90 public reviews
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Ok, how awesome was this game, right?! What a fun, interesting, bright, totally 90s little romp through 16-bit heaven. I loved every second of this sexy beast, from smashing those grey bricks Super Mario-style, to finding all of those insane hats and disguises (gotta love the Jason Voorhees one!), to navigating some really interesting worlds populated by cool-looking villains and accompanied by such a rockin'…
All I can say about this timeless l'il NES treasure is this: don't let the silly name, colourful images, and cutesy animation style fool you! This is one of the hardest puzzle games you'll ever have the pleasure of playing! It's also one of the most rewarding and fun. Considering how most puzzle games can boast upwards of 100 levels that all look virtually identical, Kickle Cubicle shakes things up a bit by offering…
If there's one thing this game will forever remind me of, it's the constant frustration of that goddamn final boss battle! But more on that later. The story behind this game is, 65 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Then they died. Then, nineteen years ago, Steven Spielberg made a movie about cloning them. To coincide with this movie, a bunch of video game companies made a sidescrolling action game under…
I'm sure that back in the grand old days of...whatever year this was released, it was kind of a sports fanboy's wet dream to see the likes of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird duke it out 1-on-1 in a no-holds-barred competition to see just who was the greatest basketball player of the era. Nowadays, though, the game falls flat. But not for the reasons you'd think. JvBSOoO is full of neat little mini-games like a free…
I don't care what any haters out there may have to say about this particular game (actually, come to think of it, I don't care what any haters out there have to say about ANYTHING, period); Indigo Prophecy was astoundingly fun and original. Whatever flaws the game had were certainly picked apart and discarded by the time Heavy Rain came around. I know that these games are pretty much worthless when it comes to…
I was stunned when I rented this on a whim one rainy afternoon and popped it into my Xbox. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but whatever it was, the game was a lot better. It really put you in the shoes of Indiana Jones. I can't help but think now, almost a decade later, that Indy's parkour puzzling escapades through the jungles of Ceylon or the Nazi castles of Germany paved the way for what would become…
It's funny how a character who pretty much PERSONIFIES adventure in a human form had to go through so much crap on the NES before finally landing an ideal game for himself on the Super Nintendo. The 2600 outing was alright, if not a wee bit too cryptic, but this one is exactly what an Indiana Jones game should be...one based off of the movies, anyway. The ones that followed were good, but they were different…
This top-down perspective clone of Contra (hey, we were always thinking it, I'm just saying it) is two tons of fun, old fashioned, family frivolity...if your family enjoys huddling around the glow of the TV to slaughter countless terrorist insurgents with a never-ending stream of machine gun bullets and live grenades. But if you're part of one of those stuffy families who prefers "wholesomeness" and "apple pie" and…
The first Hitman game I ever played was Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, when a friend & I rented it one dreary Tuesday afternoon so that we could avoid having to go outside. We loved it. I promised myself I would buy it, though that never happened. Fast-forward a bit to find myself and that same friend renting Hitman Contracts for the same reason. We loved it. I promised myself I would buy it, though that never happened.…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with 2 *GLOCKIE* awards for: *BEST GAME OF 2008* *BEST ACTING IN A VIDEO GAME* I think everybody in the world has the exact same opinion on this game, judging by what I've read, heard, and seen since it was released. Excellent storytelling, superb acting, top-notch graphics, outstanding gameplay, near-unlimited possibilities, and a fantastic addition to the series. But... Where…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with 5 *GLOCKIE* awards for: *BEST GAME OF 2004* *BIGGEST ALL-STAR VOICE CAST* *BEST VILLAINS: OFFICER TENPENNY & BIG SMOKE* *FUNNIEST CHARACTER: CATALINA* *MOST FREEDOM* This is my favourite game of the GTA series, beating out Vice City and GTA IV by a Kate Moss-thin margin. Why does it win? Because this game is the bizarro-world alternate of Seinfeld: it has EVERYTHING.…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with 2 "GLOCKIE" awards for: *BEST GAME OF 2002* *BEST SOUNDTRACK* Maybe I'm just biased because I am absolutely, positively, scarily obsessed with anything & everything to do with the 1980s, but I LOOOOOOOOVED this game like Prince Adam loved Teela (see? 80s!). The choice of setting it in 1980s Miami during the height of the cocaine trade was pitch-perfect for the series. The…
What can I say here, boys & girls? It's Grand Theft Auto. It's the one that 60% of all the games ever made afterwards have compared themselves to in some way, shape, or form. It's strange, because unlike other huge groundbreaking titles, like Zelda or Super Mario Bros., GTA III hasn't exactly aged well. The Liberty City found herein is so laughably small compared to the Sahara Desert sandboxes we get to play around…
This game is not unlike a bag of steel-cut oats: it's harmless, wholesome, and good for all ages, but it's so bland you'll be begging to add just a dollop of Nutella or raspberry sauce to give it some kind of flavor so that your taste buds aren't left dying and begging in a gutter like some sickly vagrant in the streets of Victorian London. The concept of a glove ferrying magical crystals across levels is a good…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with 4 "GLOCKIE" awards for: *BEST FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER* *BEST MOVIE-BASED GAME* *MOST NOSTALGIC GAME* *BEST GAME OF 1997* This game is like tomorrow, on account of it NEVER DIES. It's amazing, it's spectacular, it's been talked about to death. So instead of regaling you with the same boring reviews that absolutely EVERYONE has already written about this, let me instead tell you 2…
While this game's screenshots and box art would be right at home on the album cover of an early 80s hair metal band, it still holds up today as a brilliant and classic arcade beat-em-up from the days when BEING a brilliant and classic arcade beat-em-up was still worth a damn. All of the characters in this game were a lot of fun to use. The dwarf was a hilarious little rascal who turned the game into a comedy even…
What a great movie Ghostbusters was. Too bad the same can't be said for its NES adaptation. What I want to discuss, though, is not how lame this particular video game was, but how it feels like exactly the same kind of game that would have come out today, in 2012. Let's delve further. Ghostbusters on the NES is a poorly-designed movie-tie in game. The box art is simplistic and almost free of any colour. The game…
Genesis was particularly known for its unique sound and visual style, which Ghostbusters took full advantage of for their Genesis debut. The caricature-like look of the characters is great, as are the cartoony (yet genuinely frightening) ghosts who populate the labyrinthine houses that make up this game's 5 levels. Hunting around for bosses is a fun idea, and it feels like a 16-bit precursor to Shadow of the…
I remember renting this one or two times back during my tenure at the University of N64. I was sucked in by the platforming, the crazy characters, the multitude of levels, and the witty wisecracks. But over time, the platforming became frustrating, the characters became bland & uninspired, the levels started repeating themselves (particularly the ones I wasn't fond of, like the computer ones), and the wisecracks got…
If Futurama could take human form, I think I might marry it; I like the show that much. I'm even a big fan of the comic books. But their video game outing? It's like one giant "meh". A bland, empty-feeling game with so little going for it that it falls into the rental-only category. The character quips are funny, of course. That's a given, thanks to the cast & writers of the show climbing on board. But I think they…
Imagine a wooden barrel full of juggling balls, each one of those balls representing a movie or IP license. To sum up LJN's business plan during the late 80s and early 90s, they pretty much picked up every one of those balls at once, attempted to juggle them, and dropped them all on the first try. This game's not HORRIBLE, but it's not playable enough to be considered 'good', at least not by my weird and unpleasant…
Fire Emblem is what every JRPG SHOULD be. The tactical warfare is a zillion (scratch that, a googleplex) times more entertaining than turn-based bore-stravaganzas like Final Fantasy. This was the first installment we got, so it was a little rusty in terms of visuals & graphics. There's only so long you can go staring at drab blue and red sprites before you start yearning for a third colour with the burning, sweaty…
Peter Molyneux promised us the world. When I read about this in the Official Xbox Magazine, it seemed like the open-world fantasy RPG I'd been waiting for my entire life. It wasn't. But it wasn't far off. Despite the surprisingly quick, linear storyline, Fable's golden caramel center lies in its side-quests; and baby, we got your side-quests right here. There are tons of things to do in this game, and the main story…
I read a four-page spread about this in an issue of Sega Visions and it looked amazing. Unfortunately, I never got to play it until much later on an emulator...and, it was balls. Why, why, why, why, WHY did this have to be in that cramped, narrow first-person tunnel-vision perspective?! This could have been an epic of epic epicness. Instead it was a cramp of crampy crampiness. To be fair, I played it on a Genesis,…
This is one of the best-looking games that I remember on the Genesis, and a perfect encapsulation of what the boxing scene was like back in the early 1990s. And you gotta love that subtitle, "Real Deal" Boxing. Because all of the other boxing games weren't the real deal. They were just posers. I don't know why (and I'm a little disturbed by this myself) but I find it strangely addictive to alter the colour of your…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with 2 *GLOCKIE* awards for: *BEST MUSIC (NON-ORIGINAL WORK)* *BEST GAME OF 1995* Seriously, the music here is incredible. Looking back at this, I discovered something that I think Apple would be interested to know: every single level of this game (especially the Puppy Love ones) would make an absolutely perfect iPhone game. Think about it! They'd all work great on mobile devices!…
I'm actually embarrassed to say this, but I cannot beat this game. If my life were to be hanging in the balance and the fates of the world, the universe, the parallel-universe from Fringe , and everyone living within them were to depend on me getting past the last boss of Earthworm Jim, everyone would be doomed. It's the What The Heck level that gets me. I can't get past it. I've been trying my darndest since the…
I'm still getting over the shock that not only was this a huge, epic RPG with tons of gameplay and a fun story, but it actually CAME WITH a strategy guide! That is (as they used to say in the 1980s) awesome to the max. It is also way radical, most excellent, totally righteous, and splendid. Of course, it's me, and I'm biased, so EarthBound loses points for being a turn-based RPG. Sorry, but waiting my turn to use a…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with a *GLOCKIE* award for: *BEST GAME OF 1994* I don't know anybody else who's ever played it, but I'm kind of obsessed with this game. It's a lot of fun, there are dozens of big, colourful levels, lots of power-ups, funny animations, a basketball mini-game...it's everything a good Sega game needs. It just loses points for getting unbearably hard during the last couple of levels.…
This game was way too much fun! Back then, the concept of playing as a satanic overlord of the underworld was sheer genius. Commanding your minions to upgrade your lair into an impenetrable fortress of doom and horror, and then waiting for those unsuspecting, do-good heroes to come charging in stupidly on their white horses, just so you could pummel them into bloody pulps and string them up on your torture…
Okay, let's get this over with. It's kind of hard to review a game like this in 100 words, so let's just cut to the chase so we can get to what everyone really wants to hear. So, Duck Hunt: you shoot ducks. The end. Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about that dog. Is there anyone out there who HASN'T fantasized about unloading an entire clip of armor-piercing bullets into that smug little face of his? They…
I'm not going to dance around this: I think Dr. Mario is tons more fun than Tetris! Sure, Tetris is great and all; it has superb music, and the concept is simple yet ingenious. But when Mario tosses on the white coat and stethoscope, all bets are off. Dr. Mario is insanely entertaining, and the music is good enough to leave on in the background even when you're NOT playing, just for ambient sound. When I found out…
BioWare knows how to make fun, sprawling RPGs with plenty of room (almost TOO much room, one might argue) for customization, dialogue, character development, and selling useless items because your inventory is full yet AGAIN. All things considered, Dragon Age was a rompin', stompin' good time. My Grey Warden was a sexy Elf ranger with platinum blonde hair and a sarcastic disposition towards life, which made the game…
I don't know if there were side-scrolling beat-em-ups BEFORE Double Dragon, but if not, talk about being a trailblazer! Remember how popular this genre was in the arcades and living rooms of yesteryear?! It's the exact same concept as a Mario game (some asshole kidnaps your girlfriend), except this time, there's KARATE. And dragons! Metaphorical dragons, but, still, that's hardcore! I never really played the second…
Not much has changed between the Donkey Kong Country games as far as gameplay goes. If you can pick up and play Part 1, you can pick up and play Parts 2 and 3 without any fuss or muss. They've tweaked a few things here and there, tossed in some tougher enemies, but all in all, you've got three incredibly similar games. Don't get me wrong, now: that ain't a bad thing, especially considering how fantabulous the first…
Read the full review Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!
For starters, I want to say that the subtitle "Diddy's Kong Quest" is one of the best plays on words I've ever had the pleasure of hearing. The word "quest" doesn't get used often enough anymore. Back in the day, everybody was going on quests: Diddy Kong, Uncle Fester, Simon Belmont...some other people. Now, subtitles are all about "Revelations" and "Reckoning". Seriously, what the HELL does "reckoning" even mean?!…
Read the full review Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
I never owned a Super Nintendo growing up, so I never got to play Super Mario World or A Link to the Past until much, much later in life. But even I got to try Donkey Kong Country. Is was just that huge. Everybody who was anybody had it (meaning that I wasn't anybody). Not only is this a terrific platformer, but the graphics were way ahead of their time. If you look at the sequel that just came out for the Wii, the…
Rareware, this is you at the top of your form. When this came out and my cousins picked it up, I remember going over to their house and playing it for so long that the N64 actually froze. Multiple playable characters and a slew of collectible items that kept you backtracking through previous areas made this game so gosh-darned enjoyable that it was almost criminal. The difficulty level got pretty intense at times,…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with a *GLOCKIE* award for: *BEST GAME OF 1981* It's strange: this game is kind of like a reverse-crossover. It gave us Mario, Peach, and DK before we had games featuring Mario, Peach, and DK. So, if this is the real deal, does that mean that everything else that came after is nothing but a cheap spin-off?!!?!?! Because I'd be totally cool with that. This is a game about saving a…
I think what kept me from liking this game TOO much was how freaking insanely hard the last three levels were. I'm sorry, I don't care how "hardcore" we may have considered ourselves back then, I don't know a single kid who was able to walk away from that Roller Bob level unscathed. And the whole 3-D thing in the crane game wasn't fantastic, either. But aside from that, Pixar's first flick made a pretty decent video…
I could be wrong, but I think this might have been the VERY first video game I ever played in my life. It would have been between this and Super Mario Brothers, I guess. I can think of worse games to start off with. For a game where you play as a sixteen-year old spoiled rich girl with no feet, it's actually very entertaining, easy to master, and just challenging enough to keep you coming back for more. Now that I…
I'm not sure why, but this game actually used to frighten me as a kid. Maybe it was the dark visuals, the eerie ambient music, the vicious animals who attack the Beast for no good reason...whatever the case, I would shiver just a little bit while I played this. It's a pretty decent game, I guess, but it becomes forgettable once its overshadowed by the Aladdin and Lion King 16-bit adventures that followed. I think…
Glockstar Armani presents this game with a *GLOCKIE* award for: *BEST GAME OF 1993* Baby, you wanna talk video game nostalgia?! I got your nostalgia right here! Aside from being THE most iconic animated movie experience from my childhood, this game was right up there with the greats. Everybody I knew was playing it: friends, family, strange vagrants who wandered into my house and started using my Genesis when they…
Being a fan of Mickey games, I got this the day I received my Wii as a Christmas present. I really liked the concept & I was anxious to try it out. However, I was misled by...*shudder*...FALSE ADVERTISING. See, according to everything I was reading online about it, Epic Mickey was promising to be an old-fashioned, N64-style platformer in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie or Super Mario 64. That couldn't have been further…
I'm gonna go right ahead and say it: I think this game is way better than most folks make it out to be. As far as movie adaptations go, it's a pretty damn solid gaming experience. Die Hard itself has a storyline & concept that lend themselves very well to a video game, and I think Nintendo pulled this off better than expected, all things considered. You really felt like you were all alone in a dark tower, with…
This could have been handled so much better. Considering that our yellow-clad, square-jawed hero released his movie in 1990 after the wild success of the Batman film a year prior, you'd think that Dick would take a page out of Bruce Wayne's book on the video game front as well. But alas, that wasn't the case. And what we ended up with here was a game that showed a lot of potential, but failed to live up to it. This…
I don't know how corporate pandering works in this day and age, but considering we haven't seen games like Cool Spot or Yo! Noid in a while, I think it's safe to say that they don't condone marketing gimmicks like this anymore. Which is kind of a shame. Not that these games were good, or anything. Cool Spot was awful. It looked nice, the controls were straight-forward, and the gameplay could actually be pretty fun…
Glockstar Armani present this game with a *GLOCKIE* award for: *BEST GAME OF 1987* If I were Dan Brown, I would set to work writing a novel called "The Konami Code", in which Tom Hanks finds a murdered video game enthusiast and follows a series of clues to discover that Shigeru Miyamoto hid a bunch of religious conspiracies in his video games. Shit, that would be an AWESOME book! Contra is one of those games that is…
