Category Archives: Game Reviews
The Walking Dead: Season Two – Episode Two (Spoiler-Free) Review: Trust Me
After establishing themselves as some of the best storytellers in gaming with Season One of The Walking Dead, Telltale Games certainly didn’t set the world on fire with either Season One’s 400 Days DLC or Season Two premiere All That Remains. While the pieces that made TWD great were there, the heart that made TWD special was missing.
Fortunately, despite having four games on the go right now, Telltale hasn’t bitten off more than it can chew. Episode Two of Season Two is a return to form for The Walking Dead series.
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The Elder Scrolls Online Beta Impressions: Prison Break
I think I’ve mentioned it a couple of times before that I’m not a fan of MMOs. If the subscription model (that requires you to pay the equivalent of four games to play for that first year) and microtransactions aren’t enough to scare me off, the grinding and fetch quests seal the deal.
I’m not unwilling to put my previous experiences aside to give MMOs another try. For example, I got into last weekend’s beta session for The Elder Scrolls Online and was willing to give that a try to see if I’d like it.
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Titanfall Beta Impressions: Pilots and Rockets and Mechs, Oh My
One of the most hotly anticipated games of 2014 just wrapped up its beta testing period. For the majority of interested gamers, this was their first chance to play the heavily hyped and critically acclaimed Titanfall.
I somehow managed to get into the beta despite the fact that I rather detest multiplayer in first-person shooters. Granted, that’s mostly a function of my being terrible at FPSs. Single-player campaigns, like BioShock, I’m fine. Throw me into something like Planetside 2 and I’ll be into a sub-0.1 K/D ratio. Could Titanfall convert me from FPS neophyte to another shooter junkie? No but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still fun.
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Contrast Review: Now That’s Not Thinking with Shadows
It’s only appropriate that a game whose review on Valentine’s Day has a love story. Okay, that’s probably a bit of a stretch when it comes to Contrast seeing as the game is a puzzle platformer where a man trying to win back his family is only really of minimal importance to the game. However, it’s there so I’m calling Contrast an appropriate game to review today.
When Contrast was released, it certainly carried some big expectations. While Compulsion Games was a rookie developer, the game had been selected as one of two free games on PlayStation 4 at launch for PlayStation Plus members. Was Contrast worthy of such a distinction as being on of Sony’s featured launch titles?
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WRC Powerslide Review: The Spin-off Doesn’t Spin Out
Milestone’s WRC series and I have a long history. I’ve played each of the four games and reviewed the last three. The series has evolved from TV presentation to arcade presentation. It’s tried to be rally sim and tried to be a WRC-licensed Dirt game. Every time it makes a change, they take two steps forward and at least one step back.
With WRC Powerslide, Milestone has completely gotten away from proper rallying. Instead, Powerslide is a WRC karting game. While I’ve been looking for the proper WRC series to embrace being a proper rally sim, Powerslide proves that you don’t actually know what you want from gaming until you get it.
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The Stanley Parable Review: A Successful Experiment
One of the terms that I’ve been hearing a lot lately is “experimental gameplay.” The other popular descriptor for games is to refer to some as art. They’re labels that seem to be haphazardly applied to anything that doesn’t conform completely to bog standard gameplay conventions. Gone Home was a game that the critics referred to as both experimental and art. While last week we found out that I disagree with those sentiments, I have found a game that both labels could apply to and certainly qualifies as experimental.
The Stanley Parable is an updated, full release of a 2011 Source engine mod. Like Gone Home, there’s no combat in The Stanley Parable. However, that’s where the similarities end. The Stanley Parable is so experimental, so unorthodox and so brilliant that it certainly earns its place as one of 2013’s best games.
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Gone Home Review: A House is Not a Home
This year’s surprise hit game was a little indie game called Gone Home. The debut effort of a small indie dev made up of BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den devs is in a way inspired by BioShock but much simpler and focused. For many critics, the straight-forward focus on story made it near-perfect and the game of the year. Many gamers, though, didn’t find it as good as it was hyped up to be. So where does it fall on the spectrum?
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The Walking Dead: Season Two – Episode One (Spoiler-Free) Review: Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
The surprise hit of 2012 was The Walking Dead. Given how often that licensed games disappoint and Telltale’s shaky track record before the release of the first episode of their The Walking Dead series, no one was expecting Telltale’s new game set in the universe of The Walking Dead comic books to be as great as it was. The first five episodes of The Walking Dead picked up dozens of Game of the Year awards along with seemingly hundreds of other awards in 2012.
So The Walking Dead: Season Two had a lot to live up to. Could the first episode of Season Two of The Walking Dead live up to the original or would it be underwhelming like the 400 Days DLC?
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Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe Review: Back to the Future
The first video game that I remember playing was Shufflepuck Cafe on my dad’s old Macintosh SE. Sure, there were other games on there but nothing quite captured my attention like Shufflepuck. It might have been in black and white but the graphics looked fine, it had sound (which was a rarity on that computer) and it was just fun to play. I may have poured more hour into that game during my childhood than anything on my NES.
So when I saw this homage to the original Shufflepuck Cafe pop up on Steam, I had to pick it up, if only for nostalgia’s sake. Fortunately, Shufflepuck Cantina didn’t stop at recreating the original in colour but added some depth to the original.
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Speedball 2 HD Review: He Shoots… Off the Post!
With all the retro remakes of classic games have been coming out, it was only a matter of time before I reviewed one of them here. I had never played the original Speedball games when they were released on the Atari ST (and the dozen or so other platforms it was also available on) but given the lack of sports games on PC, I thought I’d give it a try.
All that ended up happening was me questioning the need for HD remakes of classic games.
et geekera 