June 05, 2013 by Steve
What does it mean to be a god if no one will listen to you? Arcen Games looks at this with a bit of humor in their latest release, Skyward Collapse. Here, we play an omniscient, omnipresent celestial being, tasked with cultivating and manipulating two factions that would like nothing more than to see the other eradicated. That's an interesting scenario on its own, but we are further entangled by a godly need for entertainment (conflict) and plagued by natural "woes." To further jumble our troubles, rogue elements including deities and mythological creatures try to spoil our day. In this turn based strategy/god sim, we inherit the intriguing situation of lacking direct control yet commanding plenty of manipulation.
Read moreMay 20, 2013 by Greg Noe
Yes, yes, this site still functions. I apologize for not writing anything in... a long time, but I'm actually playing games! Loving Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny on the PS3 and just picked up a 3DS with Super Mario 3D Land, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, and Fire Emblem: Awakening! With all the great games coming down the pipe from Nintendo and third party developers, I figured I had better get on the 3DS train sooner than later.
In the meantime, here are some more thoughts on Android and iOS games I've been playing lately.
Read moreApril 18, 2013 by Steve
Well, I was not entirely ready for this. The Cat Lady, released last year by Screen 7 and created almost entirely by Remigiusz Michalski, was absolutely no where on my radar until I recently saw a preview of it in action. I suppose this isn't overly surprising. Michalski's and his studio, Harvester Games, have only developed two titles. The first, released in 2009, is called Downfall and is apparently both highly acclaimed and fairly successful. The second is this game, The Cat Lady. Both are created in Adventure Game Studio and are horror adventures, further limiting the client base (unless you have the media strength of The Walking Dead).
Yet, this ended up being one of the most interesting and complete titles I've played in ages. And somehow, that's even more satisfying when it's a complete surprise. It feels like this game has been stirring and simmering over the course of many years, and that probably isn't very far from the truth. This is an unbelievably mature experience, most likely the most mature game I've ever played. Many of the themes are very dark and complex and real, and this is one of the few instances I can imagine where an age/user discretion is actually warranted. And that can also be a bit of a warning for the rest of this article.
Read moreApril 10, 2013 by Greg Noe
Luigi has strangely found his niche in the Mario universe as the ghostbusting, mansion tip-toeing brother. Why Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto decided to make a GameCube tech demo out of a ghostly mansion and then have it star Luigi may be a question for the ages, but 12 years later we are here with its sequel, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3DS.
It’s been a decade since I played the original Luigi’s Mansion, but I remember it being a charming, if repetitive experience highlighted by Charles Martinet’s incredible voicing of a freaked out Luigi. With the Wii U in seemingly more need of quality software than the 3DS, I’m surprised some tablet-utilizing version of Dark Moon didn’t show up on the console, but the likelihood of me playing the portable version is much higher, so I personally appreciate the 3DS release. Let’s play.
Read moreApril 05, 2013 by Greg Noe
It’s been a few... months since the last first hour review, but that’s okay, I’m happy with everything else I’ve been doing with my extra time, and you’re probably happy because you’re reading this and not the comment section of my Persona 3: FES review.
So while I have your attention, let’s talk quickly about Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny. Rune Factory is a shoot-off series of Harvest Moon, and I’ve talked about both sets of games quite a bit here. I’ve never really enjoyed console Harvest Moon games since the Nintendo 64, and never played the previous console Rune Factory game, so I decided to take a chance and try out Tides of Destiny for the PlayStation 3 (also available on the Wii). Honestly, part of me just wanted a game I could play in front of the kids since Uncharted 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 don’t go over very well.
This will be an incredibly informal first hour, as I didn’t even bother to take notes, but I suppose if you’re looking for a formal first hour review you would have gone somewhere else a long time ago.
Read moreMarch 25, 2013 by Greg Noe
I've been distracted by life's other bits the last couple of weeks, but there's pretty much always time to play games on my phone. I’ll spend a minute writing about each game, hopefully summarizing my thoughts as quickly as if I were telling you about a mobile game in person.
I covered Super Hexagon last go around, and have since played it on the PC, and I have to say the experience is a lot better on the big screen. It's definitely fun on the go, but I managed to reach 60 seconds on Hard on my second attempt using my keyboard.
Read moreMarch 04, 2013 by Greg Noe
I used to write reviews on nearly every Android or IOS game I spent more than an hour on, but I’ve fallen behind lately, so here's my first round at some reviews. I’ll spend a minute writing about each game, hopefully summarizing my thoughts as quickly as if I were telling you about a mobile game in person.
Read moreMarch 01, 2013 by Ian M. Bagley
It's been a long while since I've written a review, which is pretty commonplace due to my busy schedule. But as my days have cleared up due to seriously inclement weather, I figured I'd write a review. Not just a review, but a review on a game in a series that I am in love with. This is something I had been saving and looking forward to for the right time.
Unfortunately though, this didn't pan out like I had hoped. This is hard for me to write. Not just because of the fact it's a multiplayer experience I'm reviewing, but also because it's a dream of mine being crushed.
As I've mentioned before, I was a pretty avid player of Counter Strike, and much more so, Counter Strike: Source. My father and I played CS: Source from around 2005 until 2007. We were in a clan, competitively. (The name of it was Exemplar Sect, best player was Pug.) Anyway, we loved that game, and I remember upgrading computer parts all of the time to increase framerates, and every weekend was a Mountain Dew fueled weekend of meeting people all over the world and killing them. But then other games became popular (I played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 quite a bit.) and I went over to them, but I always visited CS: Source, and always had a blast.
Read moreFebruary 22, 2013 by Greg Noe
I’ve had my PlayStation 3 over a year now, and during that time I’ve enjoyed Heavy Rain, Infamous, and Uncharted, but the game that I’ve had the best time with is Valkyria Chronicles. I hadn’t even heard of the game until a friend shoved it in my hands, and it ended up being my First Hour of the Year and now my favorite game on the platform.
Valkyria Chronicles is nearly a perfect execution of all aspects of a video game. The gameplay is a fun and addicting mix of strategy and action, the graphics have a lovely anime-style to them, the presentation is flawless, the story is an interesting riff on World War I, the voice acting is actually great most of the time, and the soundtrack has a grand bluster to it that makes everything else better. And to top it all off, Valkyria Chronicles was developed by Sega. Sega!
I will admit, the game took me quite a long time to beat, over six months with about 40 hours of actual gaming (I’ve put more time than that into Xenoblade Chronicles in the last month). It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy the game, but because Valkyria Chronicles seemed to require a certain amount of minimum playtime to really get into it. Even one hour free didn’t feel like enough for one sitting. Weird how that is for some types of games.
Read moreFebruary 06, 2013 by Greg Noe, Steve
I loved Borderlands 1, but was always little cool on its downloadable content. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned was a tedious addition with boring enemies, and Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot was just an endless barrage of arena battles, better tuned for testing weapons out than actually having fun. So while I also loved Borderlands 2, I was very leery about its additional content available for purchase.
But Nate treated me to the season pass, and a few weekends ago Steve and I took down the first DLC released, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty (there’s a pun in there somewhere). Turns out this release is a much more traditional release featuring a half dozen new zones, a bunch of new enemies, over 20 new missions, a new vehicle, and at least one raid boss (okay, there’s two, but we couldn’t beat the first one).
There’s honestly a ton of content here for a DLC, it probably took us about five hours to reach the first raid boss and lose to him a couple of times, so you’ll certainly feel like you got your money’s worth. But at the same time, it’s kind of a slog. All the new missions are self contained in the new Oasis zones so there’s a ton of backtracking and retreading ground. The central hub is also kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and if it wasn’t for the new skiff, would be exceedingly obnoxious to get to. This is one of those cases where there just might be too much.
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