Blog Archives
Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Four Review: The Bravo-Team
If you were to ask the critics, Tales from the Borderlands is the hidden gem of Telltale’s slate of episodic adventure games. I’d hazard that those critics are also going to be fans of or at least have played the Borderlands games at some point in time. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never put much more than five hours into Borderlands.
When you take that into consideration, it’s probably not that much of a surprise that I haven’t rated Tales from the Borderlands as well as most critics. And while a number of critics saw the penultimate episode of TFTB as the best episode in the series and called the series the best thing out of Telltale since the first season of The Walking Dead. I saw it as just an episode.
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Life is Strange – Episode Four Review: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
Next week marks the release of the final episodes of both Tales from the Borderlands and Life is Strange. As someone who is reviewing both games, that leaves me a choice of which game I should play first when both finales come out on October 20th. After playing Episode 4: Dark Room, Life is Strange proved that it is the best in class in the episodic adventure game genre.
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Life is Strange – Episode Three Review: Truth and Consequences
Newton’s third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Put simply, for every action take, there is an opposing force pushing the opposite way with equal strength. While that’s a law of physics, Newton may as well have been a philosopher with that one. I’m not sure that there’s a law of physics more appropriately applied to life.
The whole point of Life is Strange is actions and their equal and opposite reactions. You could make the argument that all games that are designed to change themselves to fit your decisions should act like that. If there’s one thing that Dontnod has gotten right through three episodes of Life is Strange, it’s that your decisions cause real and obvious reactions in Arcadia Bay. It certainly extends beyond just little changes in dialogue too.
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Life is Strange – Episode Two Review: Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro is an art term for the use of strong contrasts between light and dark in a composition. It’s the concept that forms the basis of most strong black-and-white photographs. No, Life is Strange – Episode Two: Out of Time isn’t presented in black and white in a literal sense. It contrasts light and dark themes to pull off emotionally impactful moments in just two episodes what it takes Telltale five episodes or BioWare dozens of hours to achieve.
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Life is Strange – Episode One Review: If I Could Turn Back Time
With the final episode of Life is Strange, Square Enix and Dontnod’s surprise hit episodic adventure game, coming out on October 20th, I think that’s as good an excuse as any to play through it and get it all reviewed between now and the release of that last episode. Critics adore this game and review scores are getting better with every episode. My interest comes in that I find that my reviews often contradict the critics in that where critics see improvement, I see it differently. Will I see a game floated as a game of the year contender differently that the rest?
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Absolute Drift Review: Get a Little Bit Sideways
Racing games tend to be very complex. It’s not just the Assetto Corsas, Forzas, and Gran Turismos of the world that are complex. Even the likes of Mario Kart and even all the way back to the old NES racing games that seem fairly simple and arcadey have a lot of different moving parts (pun intended).
But what happens when you strip away most of those moving parts? What happens when you build a game around a car, a track and your right foot? Absolute Drift attempts to answer that by taking the drifting game and distilling it down to just drifting.
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Game of Thrones – Episode Five Review: The George R. R. Martin Special
What’s the old George R. R. Martin special? Political intrigue mixed with copious amounts of violence, death and destruction. Sure, that’s probably over simplifying the books and TV show but that’s what keeps people coming back every time.
It was only a matter of time before Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones series also started to get closer to resembling a video game version of Game of Thrones rather than a Telltale game with a Game of Thrones coat of paint. That doesn’t mean that Episode Five – A Nest of Vipers was the best episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones this season.
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Escape Dead Island Review: Voyage of the Damned
I give up. I’m throwing in the towel. I am tapping out. I’ve had enough of Escape Dead Island after six hours and two attempts at playing the game.
This is a game so devoid of merit that I refuse to play any more of it. I haven’t completed the campaign and I’m not sure that even the most brilliant plot twists in the history of gaming (and the writing indicates that to be as remote an unlikelihood as Valve going out of business) would make me change my rating of this game.
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Rocket League Review: Tonight on Top Gear
Sometimes, a game comes out of absolutely nowhere to take the world by storm. Shortly before it was launched, Rocket League became the hot game in the gaming sphere thanks to developer Psyonix getting the game in the hands of popular let’s players and streamers. Now, it’s cemented in the top games on both Twitch and Steam (in both players and sales).
So how does this little indie juggernaut really stack up when you go beyond the hype?
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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Three Review: The Long Road Home
I’ve never really understood how Telltale can be so good at writing these episodic narrative arcs but be so completely incapable at writing the second episode of those stories. They go from great starts to non-existent follow-up and that certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the third episode of Tales from the Borderlands. Fortunately for Telltale, they aren’t too bad at bouncing back from a subpar effort and certainly did with this episode of TFTB.
et geekera 