33 public reviews
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Ever since Wayforward and Capcom announced they were bringing back DuckTales , a lot of people cried out "I love that game!" and "I used to play the hell out of that game!" I was one of them, having played the original game on my cousin's Nintendo all the time. Like most games from the 1990s, the premise was pretty straightforward: guide Scrooge McDuck through a series of levels to seek out fabled treasures.…
Ever since Wayforward and Capcom announced they were bringing back DuckTales , a lot of people cried out "I love that game!" and "I used to play the hell out of that game!" I was one of them, having played the original game on my cousin's Nintendo all the time. Like most games from the 1990s, the premise was pretty straightforward: guide Scrooge McDuck through a series of levels to seek out fabled treasures.…
Telltale's The Walking Dead was, without a doubt, one of the best narrative experiences in gaming. While the wait for season two has been arduous, the studio threw a fan community a bone with The Walking Dead: 400 Days , a short expansion that serves as a lead-in to the next season and introduces a whole new cast of characters. 400 Days differs from season one's format, delivering a series of short vignettes that…
How can a game so violent and so difficult be so incredibly good? Hotline Miami is an odd beast. A top down shooter with a plot that would make Suda51 smile, in a lot of ways the game presents itself as a love letter to 1980s action films as you guide a voiceless character through unimaginable series of slaughters against small armies of hitmen. There's very little in the way of narrative, as the main player…
My first exposure to Lunar 2 Eternal Blue was on the Sega CD. After loving the hell out of the original game, playing the sequel was a no brainer. Set 1000 years after Lunar: The Silver Star, the sequel introduced a whole new set of characters (based off of Dragonmaster Dyne and the Four Heroes) in a world in which Dyne and Athena are considered legends. Controlling a young boy named Hiro, the player will set out on…
Metro 2033 was a pretty fantastic game. Set in a post-nuclear Russia, a setting rarely featured in Western games, the remnants of humanity struggled to survive a harsh new world by settling in the underground metro tunnels. Proof that human behavior doesn’t change in the face of disaster, the remaining humans have broken into several different factions including a Nazi faction that hunts down those who show signs of…
Wow, this write up is a long time coming. I played and finished BioShock Infinite the week it came out and things just kept getting in the way of me putting my thoughts down. So, BioShock Infinite ! How do you go about following up one of the more popular shooters of this generation? It wasn't enough to just continue the story of Rapture and Andrew Ryan (which BioShock 2 did) but instead, Ken Levine and Irrational…
The Far Cry series has come a long way since Jack Carver found himself trapped on a island with terrifying, Dr, Moreau-style beasts. After taking the franchise away from Crytek, Ubisoft Montreal pulled it out of its sci-fi roots and grounding it in reality as Far Cry 2 set the conflict within war torn parts of Africa. Far Cry 3 brings players back to the lush, tropical island paradise ruled by violent pirates who…
Halo , the console and genre defining shooter developed by Bungie, helped put Microsoft's gaming division on the map. With millions of copies sold, Halo sequels have become a known quantity. Four games later, Bungie shocked the gaming world when they announced their departure from the franchise and plan to hop over to Activision in order to begin working on a wholly different property, leading many to speculate if…
Who would have thought a shooter advertised around a small, chatty robot quick to anger would do so well? Borderlands was a shooter that took me by surprise because, well, it wasn't so much a shooter as it was an MMO-style role playing game with a heavy emphasis on loot and a great sense of humor. For me, Borderlands ' biggest failing was its lack of a meaningful narrative and throw away characters. It was easy for…
One could argue that Naughty Dog was one of the driving forces that helped make the PlayStation 3 a success. While developers initially railed against the console for its complexity Naughty Dog not only met the challenge, they found ways to push the envelope and squeeze more power out of the machine. The result? One of the finest trilogies of this console generation. After Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception , Naughty…
In 2003, Robert Kirkman created The Walking Dead in order to tell a zombie story like no other. While most films and literature in the genre had a tendency to kill the heroes or see them off to parts unknown, Kirkman's work presented an ongoing story of survival. Fast forward to present day: the comic is still going strong and the television adaptation ranks as AMC's highest rated program in the channel's history.…
Rayman Origins is one of the best games you can own on the PlayStation Vita. Although it doesn't do anything particularly exciting with the hardware's numerous bells and whistles but makes the transition more or less intact, with the exception of the co-op mode. Despite this, the game is just as fun and visually enthralling as it was on consoles. Michel Ancel's return to the franchise finds Rayman and his friends…
Max Payne has a long and storied history. Originally developed by Remedy, Max Payne was a tongue-in-cheek noir thriller that was the first game to utilize the bullet time effect made popular by The Matrix . As a hard boiled, Mickey Spillane-type NYPD detective, Max waged a one man war against the mob after his wife and baby daughter were killed, turning the bright cop into a depressed pain killer addict. The…
I firmly believe that a lot of developers need to pay attention to Naughty Dog, if they haven't already. Apart from Valve, I have difficulty trying pinpoint a studio that has been more ambitious in its storytelling, scope and presentation than the folks from Santa Monica. The Uncharted franchise stands, in my mind, as one of the better action game trilogies of this generation because of deep attention paid towards…
I'd like to preface this review with a confession: I have not played the original Deus Ex . I've certainly been meaning to since I received a copy f the game not too long ago, but life has a bad habit of getting in the way of things, especially video games. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel to the 2000 game and, from what I've picked up from the community, mighty big shoes to fill. When Deus Ex was released, it…
Takeyasu Sawaki is known for making visually striking video games. As the lead character designer for Okami , he implemented an incredible artistic vision to a story about the goddess Amaratsu who travels to the realm of Man in the form of a white wolf in order to cleanse the land of evil. Stepping away from his character design role, Sawaki would lead the production of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron which…
Hey folks, Initially, I was thrilled that the PS2 era Prince of Persia games were getting the HD treatment. That is, until I actually played the thing. I don't know who was in charge of putting this product together, but we're talking about a really shoddy job here. The game's audio is fucked and whenever someone talks, it sounds like someone held a microphone far away from the screen while playing the game in an…
One of the problems with video games these days is the cry for something new and original. When you've played the same military shooter for the umpteenth time, the action tends to get a little stale. However, with every release of a game that manages to do something different, it often becomes a commercial failure - despite being a critical success. Games like Shadows of the Damned and Katamari Damacy did their best…
It's hard to believe, but American McGee's Alice was released ten years ago. I'm finding myself constantly incredulous when I realize just how old most video games are. I mean, thinking about it: Half-Life 2 , a genre defining game, came out in 2004 . Kind of hard to believe, isn't it?It doesn't seem so long ago. Anyways, we're not here to talk about that but rather about Alice: Madness Returns , the sequel to the…
The cover art for Shadows of the Damned includes a bit of text that reads, "A Suda51 Trip." When it comes to Suda51 titles, they are less like games and more like complete mind jobs, often eschewing traditional styles and tropes to create new ones that fit his twisted vision. Previous Suda51 games include Killer 7 , a fantastic piece of crazy about assassins and more recently, No More Heroes. While Shadows of the…
Do you ever get the feeling that something was created specifically for you? That's what L.A. Noire makes me feel. See, I love the era of between the 1920s and 1940s. The cars, the women, the simplicity, the music, fashion and radio. Films like Chinatown , L.A. Confidential , Hoodlum , The Godfather appeal to me because they take me back to a time that I would wish to visit should I ever get a time traveling…
Its weird - even though I've been playing Back to the Future , for some reason it feels like it's been a long time since I've played a new, core-gamer focused PC title. I figured Crysis 2 would scratch that itch, and having played the last game, I knew what sort of experience to expect. I just didn't expect that it would be pretty much the same damn game for four years ago. Developed by Crytek, Crysis 2 is the…
Reposted from my site: Once again cutting close to the mark, Telltale has released the latest episode for Back to the Future The Game and all I have to say is, "What the hell?" Up until now, the game has been a fun, time travelling romp as Marty is now being forced to contend with the consequences of his actions. In the previous episode, "Citizen Brown," the stakes were significantly raised as Marty confronts an…
Read the full review Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 4: Double Visions
Reposted from my site: Finally! Telltale Games has delivered the second episode for Back to the Future: The Game ! After an excruciating month and a half, I'm finally ready to pick up from the first episode in which Marty McFly had to travel back to 1931 in order to save his friend, Doc Brown, from being incarcerated for the crime of arson. Although there were a few bumps in the road, Marty (or Michael Corleone as I…
Read the full review Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 2: Get Tannen!
Reposted from my site: I think we have something special here, folks. Telltale Games (developers behind Tales from Monkey Island and Sam and Max ) acquired the license to produce an episodic adventure game based on the classic film trilogy, Back to the Future . The game was made available yesterday and after completing the first "episode" of the game, I'm hungry for more. Back to the Future: The Game is fueled by…
Read the full review Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 1: It's About Time
Reposted from my blog: Hang onto your seats, folks. This one is a doozy. In last month's episode, Marty and 1986 Doc worked together to bring "Kid" Tannen to justice in order to fix the present timeline which saw Biff Tannen as Hill Valley's mob enforcer. Just as Marty was getting ready to head home, he witnessed 1931 Emmett Brown ask Edna Strickland to see the movie Frankenstein with him. Seeing the film was a…
Read the full review Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 3: Citizen Brown
First things first: This review is spoiler free. Back in 2007, Valve released a product called The Orange Box which offered five games for a damn good price: Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal . The set was incredible deal and offered an incredibly rich Half-Life experience to those who haven't played it, but it was Portal that was gaining the most widespread attention. Portal…
Reposted from my site: Now, I know what you're thinking. "Lord, not another Lego game! Talk about a stagnating franchises!" Hear me out, here. When Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars was announced, I too met it with skepticism. The last game, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga was a good game, if a little dated. My fear was that Lego Star Wars III was going to be like Lego Indiana Jones 2 , with Traveler's Tales…
Panic! is less of a game and more of an electronic diversion. It was the sort of thing you played after getting bored playing through games like Double Switch , Jurassic Park or any other FMV-centric Sega CD title that you bought instead of Sonic CD or Snatcher . Rather than follow any sort of gaming convention, Panic! is a disc crammed with mind blowing, Japanese-style insanity. If you thought Bayonetta was crazy,…
Rule of Rose is an interesting game to play. On one hand, the gameplay is pretty bad, but on the other hand, the game offers up a genuinely creepy and unsettling narrative. You play the game as Jennifer, a young girl who finds herself at an orphanage in England. Exploring the building reveals a small cabal of little girls who have established an aristocratic society under the noses of their caregivers. After…
I finally got around to trying out "Alpha Protocol" and it was two hours into the game that I realized how spoiled I was with "Mass Effect 2." BioWare cleaned up a lot of nagging issues from the first game, such as texture pop-up, cleaning up the inventory and bumping up the visuals. Obsidian Entertainment is no stranger to using pre-existing BioWare tech, as they've developed the infamous sequel to "Knights of the…
Deadly Premonition (aka Rainy Woods) is a $20 title that, admittedly, is not for everyone. Deadly Premonition blends familiar gameplay mechanics from Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto and presents it in a manner befitting David Lynch. With a cast of over 30 characters who are all suspects to the murder of a young girl, a lead character who loves to talk about 80s movies and music with someone named…
