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Most Recent: Reviews
No Time To Explain Review: Laser Rifles, Time Travel, and Dancing
No Time To Explain is a fast-paced 2D platformer where your main mode of travel is a gun so powerful that it doubles as a jet pack. You start out by using your super-powered rifle to chase yourself through time and the game’s looping plot keeps getting more outlandish from there. So dig in, because I do have time to explain.
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Posted in PC, Reviews, Top Story, Xbox One
Tagged No Time To Explain
Extreme Exorcism Review: This House Was Cleaned… With a Twelve-Gauge Double-Barreled Remington
Golden Ruby’s Extreme Exorcism is what you get when you combine the single-screen baddie-bashing of something like Mario Bros. with the pattern memorization requirements of the most chaotic Treasure shoot ’em up. Toss in a throwback retro look and an Army of Darkness-style arsenal, and you’ve got yourself a game.
But there’s got to be more to Extreme Exorcism than that, right? Of course, and the power of Christ compels you to read on… (more…)
Mega Man Legacy Collection Review: A Potent Mixture of Retro Perfection
The Mega Man series is built on patterns. Every time out, a robotic warrior clad in blue battles eight “Robot Masters” in an order chosen by the player. As he pushes through the game, Mega Man acquires an arsenal of new weapons from the vanquished Robot Masters. And after defeating all of them, he challenges the evil Dr. Wily in a fiendishly hard multi-leveled fortress. After delivering the final blow (usually with the game’s worst weapon), Mega Man rides off into the sunset, ready to return if the world needs him again.
I know these patterns. I first learned them in 1987 with the release of Mega Man for the NES, and I received a refresher course roughly every year thereafter thanks to the five sequels that followed. Through trial and error (and believe me, there were many, many trials), I eventually learned how to traverse each game’s set of levels with near flawless accuracy.
After ignoring the series for several years, Capcom decided to compile the first six entries into the recently released Mega Man Legacy Collection. I still know the patterns, but even two decades removed from their original release, the games included in the Mega Man Legacy Collection hold up in a way that few do. (more…)
Lego Jurassic World Review: Spared (Mostly) No Expense
Jurassic Park holds a very special place in my heart. When I first read the novel at 12 years old, I remember closing it and saying to myself, “This needs to be made into a movie.” Little did I know that Stephen Spielberg was already filming the movie as I was reading it. And when the movie came out, it was an amazing experience. After seeing it in the theater, I remember being scared to death as I was riding my bike home, thinking that every noise was a Dilophosaurus hunting me down. Weeks later, I saved my Chuck E. Cheese tickets just to get a raptor stuffed animal and collected Jurassic Park trading cards. I even supersized my Extra Value Meals at McDonalds in order to get the collector’s cups. I was fully engulfed in the dino-mania that was sweeping the globe. Everything about Jurassic Park was amazing, with one exception… the video games.
The Jurassic Park games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were completely different, but unfortunately, neither hit that high standard set by the book and movie. I rented Jurassic Park for the Super Nintendo and found the mixture of overhead exploration and first-person shooter to be quite shallow. My friend had the Sega Genesis game, and while I did enjoy the graphics, animation, and 2D style, I found it too difficult to enjoy. Since then, I haven’t really found a Jurassic Park game that I enjoyed – that is, until Lego Jurassic World. Playing it brought back fond memories of growing up watching these movies, and while it isn’t perfect, Lego Jurassic World is still a fun romp. (more…)
Spectra Review: Chiptunes, Racing, and 80s Arcade Style Aren’t a Bad Combination
It’s a rare game that credits the composer as a co-developer, but that’s what you get with Spectra, an overhead racing game that’s set to a chiptune soundtrack created by Niamh “Chipzel” Houston (best known for her work on Super Hexagon). British developer Gateway Interactive took her bleeps and bloops and laid them over a procedurally-generated raceway that expands out into space using arcade-style wireframe graphics. The music and visuals complement each other nicely, but Spectra’s “keep it simple” style goes a bit too far. (more…)
Kholat Review: Lo-Fi Scares From Russia
I don’t normally play horror games as it’s not really a genre I enjoy. But horror games from Russian and former Soviet bloc countries are a different story. There’s something about their style that shows they really understand fear. I cannot quite explain the draw, but I really like their ability to create an atmosphere where the surroundings and my mind are working equally hard to scare me. And when I heard that Kholat was from that part of the world, I knew I wanted to give it a try. (more…)
Splatoon Review: You’re a Squid! You’re a Kid! You’re the Best Shooter in a Long Time!
Even though it doesn’t star Mario or Link or Samus Aran, Splatoon is the quintessential Nintendo game. Starring a race of shapeshifting human/squid creatures known as Inklings, the game’s bright colors and relentlessly cheery attitude place it firmly within Nintendo’s wheelhouse. But Splatoon is also unlike your typical Nintendo game in that it’s a shooter, albeit one that uses squid ink instead of bullets and is more concerned with area control than racking up killstreaks.
It’s also the best shooter I’ve played in a very long time. (more…)
We Are Doomed Review: A Dreamy Twin-Stick Shooter You Shouldn’t Miss
If you love twin-stick shooters, then this is a great time to be playing video games. After reaching perfection with the release of Smash TV in the early 90s, the genre faded away for more than a decade before Bizarre Creations brought it back with Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Since then, a ridiculous number of twin-stick shooters have been produced, and the control scheme has even been co-opted by a growing number of roguelikes. Basically, you can’t swing a dead hedgehog at a game convention without hitting a developer showing off their new twin-stick title.
Into this crowded fray comes We Are Doomed, the first PC/console game from Vertex Pop. (more…)