Category Archives: Game Reviews
Retro/Grade (PC) Review: Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Insanity
What happens when you mix an arcade style shoot-’em-up with a rhythm game and then do it all backwards? You get the delightful (and difficult) Retro/Grade. Originally released as an indie game on the PlayStation 3, Retro/Grade has made the jump to PC.
Rhythm games and shoot-em-ups have been done before so the base genres are well represented in gaming. However, they’ve never been done like this.
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Trials Evolution Gold Edition (PC) Review: The Engine Has a Misfire
Do you remember Miniclip? When I was in high school many a joke class (like intro to business, civics and career studies) was spent playing flash games that wouldn’t crash the old, cheap computers. The original mainstay was miniclip.com, which, I’m slightly surprised to say, still exists today.
That’s where I first played the Red Lynx’s Trials series (it was called Trial Bike back then). I had seen proper Trials on TV on an old show called Motorsport Mundial so I knew what Trials was about and was instantly hooked on the flash game. Naturally, I’d have to pick up Red Lynx’s first PC Trials game since it left flash.
The problem is that while Trials Evolution, the most recent Trials (né Trial Bike) game, is a critically acclaimed game on the Xbox 360, Red Lynx should have kept their PC games on flash.
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The Showdown Effect Review: Yippee-ki… Ah, Screw It
Have you ever wondered what would happen if Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Bruce Lee and Liam Neeson did battle in a giant battle royale of action movie superstars? I’m sure a drunken conversation has resulted in a battle between movie heroes but nobody’s really gone beyond the argument over pints.
The Showdown Effect, a new game from Magicka devs Arrowhead Studios, tries to answer the question of which action star would win if placed in a battle to the death. If Super Smash Bros. dropped the more family oriented direction for the comically clichéd action ripped out of 80s and 90s action movies, it would be The Showdown Effect.
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Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC Review: An End, Once and For All
This is it, isn’t it? One last ride with Commander Shepard as we take on a group of well-armed and ill-intentioned bad guys in order to save the galaxy with our friends in tow. BioWare made us well aware that this was going to be the final piece of DLC released for Mass Effect 3. In effect, Citadel would be a send-off for the series that people had invested so much time and energy into over the last six years.
So how was our ride into the sunset with Commander Shepard and crew?
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Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Review: A Car in a Boat in a Plane in a Hedgehog
I’ve never been a Sega guy. I grew up with a classic NES and had Mario rather than Sonic. Even my one friend who did have a Genesis (or Mega Drive, if you’d prefer) didn’t have a Sonic game. (He did have a game on the classic Stallone movie Cliffhanger so maybe game buying wasn’t his parents’ forté.) From there, I got a PS1 so I largely missed out on everything Sonic and Mario Kart related in my youth.
And that created a very real problem when it came to reviewing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. It was described as fan service for long-time Sega and Sonic the Hedgehog fans and a Mario Kart clone. Well, I can’t exactly evaluate a game based on that when the Sega game I had the most playing time with was ATP Tour Championship Tennis.
Looking at SASRT (God, that’s a terrible acronym. That’s what happens when you make a game with an obscenely long and ridiculous title.) from a racing game enthusiasts perspective didn’t give me much cause for hope. After all, saying that Sega would only put out an exceptional Sonic game would omit the existence of Sonic Free Riders which was so universally panned that it makes Aliens: Colonial Marines look like Skyrim by comparison. Read the rest of this entry
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Antichamber Review: You Just Wrinkled My Brain
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the gaming press soil themselves in excitement over an indie release but that’s exactly what happened in the run up to the release of Antichamber.
The game has been described as Escher-like, in reference to the famous Dutch “impossible reality” painter M.C. Escher. You might know his drawing “Relativity” which shows people climbing stairs with no regards for the laws of physics at all. And that seems to be where Alexander Bruce got his inspiration for Antichamber. Read the rest of this entry
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The Cave Review: A Domain of Evil It Is. In You Must Go.
The second-to-last week of January had a game I was very excited about. Strike Suit Zero was a gorgeous looking space sim. Having grown up on space sims, I was looking forward to a great space flight combat game. Then I actually started flying the titular Strike Suit ship and found myself quickly underwhelmed by twitchy controls and combat mechanics that didn’t work as advertised in the tutorial which resulted in a massive and frustrating difficulty spike.
Fortunately, there was a second big indie game release that week. Double Fine Productions released their much-anticipated The Cave. The developer is best known for their work on Psychonauts and they got a hand from popular games director Ron Gilbert whose resume includes the cult-hit Monkey Island series. Better than the team behind it was trailers promising puzzles, stories and dark humour. In other words, it ticked off most of the items on my checklist of things I like in games.
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10000000 Review: What’s In a Name?
Another iOS port to PC. I’ve had such good luck with iOS games that why shouldn’t I pick up another iOS game ported to PC. After all, it’s not like Death Rally was an over-priced, under-performing game or Super Hexagon made me physically ill. Oh wait…
That brings me to the latest iOS port to make it Steam and subsequently make a dent in my wallet. 10000000 (that’s “ten million” because developer EightyEightGames doesn’t believe in commas… or spaces) is a puzzle-RPG hybrid that sees you fight your way through a dungeon with the ultimate goal of scoring 10,000,000 points in a run. When you find that tidbit of information, the game’s title makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it? Read the rest of this entry
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Primal Fears Review: Running Scared
I’m a huge fan of twin-stick shooters going back to the original twin-stick game for the home console, Ape Escape. When the PSN went down two years ago, one of my free game downloads was Dead Nation. I absolutely loved that game. It was an isometric camera version of Left 4 Dead. It wasn’t a zombie simulation as much as it was an arcade shoot-em-up.
When I picked up DNS Development’s Primal Fears, I was hoping for largely the same thing except with keyboard and mouse. The trailer showed that it was fairly arcade-inspired with enemies dying in massive explosions and/or bursting apart under a hail of gunfire. A trailer wouldn’t lie to us right? Read the rest of this entry
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Spec Ops: The Line Review: Do You Know the Enemy?
Despite having yet to play it, I named Spec Ops: The Line as one of my 12 favourite games of 2012. The game created a fair bit of discussion about its story which delved into the psychological effects of war on soldiers. I was amazed that a military shooter, a genre that usually omits any effort when it comes to storytelling in lieu of spending money on graphics and multiplayer content, was making waves over its plot and a complex sounding plot at that.
I figured that I couldn’t name the game one of my 12 favourites of last year without giving it a try. So when it went on sale during the recent Steam sale, I put my money where my mouth was to see if it was actually worth a spot on the blog’s de facto year-end award list. Read the rest of this entry
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