This Week’s Topics:
Wherein I discuss my pursuit to the grave, the glory of backwards compatibility, a game where you can play as a pig who can transform into rockets, Activision perpetuating evil from the very top, a cynical crossover clash, and a response to a most “Definitive” failure.
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You know what the worst past of E3 is? The fact that I cannot simply drop everything to enjoy spending an entire day in video game wonderment. As such, since 2013 the Monday kicking off E3 has always been a frustrating affair where I not only want to watch the conferences, do a write-up, which takes time because I am a slow writer, and keep up with the news that falls between the cracks, but I need to attend college classes and do part-time office work that mostly consists of spreadsheets, filing, and processing bodily specimens. Anyways, enough customary moaning. The video games are here!
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It just occurred to me that I have no idea what a comma splice, independent clause, and dependent clause are. The could be due to my own foolishness, but I like to think it’s because my school placed me in remedial English during my middle school years. I’m not sure why, as I was always a B student, and my writing was actually praised by a few teachers. This school district also sent me to play with the down syndrome and retarded children once a week in third and fourth grade. Because Autism, I guess. Now my autism causes the state to pay for my super level schooling and probably pays people to care for those retarded adults. (more…)
Being born in late 1994 and being initially intimidated by video games for reasons that would only be plausible to the mind of a timid little boy, I found myself not too enthralled by a large quantity of older titles. But if I were to make a top ten, or possibly even a top five list of my favorite games of all time, I would certainly place Symphony of the Night up there. With that in mind, asking why I would review a title such as this is a valid question, especially since I did back when I was figuring this reviewing doohickey out. Well, because I didn’t explain why I love it so much properly, which was also the reason for my second Saints Row 2 review. So let the praise flow super duper well without being unconditional! (more…)
If I haven’t plugged it enough, please go out and buy The Body of Raiyne! It is my first novel and is only a dollar, hell, it may end up being even less later down the line and for brief periods. In addition to that, I have started work on my next novel, which will sadly probably not come out until the year’s end, possibly even later if I go through my idea for the short story, Psycho_Shatter. Psycho_Shatter is a terrible idea as it features a main character with major mental problems that I will not research and will probably include a person being burnt alive in an oven. But I still want to do it in order to have a massive wanker of a protagonist be placed in situations where he just rants about everything while being the most fragile little shit I have ever conceived. But onto the video games!
I really do not have an explanation for what I decided to replay Saints Row 2, let along the vanilla version of a not very good PC port. I am aware that there is a supposedly awesome mod by the name of Gentlemen of the Row, but I forgot about it until I was nearly done with my 45 hour playthrough where I did just about everything I could do that wouldn’t be easily viewed as mindless busy work. However, this is not a review where I look back and question why I did not see faults with a title, but one where I actually come to terms with how I probably should have loved this title even more than I thought I did. Also, I want to review something happy on Christmas, unlike last year… (more…)
I remember back when I was a wee lass, er, sorry, wrong reality, when I was a wee boy and bought lots of big titles on the regular because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Brutal Legend was one of them, and I promptly forgot nearly all of what entailed in it. So I got it again through a Humble Bundle. Not because I wanted to review every Doublefine title before they began making Kinect Titles, that just sorta happened. (more…)
Mark of the Ninja is the last game I played on my Xbox 360 before I put it away for the foreseeable future. Not this version, I bought this after I let the console stay dormant for two months before getting a free copy in a Humble Bundle. Which means I own three versions of this game, something I can’t say about anything aside from the first three Sonic games, which I actually own about four copies of… Damn, I didn’t even realize that until just now! Okay, okay, let’s talk about them Ninjasks named Mark.
There comes a time when games are long, have problems that become apparent early in playing them, and feel like a time sink that will amount to the same conclusion, more or less. Jade Empire is one of those titles, and as I’ve hit 13 hours in the game and chapter three out of five, I no longer wish to continue, and feel as if I have a good amount of things to say about the oft forgotten Bioware title. As part of a new segment that will hopefully survive through my very spur of the moment decision making, called Partway Reviews. In which I review a game after getting to the point where I no longer wish to continue playing it, but still feel like saying things. (more…)
The fate of tiny games seems to be two parts due to whether or not you can assemble a decent amount of health with a marketing budget about as small as it can be to afford a booth at Pax, and if you can get critics to call your game an eight or higher. Especially when you have jerks like me who says, “I’ll give you five dollars for a year’s work… sucker!” Which I just did with a not-quite indie game, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. (more…)
So after their owner ended up losing almost all their money, Black Isle reestablished itself as Obsidian Entertainment. Working on sequels to games that fit their specialties, only to eventually be able to pick up the license they had been working with before Black Isle got the axe? With the countermeasure likely involving them having a fraction of the budget to a game they were essentially modding in hopes of using up ideas gathered over the years. Which is essentially the backstory for New Vegas’ development, or so I believe.
Note: I re-reviewed this game in 2017. Please disregard this original review.
So after years of working on and developing a franchise, you tell its creator to more or less reboot it, while trying to make it flop as hard as possible. What with your terrible timing for its release, where it’s first week sales in five digits was not surprising. Oh, but by the end of the year the game managed to make money because it was made by a small team. So you plan a bigger and better sequel, only to tell the creators to spend another six months on it before finally releasing it in a manner to maximize profit by putting it on everything. Is it good? Yes. How good is it? Let’s find out. Ready, one, two, three go!
Ah, nothing like playing catch up with games that were released, debated, and ultimately put aside until the December of decisions where the various outlets decide upon their favorite game of the past year. But I feel as if I can get a bit of traction while nobody is talking about it, but namely know what the blazes I’m talking about when I’ll say Saints Row IV or Rayman Legends is my GOTY. Even though Bioshock Infinite is still quite good, but it is another Last of Us for me.
Another week, another batch of news, and another few days of me making minimal progress on my review backlog, while dragging my feet with my novellas. Let’s talk about them there video glumps!
Okay, okay, okay. I realize that I should not get into the habit of redoing everything I’ve ever done, but sometimes I want to replay a game after a while, and look back at my past review of said game and view it as lacking. Yes, I said mostly nice things, but I don’t think I said them very well, and this will hopefully amend that. That, and I wanted to get a refresher for 400 Days, which I’m not gonna review, because it would be two rather annoyed paragraphs. (more…)
As I state with half of my reviews for games, most of my stuff is randomly picked by a birdie telling me it is worth however many dollars is slapped on it, and my not very valuable time. I mean, why wouldn’t I pick up a title with a relatively positive reception, poor sales, and an eight dollar price tag. No clue, but it certainly was worth what I paid. Oh, and no Multiplayer will be mentioned because who the blazes would be playing it?
Alright, after a year and a half on my shelf, 80-100 million dollars in development, three years on shelves, and a little over a week to actually play the blasted thing, I’ve gone through another wrapped title. Still with the sticker boasting its 160+ Game of the Year awards to justify its title. Not that I would really expect that after going through the single player campaign. (more…)
Did I mention how I am really, really bad with maintaining a clean slate of titles, with backlogs up the bum that I fix by picking away at it and filling my gap with another title? Well, I just did that, as I picked up a mostly forgotten title from 2010 and need to give my thoughts on it because that is fun for me.
Nothing like being introduced to a game through your nonreligious friend trying to tell you, a nonreligious person, that you should care about a game because it was based on ancient religious texts, before the friend calls the game rubbish for being a full retail title, having believed it to be a downloadable title. But it was $3 for a digital copy and got some decent praise, so I bought it like I’m sure a few thousand did, but unlike most people, I hardly find the game to be an ascension. Damn me and my deadly puns! (more…)
There are times when a game falls flat on expectations. When a game that is a personal favorite of many people you admire turns out to be something you just can’t get into. And times when it effectively kills your interest in the series it belongs to. But not Snake Eater, because it is my favorite Metal Gear Solid game thus far.
As stated prior, I apparently lived my life wrong to the point where I never ended up touching a PS2 or original Xbox controller, choosing a Gamecube because I could only get one, and I inherited a Nintendo 64. Which is a decent excuse for why I never played several titles, but no reason why I waited over a year until I opened up the Metal Gear Solid HD collection to continue my trek through the series. (more…)
I hate it when titles take me forever to get around to, and this one was hanging in the balance for about two months. But after using an extended weekend to plow through this title that I would expect 5+ million people to own due to how it was $0.00 for a few days. Still, I am insane and can’t go through something and not write about it unless my thoughts are totally indifferent, so here’s what I thought of the title, and two months before the sequel.
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To stop beating around the bush, and immediately light it on fire, I did not like The Witcher 2 any significant amount. In fact, after I got to the second of three chapters, the only reason I continued was so I could label this as a review rather than a first impressions piece. However, seeing as how adorable the box back is, I’m going to use that as the centerpiece of the review, if only because I think it’d be more fun than I got from the actual title.
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I literally choose everything I review by looking at something and saying, “That one’ll do for this week or given time period.” And I decided that the best way to wash out the taste of a cold deconstruction of a genre I am unfamiliar with, is with an urban sandbox game! One that I would’ve probably never cared about, if not for the fact that it was one of the handful of cancelled games to be revived completely, and it got an ill fitting name. Really? There are no dogs in this tale of Sleeping Dogs!
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Note: I re-reviewed this title in 2014. Please disregard this review.
Y’know, other than the amount of dissatisfaction when you realize that you are not putting out anything that people actually care about. The feeling of not having much to say is the worst part of my self imposed hobby/job. Its not just that people have said a lot after it was given a far closer look, and I’m late to the metaphorical party. It’s because how they clearly have more experience, since I’ve never even touched what one would consider to be a, “Modern Military Shooter”. So I’ll try something less conventional, and structure this review in accordance with how I was introduced to this game.
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Note: I re-reviewed this game in 2013. Please disregard this original review.
The surprise popularity in The Walking Dead game was something that I originally presumed to be something that everyone would forget about come the fourth of the five episode. Not that it was bad, because that is what I remember about every Telltale game, a general decline in interest with an end product that people ended up getting a bit too excited for. Not to put them down, I never actually played one of their previous games beyond a demo or two, with my reactions being positive. But them bringing a game of the year? That not only blew my mind, it made me snatch it up, and ignore my backlog just to get around to it. And, well, I can certainly see why so many people liked it.
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As I have stated before, I dislike multiplayer that has me directly connect to people online . Oh sure, I can have some couch co-op with a friend who only ever comes over once every two weeks to a month, which was the reason it took me 9 months to beat Rayman Origins. And at the same time, I dislike games, or any medium, when they focus on modern warfare. But, because I am a tad nutters, I wanted to see if Double Fine could make me give two scraps about the applicable subgenre. And, well, they tried at least.
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A part of me feels more than a little awkward for bringing up a game that is 15 months old, the right amount of time for the game to be forgotten, and not necessarily looked back on by most. However, part of the creation of this blog was to organize my thoughts on pretty much every game I currently own, something that I am bound to regret when I need to do some the lengthy RPGs I have lying around. But I had the DLC for this, and due to an odd decision plan, it was either this or Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga, a sixty hour game. So, not even acknowledging the original Deus Ex, here’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, one of the more conflicting games I’ve played in recent memory.
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I do not normally do reviews for DLC, but I bought and played through some and feel like I should talk about it. If you couldn’t tell from the header, its Bioshock 2’s single player DLC, Minerva’s Den. And it is one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve seen in a good while.
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I thought Bioshock was a very nice game, other than the save system that encouraged you to try and try again with no consequences for messing up other than a load screen. How it included revitalizing chambers in case you do not use the save system. The pointless morality system, and a crappy ending. So the sequel took into account to not improve most of those things, and just creating plot holes and a product that lacks was filled with one of the first big gaming controversies that I saw within the medium. But this is a place for my opinions, so let’s do it with Bioshock 2.
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Note: I re-reviewed this game in 2017. Please disregard this original review.
Ubisoft, what the hell were you thinking with this title? It is odd enough that you would decide to release a 2D platformer, a sub-genre that has been reduced to downloadable titles unless it stars an Italian plumber, at retail for $60. But you release it on the busiest day of the busiest month in the industry? On the same day as your own Assassin’s Creed Revelations? You developed an engine to make this game, so you were trying to toss it into the lion’s den? Well, joke’s on you, this game not only survived the lions, but it crashed into your office looking for more work. This is Rayman Origins, my favorite 2D platformer of this generation, if not all of time! (more…)
