lordgodalming's Reviews

41 public 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.

▦ Cozy▩ Compact

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age2017

4 out of 5 starsJul 26, 2018

[This review is based on the Japanese PS4 version.] I picked up DQXI at a used game shop in Japan for about $25 USD in May 2018, a few months before its US release. I mostly bought the game out of curiosity and a desire to continue improving my Japanese. I was not prepared for this game to surpass God of War and Monster Hunter World to become my favorite of 2018. But here we are. First impressions are a bit…

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Unholy Heights2012

3 out of 5 starsDec 9, 2014

I got this game as part of a Humble Bundle package, and I fired it up with the thought of playing for a few minutes just to see what it was like. A couple hours later I turned it off with a vague mixture of fondness and annoyance. Unholy Heights is an apartment sim / tower defense game with some cute ideas and hideous difficulty spikes. It feels like a free-to-play game in that it forces you to "grind" out money for…

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Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII2013

4 out of 5 starsApr 24, 2014

Final Fantasy XIII was, in my opinion, a great game, and even a great Final Fantasy game. I know a lot of people disagree with me for legitimate reasons, so I won’t bother defending it anymore. Besides, if you’re here reading about Lightning Returns, you must have thought FFXIII and XIII-2 were at least passable. Otherwise you’re just trolling and I will ask you to leave us in peace. Go back to threatening COD…

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Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One2011

4 out of 5 starsAug 8, 2013

Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction was the game that sold me a Playstation 3. Five years later, my PS3 library has crested 70 games, and ToD is still the game I pull off the shelf when I’m looking for an evening of pure, thoughtless fun. Having bought and played the entire Future series (ToD, QfB, and CiT), I was thrilled when Insomniac announced the follow-up to A Crack in Time…until I saw it in motion.…

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🎮

Dark Souls, but Harder

4 out of 5 starsApr 9, 2013

*MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW* Players familiar with Dark Souls won’t notice much of a difference besides a few lines of new NPC dialogue, at least until they reach Darkroot Garden, a shadowy valley beneath the Undead Parish. From here there are three tasks that must be accomplished in order to open the way to the DLC, after which a giant hand covered in eyeballs and teeth appears to snatch you into the brand new realm of…

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Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII2008

4 out of 5 starsMar 5, 2013

*This review contains spoilers for Final Fantasy VII* I still remember the first time I played Final Fantasy VII and reached the point in the story when Cloud figures out that he has been living a lie. No, it’s not when he goes on a romantic Ferris wheel excursion with Barrett in the Golden Saucer. It’s the moment he realizes he’s not the elite SOLDIER First Class he has pretended to be throughout the game. That…

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DmC Devil May Cry2013

4 out of 5 starsFeb 28, 2013

I have now played and finished all five console-based Devil May Cry games. I do not count myself among the hardcore superfans who do speedruns or complete Bloody Palace mode holding the controller with their feet or whatever, but, as I say, I’ve played every game and I feel like that gives me the right to make the following statement: DmC is a Devil May Cry game. In fact, I suspect that when upset (read: tiresome)…

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DmC Devil May Cry2013

4 out of 5 starsFeb 27, 2013

<p>I have now played and finished all five console-based Devil May Cry games. I do not count myself among the hardcore superfans who do speedruns or complete Bloody Palace mode holding the controller with their feet or whatever, but, as I say, I’ve played every game and I feel like that gives me the right to make the following statement:</p><p>DmC is a Devil May Cry game.</p><p>In fact, I suspect that when upset…

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Devil May Cry HD Collection2012

4 out of 5 starsJan 21, 2013

Late in the PS2’s lifecycle I picked up a little package off eBay that included three games by director Hideki Kamiya: Okami, Viewtiful Joe, and Devil May Cry. The one I really wanted was Okami (and it was without a doubt the best of the three) but once I’d finished Amaterasu’s adventure, I gave the other two a go as well. Viewtiful Joe was tough but mostly fair and full of fascinating gameplay ideas, while Devil…

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Dark Souls2011

5 out of 5 starsOct 10, 2012

I had a 100+ hour affair with Demon’s Souls back in 2009, so I was elated when a second game was announced. There was a lot of high talk about how Dark Souls was the “spiritual successor” to Demon’s Souls rather than a true sequel, but the first gameplay trailer made such hair-splitting unnecessary—except maybe to SCE’s copyright lawyers. Dark Souls is Demon’s Souls 2. And like any sequel should be, it is bigger,…

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Final Fantasy XIII-22011

4 out of 5 starsOct 9, 2012

Let’s get this right out of the way: Final Fantasy XIII has become the internet’s whipping child. Thousands of people who have never pressed so much as Start to begin that game moan and complain about how it was too linear; how it took 25 hours to “get good.” It is now the symbol of not just Final Fantasy’s and Square Enix’s ruination, but that of all Japanese game development (I have a sneaking suspicion that…

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Darksiders2010

3 out of 5 starsOct 9, 2012

As a teacher and compassionate human being, I always like to preface negative criticism with positive. In this case, that’s pretty easy because Darksiders does a lot well. The art design is colorful and fun, if largely stolen from the Warcraft universe and not altogether consistent with the grand and humorless story. The voice acting is likewise well done, although with vets like Troy Baker and Mark Hamill leading…

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Final Fantasy X-22003

4 out of 5 starsFeb 17, 2012

*This review contains spoilers for Final Fantasy X* The first prerendered cinematic in Final Fantasy X shocked gamers with a fast-paced game of what looked like handball, played entirely inside a sphere of water by players who could breathe underwater. More shocking still was the heavy metal soundtrack behind the movie. Beyond that opening scene, however, Final Fantasy X delved into matters of tradition, sacrifice,…

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Prince of Persia2008

4 out of 5 starsJan 24, 2012

The original Prince of Persia appeared on home computers in 1989. It was designed to be a brief game, with an hour's time limit imposed on the player from the beginning. Current speed runs through the game on youtube reduce that time dramatically, ranging from 10-18 minutes. However, surviving for even that long was much easier said than done. The prince had to navigate a Persian (Iranian) palace to save his love…

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Black & White2001

4 out of 5 starsJan 24, 2012

Few game developers have résumés as diverse as Peter Molyneux, current Creative Director of Microsoft Games Europe. A few games early in his career made waves critically and commercially—Populous and Dungeon Keeper spring to mind—but he did not truly blossom as an auteur until he founded Lionhead Studios. The first game out of Lionhead, Black & White, was to be Molyneux’s most ambitious title to date. In fact, I…

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Dante's Inferno2010

3 out of 5 starsJan 24, 2012

I find it very interesting that many reviewers panned Dante’s Inferno for its “gratuitous” nudity and sexuality, while at the same praising the “creative,” extreme, and often misogynistic violence. Apparently, shoving a scythe through the face of a pleading sinner is great entertainment, but the presence of nude men and women crosses some line of good taste. Not that I am advocating Dante’s Inferno’s depictions of…

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Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast2002

5 out of 5 starsNov 3, 2011

Jedi Outcast follows Kyle Katarn, the hero from the two previous Dark Forces games, and his copilot, Jan Ors. Now, I have to admit, Outcast is a fairly generic shooter for about the first seven levels, mainly because the game farts around that long before finally giving you a lightsaber and Force powers. However, gameplay is so vastly improved from the previous titles that you'll hardly notice. Force powers are no…

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Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure1989

4 out of 5 starsNov 3, 2011

The MSDOS version of The Last Crusade came out alongside the film of the same name in 1989 and retailed for $80. That's right. $80. And you thought new console games were expensive. I played this game on my dad's 286 PC with a 40MB hard drive and 12k RAM. It was glorious. The Last Crusade was one of the earliest games featuring a full 256 color VGA palette, and LucasArts used the colors to the game's benefit. The…

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Chrono Cross1999

5 out of 5 starsNov 3, 2011

Chrono Cross is the sequel to the 1995 Super Nintendo RPG, Chrono Trigger. You play as Serge, a young boy with beach clothes and spiky blue hair. A couple hours into the game, you discover a second world identical to Serge's, except that in this world, Serge died when he was ten years old. The remaining Serge is being hunted by a man with a cat's face (cleverly named Lynx) because Serge unknowingly holds the key to…

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Costume Quest2010

4 out of 5 starsOct 23, 2010

October 31 marks the true end of summer, called “Samhain” by ancient Celtic tribes, and is also the day when a doorway is supposedly thrown wide between the spirit and physical worlds. As is typical with ancient holidays, modern Western culture has buried the old traditions under piles of brightly colored packaging and commercial excess. But I’m not complaining. Any excuse to wear my Superman/Indiana Jones/Jedi…

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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow2010

5 out of 5 starsOct 21, 2010

Possibly due to the presence of one or more angry ghosts living on the second and third floors of my childhood home, I grew up being afraid of the dark and everything in it. Dracula? Scary. The mummy? Scary. The wolf man, the rancor monster, clowns, the girl from The Exorcist, zombies, Chucky, Mr. Boogedy, Carol Channing’s character in Alice in Wonderland—all such things haunted me when I tried to get to sleep every…

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🎮

THE baseball sim for your new IBM 286

4 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

The year was 1989: Ghostbusters II hit theaters to mixed reviews; Milli Vanilli were still, to most people’s knowledge, singing their own songs; and the Oakland Athletics, led by “Bash Brothers” Jose Canseco and Mark Mcgwire, were on their way to a second consecutive California-only World Series. And this time Kirk Gibson wouldn’t ruin everything with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth. Yes, 1989 sure felt…

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Psychonauts2005

4 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

Psychonauts tells the story of Razputin, a gifted boy attending a summer camp for psychic children. The game drops you and Raz into the Whispering Rock camp after a highly entertaining cinematic that introduces the counselors and several campers. You immediately have the choice to explore the grounds and begin collecting pink arrowheads, the game’s currency, or visit Coach Oleander, a mustachioed counselor who…

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Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time2009

5 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

So far, there have been five proper Ratchet & Clank games for home consoles (three on PS2, two on PS3), one for the Sony PSP, a Ratchet-centric arena fighter called Deadlocked, a pair of Clank games on the PSP, and the DLC episode I mentioned above. Needless to say, Ratchet & Clank have been a gaming force since they hit the scene in 2002. The secrets to their success? Responsive controls, outstanding level design,…

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Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction2007

5 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

Insomniac Games came on the scene in 1996 with a first-person shooter called Disruptor for the original Playstation. The story played out in corny videos starring live actors, but the game itself played smoothly and looked great for a PS1 game. Excellent visuals continued to be a hallmark of Insomniac throughout the Playstation era with their much more widely known series starring Spyro, the flying purple dragon. In…

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Resident Evil 52009

5 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

Past RE games created much of their tense atmosphere by keeping you, the player, completely alone throughout the game. Resident Evil 5 separates itself from its predecessors by giving you a partner. You play the game as Chris Redfield, a familiar series personality, and your new partner is an African woman named Sheva Alomar. Chris and Sheva meet in the fictional African country of Kijuju to locate and destroy a new…

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Bayonetta2009

4 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

Bayonetta is a spectacle of a game. The title character is a witch whose power originates from her hair, which is long enough to cover her whole body in a rigid, skin-tight suit. Let me just repeat that: Bayonetta wears a magic suit made of her own hair. So right from the beginning you should understand that the developers don’t mean for you to take Bayonetta too seriously. She is not so much an R-rated seductress…

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Nier2010

4 out of 5 starsSep 5, 2010

Japanese powerhouse publisher Square Enix saved most of its 2010 marketing thunder for Final Fantasy XIII, but a little over a month after that game hit western shelves, Square quietly published Nier. Online reviewers claimed to hate FFXIII for being linear, restrictive, and over-produced. Not satisfied with being wrong once, the same reviewers decided they hated Nier for exactly the opposite reasons. The only thing…

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Yakuza 32009

4 out of 5 starsAug 14, 2010

Yakuza 3 was my first ride with Japanese gangster, Kazuma Kiriyu, as well as old Kaz’s first adventure on the Playstation 3. The first two Yakuza games appeared on the Playstation 2 in an attempt to fill the gaping void left by the unfinished Shenmue series. But if you, like most people, have never heard of Shenmue, Yakuza is also similar to a much more popular franchise: Grand Theft Auto. Storywise, Yakuza 3 picks…

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LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-42010

5 out of 5 starsAug 11, 2010

If you haven’t played any of Traveller’s Tales’ earlier Lego game franchises—Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Batman—let me explain what they’re about. Each of these games lets you play through famous scenes from the movies they’re based on, but created entirely with Lego blocks. The characters are all built on the Lego-person template: cylindrical head, trapezoidal body, creepy hooks for hands, and big, sturdy pant…

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LittleBigPlanet2008

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

Little Big Planet is a sidescrolling platformer, much like the original Super Mario brothers with an added physics engine. But instead of a pair of Italian plumbers, Little Big Planet stars an adorable little mascot with the unfortunate name Sackboy. He is a tiny doll sewn together from burlap, with shiny black buttons for eyes and a wide, expressive mouth. Little Big Planet would almost certainly have crashed on…

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Joe Danger2010

4 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

Joe Danger, at its core, is an arcade racer that owes a lot to ExciteBike on the original Nintendo. Of course, current gamers demand more than ExciteBike could ever have delivered in 1986, and Joe Danger obliges them with local and online multiplayer, as well as a simple and powerful level editor/creator. But let’s focus on the single player campaign for the moment. Most downloadable titles offer up a couple hours…

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Katamari Damacy2004

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

The scene opens on a nighttime field. Three cows graze peacefully, bright stars riding the black sky above them. Dawn breaks, and rising over the horizon is not the sun but the silhouette of an enormous man wearing a crown. Two Japanese symbols appear inside the man’s silhouette; a singing voice bellows, “KA-TA-MA-RI DA-MA-SHIIIIII!” Rainbows explode upward from the horizon on either side of the man in the crown,…

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Ōkami2006

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

Hideki Kamiya created a name for himself early in the lifecycle of the Playstation 2 with the game Devil May Cry. It was a sword-swinging action game with tremendous style, a rare game that wanted to be cool and actually was. The same held true for Kamiya’s next franchise, Viewtiful Joe, which chronicled the adventures of a regular American teenager who got sucked into a superhero movie to save his girlfriend. But,…

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Demon's Souls2009

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

Demon’s Souls hates me. And it hates you too. The world in Demon’s Souls will poison you, monsters will gang up on you, and the characters who actually assist you will say things like, “Do come back alive. I need your business.” The game doesn’t even give you the escape of a game-over screen when you die. Instead your character’s body vanishes, leaving a glowing soul with only half a life bar. And when you do…

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Final Fantasy XIII2010

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

I have been waiting for Final Fantasy XIII since Square Enix released the first trailer for the game in early 2006. Four years of salivatory anticipation put my expectations for Final Fantasy XIII through the roof—after all, this game is the reason I originally ponied up for a Playstation 3. After all this time, can the game possibly live up to my expectations? Oh my, yes. Final Fantasy XIII contains the perfect…

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Final Fantasy XII2006

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

Square Enix has always aimed to reinvent the Final Fantasy series with every numbered entry. Consequently, numbered Final Fantasy games usually offend long-time fans in some new and unforgivable way. Final Fantasy XII took this tradition to the extreme. After a record five years in development and some production hiccups that would make Duke Nukem’s sunglasses explode, Square Enix finally delivered Final Fantasy XII…

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Final Fantasy X2001

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

I’ll not mince words; Final Fantasy X is my favorite video game. I remember my jaw hitting the floor the first time I saw a commercial for it in 2001. Final Fantasy X was the reason I finally bought a Playstation 2 in 2005, and even after four years of anticipation it did not disappoint. You play as Tidus (pronounced Tee-duss, from the Japanese “Tiida,” meaning “sun”), a glitzy celebrity athlete à la David Beckham.…

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Final Fantasy IX2000

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

The main character this time around is Zidane, a good natured bandit with a monkey's tail. At the beginning of the story Zidane is on an airship as part of a theater crew/pirate gang whose leader is a bearded pig-man with purple skin. Zidane and company are headed for Alexandria, a fortified city perched on the edge of a thousand-foot waterfall. In Alexandria, you meet an amnesiac black mage, Vivi, and a beautiful…

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Final Fantasy VIII1999

4 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

In the opening hours of the game the main character, Squall Lionheart, completes a mission to become a member of SeeD, a mercenary group created to fight sorceresses, who, in the world of Final Fantasy VIII, are as reviled as pirates in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise. After several missions as SeeDs, Squall and his pals realize one of their own team members, Rinoa, is being possessed by a…

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Final Fantasy VII1997

5 out of 5 starsAug 9, 2010

The main hero of Final Fantasy VII is the spiky-haired mercenary, Cloud Strife. He will always have two other members in his “party,” which is the group you use in battles. Right away you meet Cloud’s closest friends, Barrett and Tifa, the latter of which provides a potential love interest for Cloud. There is also a gentle flower saleswoman named Aerith (or Aeris in the original translation); Red XIII, a talking…

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