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What a super weird year for my gaming habits! So let's see... after several years of pretty much playing everything on PC, I bought a Switch and barely played it for more than a month, dusted off my Xbox One and remembered how much fun it is to play games on a couch and using a controller. Since then I sold off a bunch of stuff, bought a new 4K TV, shoved my PC in a closet somewhere and still haven't really taken the Switch off its charging dock. (The Switch is a great console by the way - and great piece of tech. But I prefer it as a handheld rather than as a docked console, and to be honest I just don't play handhelds all that often lately). Anyway, yeah it's been a weird year for my gaming habits, but it's also been a pretty stellar year for games. Once again I struggled to actually keep up with everything I really wanted to play. So of course this is just a list of my favorite games that I did manage to play this year. Oh, the places I've been!
Continue reading noiseredux's Top 10 Games of 2017
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I only played 3 video games this year...well, not really, but I only played three games for a substantial amount of time. People who know me or who have heard me speak in the last two years can guess what one of them is. The other two are both on the Nintendo Switch (with a third on deck). Let's talk about why I keep going back to the same series and why I am finally at a point where I can spread my gaming wings a little bit.
Continue reading The Three Games that WildBil52 Played in 2017
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Late last year, once all of the annual 'Best of' lists started coming out for the games released in 2016, I lamented the fact that I had only played a paltry four new release titles from the year and thus had no opinion on many of the games that were being discussed. So in 2017, I was determined to play more new release titles during the year in an effort to stay more up-to-date with all of the discussions going on for the latest and greatest games. And just like with everything I do, I went insanely overboard and ended up playing nearly 30 new release titles this year.
Instead of doing a traditional Top 10 list of the games I played this year, I wanted to focus on a select few that I thought were particularly great but may unfortunately go unnoticed and slip under the radar of most people. Most of these games really aren't what you would call obscure, but with the massive amount of great games released this year, it can be easy to forget about the ones that didn't get quite as much coverage. These also aren't necessarily my favorite games of the year, as I am intentionally leaving out some of the more popular titles that were released.
Continue reading Disposed Hero's Games of 2017
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There are rare moments in gaming history where a game releases and shows that it is truly possible to learn lessons from a well designed video game and apply them to the real world. For most of us the first lessons that come to mind might be critical thinking skills from having to think abstractly to solve a puzzle, twitch reflexes from high octane action games, or the obvious social benefits of a good online community. [i[Persona 5[/i] is something different, and represents a far more difficult pill and series of lessons for many around the world to swallow. Persona 5 is an important game, not because its the best selling in Atlus' history and could represent a small first step in a larger paradigm shift for turn-based role playing game design, but because it is one of the most down to earth reflections of the corruption that can penetrate and permeate a society from the highest levels down to the lowest. It's the same type of importance one might give to say, the first Deus Ex for calling out many of the problems of society, governance, and the very real world of false flag operations and conspiracy that existed in the late 1990's while that game was being developed and is still continuing to this day.
Continue reading Persona 5
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Since it is Christmas time, I figured I would review one of the games that I have the fondest holiday memories of. December 25th, 1997 was the Christmas that I received my first PlayStation, and with it a few games. In my possession at the time was a demo disk, WCW/NWO Thunder, and Jet Moto. While I was a huge wrestling fan, Thunder SUCKED (I'll do a review some other time), so I was left to spend my Christmas playing a game I had not even heard of up until that moment.
Continue reading Jet Moto
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I'm ready to wrap up 2017 from a gaming perspective, and otherwise. This year will go down as another banner year for video games which ends in a seven, and while I have acquired many of the top-tier titles released this year, the only one I played was Persona 5. It was a fantastic experience, but it was the only cutting edge experience I had all year. As the year draws to a close, I find myself looking forward to 2018 as the year when I will play the best games of 2017, like Nier: Automata and Yakuza Zero among many others.
Continue reading Good-bye 2017!
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Driv3r appeared on the game market at a bad time. The game industry was already swimming in the wake created by GTA3, its sequel, GTA Vice City, and the hype generated by the next entry in the series due out but he end of 2004, GTA: San Andreas., Honestly, you couldn't open a magazine without seeing coverage from one or two "sandbox" games. But Driv3r did have one thing going for it, that being lineage. While many of the GTA copycats out there had nothing more to go on than genre similarity, Driv3r already had street cred, with two games out that were pretty popular during their respective times. Despite this, it turned into a failure, and after a few ports (PC, GBA, and mobile), it disappeared forever. But, could Driv3r be all that bad?
Continue reading Is Driv3r Really All That Bad?
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Another year closing, another chance to get in on some cooperative fun with friends and family! In between grandma kisses and overloading on sugar cookies, hopefully you can convince some folks to sit down and have some game-time. For some of us, this is one of the only times of year we can actually get some decent couch co-op going, so hopefully my own crews' countless hours of "testing" these titles can prove useful. As is generally the case, I tossed together a selection of lesser-knowns along with some popular games that have overlooked multiplayer options. *Mario Voice:* Here we go!
Continue reading Co-op Gaming Suggestions for the Holidays, 2017 edition
This is an interesting curio - Nail 'n Scale from Japanese developer I'Max, and published by Data East. Originally released in 1990 in Japan as Dragon Tail, this unique puzzle platformer didn't make its way to Western shores for nearly a year and a half. By the time the game was released in 1992, most developers had begun to really take advantage of the Game Boy's hardware capabilities. Nail 'n Scale, however, still looks and plays like an early Game Boy title. Does this ruin the game's chances of standing up against some of its then peers? Watch the review, and decide for yourself!
[img width=300 height=450]https://i.imgur.com/xieDTLK.jpg[/img] Fun fact: the theme song to this movie actually became fairly popular in the dance club scene in the 90s
For our second entry of RF Cinema, I wanted to go with one based on an actual video game, so why not go with one of the best? Released in August of 1995, less than a year after Mortal Kombat 3 was unleashed in arcades, the Mortal Kombat movie hit theaters at the height of the series' popularity. Millions of young gamers, myself included, couldn't get enough of the dark, bloody fighting that Ed Boon and John Tobias had cooked up. I distinctly remember making friends at my local Aladdin's Castle and pouring over cheat sheets we'd made to remember each character's moves, fatalities, and combos. We even started selling them to other arcade-goers, promising free updates as more and more of the move combinations were discovered.
The movie couldn't have come at a better time. My friends and I met up at the arcade and all carpooled to the theater to watch the cartoonish violence brought to life. It was dumb, it was ridiculous, and it was amazing.
Continue reading RF Cinema: Mortal Kombat
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In some forms of media, the word “remake” can be a scary thing. In the realm of Video Games though that word is often embraced and encouraged. In fact, the word "remake" often doesn’t do this “new” release justice, so many sub-catergories have been created to better describe a new version of an old favorite. You may have heard terms such as: Port, Enhanced Port, HD Remake, Re-Release, Localization, Director’s Cut, Compilation, Backwards Compatibility, Virtual Console, Emulation, Complete Edition, Game of the Year Edition, Legendary Edition, Demake, and so many others people use to better describe the type of experience you can expect from an impending release.
Continue reading Do We Really Need A 20th Port of Doom?
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Despite trying to stay more up-to-date with new games this year, a little game known as Hellblade snuck out under my radar. I remember eventually seeing the game's store page on Steam, but after quickly glossing over it, I dismissed Hellblade as a generic hack & slash game. Once it went on sale, I gave the game another look, and noticed that it has more elements of psychological horror that definitely intrigued me. I purchased the game and didn't wait long to start playing it, and I'm glad to say that my initial impression of 'generic hack & slash game' couldn't have been more wrong.
Continue reading Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
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Every once in a while, a title comes along and really surprises you...really makes you want to play it start to finish. Golf Story on the Nintendo Switch somehow became one of those games. Golf Story is a golf/RPG hybrid game done in a pixel art style, but that barely starts to describe the adventure you are about to go on.
Continue reading Golf Story
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As a longtime fan of the Yakuza series, I was as excited as I was perplexed by the announcement and release in 2011 and 2012 of Yakuza: Dead Souls. Much like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, the game is a zombie laden, non-canonical side adventure using characters and locations from the main series of games. Dead Souls takes place after the events of Yakuza 4. It is interesting to note that the release of the game was delayed after the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 in Japan, as the game depicts real-life Japanese cities in a state of ruin.
Continue reading Yakuza: Dead Souls
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Once upon a time, the strongest desire of most gamers was to duplicate what they played in the arcade on a home console. In this fashion, one could say that arcades ruled the jungles of electronic video game entertainment. While complete faithfulness to the arcade original was the holy grail, it was certainly not a requirement, though individual interpretation on the quality of the port was certainly debated, especially in the playgrounds and hallways of schools.
Today I submit three more titles for your enjoyment; two I truly love more than the arcade originals, and one that I would rather suffer (another) head injury than play on a home console.
Continue reading But I Like Those Ports: The Sequel!
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