in his first game (unless it's from a belligerent quest giver, of course). DeathSpank is a lot of things; defender of the downtrodden, saviour to orphans, and taco deliveryman, among other things. The titular hero of Ron Gilbert's latest brainchild is as ludicrous as he is powerful, and you'll be slashing and shooting your way through hundreds of mobs in…
Don't let the denizens of Scoggins fool you too much; something fishy is definitely going on in Puzzle Agent. Telltale Games is ready to show Japanese developer Level 5 just how much they love them with Puzzle Agent , an original 'pilot episode' of what may some day be a full episodic series. The company's latest is a clever, stylish, and satisfying ride. It's certainly not without its share of logic and technical…
Sam and Max make some great nods to The Twilight Zone in The Penal Zone, the first entry in their third episodic series. The Devil's Playhouse is the title of Sam and Max's third season of episodic games from Telltale, and if The Penal Zone is any indication, it could be the best yet. With a focus on B-movie tropes and Twilight Zone styled plot lines, the classic adventure game duo bring with them yet another…
9-Volt is back in WarioWare DIY, but not even a healthy dash of retro nostalgia can save it. Variety is the lifeblood of Nintendo's treasured WarioWare series. With hundreds of games lasting about five seconds a piece (or less), a vast array of different visuals, controls, sounds, and styles is a must to maintain interest. WarioWare DIY theoretically takes the series a step further by allowing users to create their…
The new South American setting is just one of three chapters you'll play through in Darkside Chronicles. Darkside Chronicles is another on-rails shooter in Resident Evil's skin for the Wii, and although I was admittedly pretty wary of the game, I rather enjoyed it. It is basically your typical game of this type, with a few unique flourishes and camera problems. It's not a particularly mind-blowing game, but that…
Explore the town of Torchlight and the sinister underbelly in one of the best games of 2009. Just because a game doesn't do much that's new, doesn't mean it can't be one of the year's best. Torchlight is a perfect example of this. Developed by the ex-Diablo designers at Runic Games, this is a classically shaped dungeon crawl through and through, with monsters to kill, loot to collect, and hours of your life to be…
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a return to the series' roots, but the newfangled co-op features bring some baggage to this solid entry. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is, in many ways, a classic platforming experience. It's also a sometimes alienating, maddening game. How you reconsile the two halves is up to you. Personally I found this modern, co-op enabled take on the 2D Mario template to be quite fun; it's a colourful,…
Modern Warfare 2 is here, and with fantastic single and multiplayer modes to dig into, it won't be going anywhere for a long, long time. I'm not what you'd call a diehard shooter fan, but even I was surprised when I recently realized that Call of Duty 4 is two years old. While most games have been long since forgotten after their release, everyone around me was still playing, going for a prestige, trying different…
"Roleplaying Shooter" is the moniker Gearbox Software came up with for their new game, Borderlands. It pretty much says it all. Take the fast-paced, twitch gameplay of a modern shooter and combine it with levelling, skill points, co-operative play, and thousands upon thousands of guns. If that sounds like it would make an excellent game, it does. There's a definite addictive quality to Borderlands' well-paced…
I have extreme emotional conflict when discussing Machinarium, an independently-developed adventure game for PC, Mac, and Linux. If I were judging it solely from a presentation standpoint, I would call it one of the best games this year and be done with it. The game's striking, hand-drawn art style and positively sublime soundtrack dazzle the senses, and it's impossible not to get sucked into the strange, wonderful…
Nathan Drake is back again in Among Thieves, one of the most exciting, polished, and engaging adventure games to come along in ages. I played through and enjoyed the first Uncharted, much like many other people, but I certainly wouldn't have trouble coming up with a laundry list of faults about it. With this in mind, I approached Uncharted 2 with a hint of skepticism; I was fairly sure it would be good, but there's…
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box takes just about everything the first game did well, and does it better. Level-5 has added a more pronounced storyline, more voice acting, more cutscenes and a few interesting mini games to boot. It's hard to ask for much more in a sequel, and indeed, fans of Professor Layton will find little reason not to play this game. Some of the puzzles fall flat, and the increased…
Read the full review Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
What will you make of it?There's a good chance Passage won't affect you in the least, at first. However, if you're open to having emotional experiences in a video game, then repeated plays will lend themselves to some tender, heartbreaking moments. It may be difficult to believe that, looking at the game's indistinct graphics and retro soundtrack. If you play it, however, you will believe it; Passage is a game…
A lot like a summer film, Bionic Commando doesn't pull off all the things you might expect it to, but it does enough to keep you entertained for a few hours and presents itself well while it's at it. It won't be the best game you'll play all year, but a few neat gimmicks and a good presentation make it a great game to burn through in your off-time. It's not quite good enough to pay full price for, but a rental will…
Note: Through the magic of 3G and AudioBoo.fm, I've prepared a small “ micro - podcast ” where I talk very briefly about Punch-Out. If you don't feel like reading the entire text review, just use the player below (or failing that, this link ). Enjoy! Listen! Memorize King Hippo's attack patterns, and he'll be down in no time.Although I didn't actually play the original Punch-Out until just a few years ago, I can see…
Wolverine's appearance takes a beating in Origins, but dying is a pretty rare occurance.Hot on the heels of the new Wolverine summer action flick comes the video-game tie in. Pleasantly, it's actually pretty good. Raven Software clearly has respect for the X-Men franchise, and it shows throughout this game's stylish hyper-violent combat and great looks. Lunging hundreds of feet through the air and shredding up all…
Picking what plants to bring with you into a level is full of conundrums.Plants vs Zombies is the latest in a long line of highly addictive casual games by PopCap games, and it may be their best yet. It's certainly their most refined game design to date, with a more player-controlled, skill-oriented game that's rarely prone to simple turns of luck or fate. It's also the most striking of their games visually,…
Chris Redfield is back, and he's ready to get to the bottom of a new outbreak in Africa.I spent a lot of time thinking about Resident Evil 5 before its release. Its predecessor is one of my favourite games of all-time, and with such an incredibly high standard, I was very sceptical to play the newest entry. However, you may find yourself surprised by just how good it really is. The first thing you’ll notice about…
Last summer I imported Rhythm Tengoku, a music game from the creators of WarioWare. I rather enjoyed it , but if there was one thing I thought about the game, it was this: It would never make it to North America. The time may have passed on the original, but the DS sequel has made it around the world under the name Rhythm Heaven. Not only did it make it across the globe, it’s also a far superior game than the GBA…
My emotions conflicted greatly during my playing of Mirror’s Edge on account of its frustrating dichotomy. On one hand, you have an excellent climbing and running action game played entirely in the first person, and it does a fantastic job of putting you into the shoes of lead character Faith, who is a “runner” tasked with delivering illegal packages by parkouring all over an oppressively white-washed city. On the…
Look, I know you’re supposed to go into a game (especially if you want to review it later) with as open a mind as possible, but one question continually popped into my head right from the very second Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop began. Who asked for a port of Dead Rising in the first place? Don’t get me wrong, the 360 original (released about two and a half years ago) was great. It was not, however, all that…
I’ve played Noby Noby Boy for hours, and I’ve earned over half of its twelve trophies. I still feel as though I’m missing something. However, attempting to understand this game – as futile as it is and always will be – is one of its greatest pleasures. It’s impossible to fully describe this game in words alone, so I’ll keep this brief, and preface the rest of this review by saying that if you own a Playstation 3 and…
I haven’t played much of the original F.E.A.R. since it first came out over three years ago, but when the sequel was announced, I was excited. I liked the idea of a cutting-edge shooter combined with Japanese horror from the original game, and wanted to see what Monolith (who also make the Condemned games) would do with the franchise next. F.E.A.R. 2 isn’t nearly as cutting-edge as the original was, but it doesn’t…
Five years ago, I would have told you that the last thing the world needs are more light-gun shooters. I mean, what arcade didn’t have at least two House of the Dead or Time Crisis machines, with their weird, often grimey and orange-coloured plastic guns holstered on the front of the arcade cabinet? I guess it just goes to show you that what was once popular will eventually be relevant again. House of the Dead:…
Rolando is, without a doubt, one of the best games you can get for the iPhone to date. In fact, it is better than a lot of games coming out for dedicated handhelds like the DS or PSP, and it's selling for a fraction of the price; only 9.99 on the App Store. For that money, you get a sizeable game that makes use of just about every special feature the phone has, all in visually attractive packaging. If you're looking…
The original Mercenaries was one of my favourite games of the last generation. There wasn’t a huge amount of press for the game, or a lot of hype, and it was refreshing; to see an excellent, free-roaming game that wasn’t trying to tie itself into Grand Theft Auto just doing it’s thing. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is the sequel, a game I was admittedly really looking forward to. Unfortunately, it’s just not as…
Pain is not a game that you spent hours and hours perfecting your skill on, nor is does it have a plot, endearing characters, or a final boss. However, Pain is a pretty good game regardless of all that stuff, because it takes one concept – causing massive carnage – and executes it very well. You’ll be using a cartoon-like elastic catapult to launch humans into a world of hurt, and that’s about all you’ll be doing.…
Tim made a mistake in Jonathon Blow's Braid, and as you'll learn, it may not be easy to correct it. There are a lot of people online debating over whether or not Braid – the newly-released Xbox Live Arcade game by Jonathan Blow – is art or not. Upon completion of the game, however, it’s hard to imagine anybody not seeing the game in an artistic light. Although calling it a gorgeous-looking game about solving very…
Rhythm Tengoku was released in 2006 in Japan - and is only in Japanese - but the Wario Ware like notion of following your senses instead of just sitting and reading text explanations encouraged me to import it from Play-Asia.com. I'm glad I did, too, because this is certainly a rhythm game worth playing. Basically, the game puts you in roughly fifty different scenarios. Maybe you're a martial artist punching things…
Blue Dragon essentially has one aspiration; to be a collage of classic RPGs to make the most traditional role-playing yarn in existence; and that’ll sound like your dream come true or your worst nightmare, depending on what games you like to play. If you’re in the market for a game where teenaged anime caricatures fight generic evil, gain experience, and earn new skills, all the while learning something about…
Trials and Tribulations, the latest game in the Phoenix Wright series for the DS, is exactly what fans would expect to get. A new set of cases to solve, with you – Phoenix Wright – as the defence lawyer in a court of law. Ridiculous and endearing characters with weird quirks. Sticking it to the criminals by presenting devastating evidence and causing uproars in court, and doing a little detective sleuthing in…
Read the full review Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations
