Gaming opinions, reviews, news, and impressions. Plus thoughts on other cool stuff.
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Historically, one of the main differences between developer Naughty Dog's two flagship series was stealth: the "Infected" (i.e. zombie)-filled world of The Last of Us required quiet and careful sneaking, while the pulp fiction swashbuckling action of Uncharted relied mainly on loud, flashy shootouts.
With Uncharted 4, however, those worlds have collided, and Nathan Drake now has some honest-to-goodness stealth abilities. The result is a set of levels that could be pulled straight out of a really great James Bond game. (Beware: some light spoilers ahead).
I played it in February, but Firewatch was my own personal summer camp. It offers a delightful, if sometimes melancholy and mysterious, departure from urban life with a vast expanse of nature to explore at your leisure.
A game that was highly anticipated, generally well-received at launch, and subsequently second-guessed for not being as life-changing as people thought it should have been, Firewatch is still an experience that sticks out in my memory as a very personal journey inward experienced through the eyes of a man searching for an escape (and maybe newfound purpose) after a period of loss and grief.
Despite my growing collection of Nintendo's amiibo toys, it's hard to ignore the obvious fact that they don't contribute much to the on-screen action in any particular game. And, while both Skylanders and Disney Infinity figurines offer the ability to bring characters in and out of the game, this also feels like a somewhat unnecessary (albeit cool) method of purchasing DLC content. So, I wondered, can this whole toys-to-life genre really go beyond the gimmick of watching a character "magically" pop up on screen when you scan in a figure?
Enter LEGO Dimensions , which answers this question with a resounding "yes."
The term "walking simulator" has often been used as a pejorative, but it might just be my new favorite genre. Like Gone Home before it, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a game with no action or combat. There really aren't even puzzles to solve—at least not in the traditional sense. However, the five-or-so hours I spent exploring its idyllic English countryside were some of my most memorable gaming moments in 2015.
A lot of Sony's E3 press conference opening focused on games we knew about or otherwise hoped we knew about: The Last Guardian got re-confirmed, a Final Fantasy VII remake is happening, and a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter got started. But it was one of Sony's completely new franchises that really caught my eye—Guerrilla Games' Horizon: Zero Dawn .
The Evil Within, released in October 2014, marked Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami's return to his survival horror roots. Since Mikami's last RE game, the near-perfect Resident Evil 4, that series has hit some stumbling blocks, so I was glad to see that survival horror fans would be getting a new outing from the man who defined the genre.
While reviews for the game were good, if less-than-perfect, I have been having a fantastic time with the game. Here are five things that are keeping me positively freaked out.
It's probably not news to you by now that Alien: Isolation is a little bit of a divisive game. Some loved it, some didn't. Really, such is the case with many games. But, usually, I (like most people) would fall on one side the fence of these opposing views. The strange thing about Sega's interactive take on the 1979 space-horror classic is that I genuinely love and hate this game simultaneously.
While not the oldest game I'm currently playing, The Swapper is hardly a new release. If you're not up-to-speed on the game, picture a Metroid-esque 2D platformer with a "swapping" gun mechanic that allows your character to create four simultaneous clones (all of which move together) and then swap freely between them. While the atmosphere would make Samus Aran feel right at home, the gameplay has more of Portal than of Power Bombs.
Check out the full post for my initial impressions on this unique indie title.
Well, here we are: the end of another year. 2014 is just about wrapped up, so I wanted to write one last post to reflect on the highs and lows of this year in gaming from my perspective.
Other sites have covered the biggest news stories, the best & worst games of the year, and every other kind of list imaginable. So, rather than retread tired ground, I'll just provide my take on what I played, what I liked, and what really captured my attention.
At Sony's recent PlayStation Experience conference in Las Vegas, one of the biggest, most anticipated announcements wasn't a game. It wasn't even a surprise, having been teased days earlier. It was instructions on how to purchase the PSOne-themed, 20th Anniversary, limited edition PlayStation 4 console—instructions that were followed by a near-immediate sellout of the consoles with resale listings on eBay going for as high as $15,000.
Was this really a good way for Sony to celebrate twenty years of PlayStation fandom?
Black Friday is approaching, and with it comes the promise of getting a shiny, new console at an unbelievably low price. I've already written a piece recently about Nintendo's Wii U (which, honestly, might have the best lineup of games for the holiday), but what if you want something with a little less Mario? Which console should you buy?
UPDATE: So the rumors were true: Microsoft bought Minecraft for $2.5 billion. However, the good news, at least for now, is that the Vita version appears to be safe.
Original: Reports and rumors have been flying this week that Microsoft is in talks to acquire Minecraft studio Mojang to the tune of $2.5 billion. The most concerning thing, though, is that it may impact the fate of the yet-to-be-released PlayStation Vita port of Minecraft, which many have looked to as the perfect portable version of the game.
Telltale captured the world's attention with its first season of the episodic, narrative-based game, The Walking Dead, so it likely surprised no one that it managed to warrant a second season. However, it was probably more surprising that their next game would feature a completely different (and easily less well-known) property, the graphic novel Fables. Check out my review to see if this fairytale-inspired series stacks up to its zombie-infested predecessor!
