January 25, 2012 by Greg Noe
Welcome to the completely pointless recap of First Hour's Day Nine! What are these? Well, simply links to the last 24 first hour reviews for your reading pleasure. Why are they pointless? Well, they're not completely pointless, but we've actually got a lot of content in the pipe and having to put this together feels like a pain.
Anyways, we've finished up another 24 hours of gaming, which actually is quite a bit. A person can do a lot in 24 hours if they put their mind to it, and most of us would probably put our minds toward gaming, at least I would. Not 24 different games, that would be insane and overwhelming, but when spread across a few months, it's definitely doable.
So the games: we've got console games, PC games, portable games, blockbusters, indie titles, old games, and new games. Minecraft, Magicka, and MotoHeroz. A double dipping of Captain America and Bionic Commando. One of the things I love about writing for this site is just the sheer variety of stuff we cover.
Here's the list, and see you in Day Ten!
Read moreJanuary 23, 2012 by Nate
Don't look now, but it's been nine months since reams of personal info and credit card numbers were stolen in the the Great PlayStation Network Hacking. Seeing as how I don't have any suspicious charges to my credit card, I think I can breathe easy. And hey, I got a couple of free games out of Sony's negligence!
One of the games I received in exchange for the breach of my security was Dead Nation, yet another zombie game with "Dead" in the title. I think we're all a little tired of the undead scene, but I don't see this "fad" fizzling out for a long while. So let's not whine too much and enjoy the good that comes of it before we can move on to the next craze (cowboys, maybe?).
A twin-stick shooter with online co-op and flashlights-in-the-dark scares, Dead Nation might be a nice change of pace from the neon insanity of Geometry Wars and other giants of the genre. An hour of blasting reanimated corpses into bloody gobs later, I'm ready to say that the game is good. How good? This good.
Read moreJanuary 20, 2012 by Greg Noe
I beat Batman: Arkham City well over a week ago, but due to a weekend vacation, work, and the flu hitting my entire family, I’m only now getting to its review. This has given me time to think heavily about the game, and in some ways find as many flaws as ways to praise it, not sure if this is a healthy game reviewing technique or not.
As the sequel to Arkham Asylum, one of the most successful and highly regarded licensed games ever, expectations were through the roof. Arkham City was released in October of last year to brisk sales and excellent reviews, skyrocketing creatorRocksteady Studios among the upper echelon of developers.
Nate covered the game’s first hour when it was released, and later named it his Game of the Year. I just named Arkham Asylum my Game of the (Other) Year as I beat it early 2011. As I’m still ailing from the effects of the flu and its corresponding medicine, I’m going to try and keep this shorter than usual.
Read moreJanuary 18, 2012 by Greg Noe
Last year was a bit of a down year in terms of quantity of games played, but quality was just as high as ever. I did get to play a lot of mobile games, and I finished off the year with getting a PlayStation 3! Here's my lists of games played in 2011, compiled as much for you, as they are for me ten years in the future.
You can check out last year's list, or read Nate's incredibly long and detailed 2011 compilation. Enjoy!
Read moreJanuary 13, 2012 by Steve
If someone tells you they're going to do a "reverse" something, odds are the result will be terrible. The concept sounds similarly cheesy for games, evoking memories of bad minigames and multiplayer modes. However, for some genres it actually could be a fresh take on the concept, and 11-Bit Studios tries to prove this with their "reverse tower defense" game, Anomaly: Warzone Earth. 11-Bit is a brand new developer out of Poland, powered by a small team of industry veterans. It appears that they've taken an independent mindset towards publishing and distributing, releasing Anomaly directly to Steam and the Mac Store. Thus far, they seem to be having a good deal of success and are proving capable in quickly porting their game to new platforms, including iOS, Kindle Fire (!) and an upcoming XBLA release.
January 11, 2012 by Greg Noe
I played quite a few mobile games in 2011, and I don't expect that to change much in 2012. Where's My Water? was available as a Free App of the Day on the Amazon Android store a few weeks ago, and I picked it without much thought and tucked it in the mobile queue. Free games are great, especially on a pick-up-and-play platform like a phone. It's pretty amazing how the ideas behind a First Hour Review can be boiled down from 60 minutes to 30 seconds.
Where's My Water? passed my immediate test of being playable and having an interesting concept; a few days later with every rubber ducky collected and all the challenge levels defeated, I'm ready to declare it a triumphant mobile game along the lines of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, here are my thoughts.
Read moreJanuary 09, 2012 by Nate
In 2010, I played 73 games. That's a lot of games. Probably too many games. I was pretty sure I would never play that many games ever again.
In 2011, I played 84 games. That's more games that I played in 2010, the year in which I played too many games, probably.
In this edition of my annual gaming inventory, I'll note how many hours I spent with each game, what progress I made, and whether or not I'll come back to the game in the future. I post this knowing that someday, years from now, it will be used in an intervention regarding my time management skills and/or life priorities. I'll be too busy playing Ultimate Angry Birds vs. Capcom to listen to my concerned friends and loved ones, though.
Read moreJanuary 05, 2012 by Paul Abbamondi
After languishing in a void of lackluster retail releases, lame battery issues, and an eShop brimming with nothing original to play, the Nintendo 3DS is starting to come around as a solid system to have and to hold. Okay, well, the battery issues still remain a problem, but whatever, at least there's befitting videogames to finally play on the dang thing. Since launching in June 2011, the system's eShop has featured 3DS Classics, such as Excitebike and TwinBee, Virtual Console re-releases, such as Kirby's Dream Land and Mario Picross, and then original 3DSWare games, such as...well, not much really. A handful of titles, but nothing too memorable.
However, word around the Interwebz is that Pushmo (called Pullbox in Europe), the newest release for 3DSWare, is pretty stellar, akin to Picross 3D in terms of its puzzles and addictive nature. Seeing as I ate up over 350 puzzles in Picross 3D, more puzzles for on the go is something I need and quickly handed over my ecash to Nintendo.
So, let's push and pull some blocks for thirty minutes and hopefully have a fantastic time.
Read moreJanuary 03, 2012 by Nate
Upon starting Super Mario 3D Land, I was placing internal bets on whether the game would be filed with the 2D or the 3D Mario experiences. Miyamoto and the team say they combined the approachability of 2D Mario with the freedom of the third dimension, but one of the two styles must win out, right?
Exactly fourteen hours of playtime later, the answer still eludes me. There's bits of Super Mario Galaxy and pieces of New Super Mario Bros in the game, and it leans heavily towards the former. What's keeping me from committing 3D Land to the 2D Mario pile is all the Sonic Adventure mucking things up.
Despite the disappointment, elation, and outright disdain that those three names likely bring up, they ultimately mean little for the actual quality of the game. It would be difficult to argue that Super Mario 3D Land is anything other than the Nintendo 3DS' most compelling purchase to date. But it's also the first Mario title in several years that I can't just rave about.
Read moreDecember 31, 2011 by Greg Noe, Ian M. Bagley, Mike in Omaha, Nate, Paul Abbamondi, Steve
Announcing the 2011 Game of the Year Awards from First Hour!
These aren't your normal awards, we cover everything from older game of the year to worst first hour. We also don't sum up votes on categories or anything either, we simply present each writer's thoughts on their pick, so if you don't like something, you know exactly who to blame! Of course, we do all this just for fun (spare time!) and buy all of our own games (real money!), so most of us don't even touch some of the big releases of the year. Woe to the unpaid game critic!
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