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Top 10 Games of This Generation – Honourable Mention: Mark of the Ninja

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(Original Review)

I hate stealth games. I hate the myriad of artificial fail states that oftentimes come with it. I hate the oftentimes fake openness that really boils down to 1 or 2 options you may have at any given point. I hate the trial-and-error nature of the gameplay. I even hate the very conceit of stealth in video games. When i play a video game, I want the power fantasy. In most stealth games, you feel like a weakling who has no other means of getting through a scenario.

I hate stealth games, but I love Mark of the Ninja.

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Top 10 Games Of This Generation – Honourable Mention – Tomb Raider

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(Original Review)

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve held a lifelong disdain towards the Tomb Raider franchise. At the time, I hated the fact that it played a major role in gamers adopting the PlayStation One in droves, which did not sit well with my Nintendo fanboy self. I also just thought that the few experiences I had with a few of the games in the series didn’t strike me as anything interesting or special. The last time I tried to play a Tomb Raider game was Legend on the Xbox 360, which I grew bored of after an hour of playing the demo.

Regardless of the validity of my claims against the Lara of yesteryear, they don’t apply here. The new Tomb Raider is awesome.

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Hard Corps: Uprising Review

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As much as I love the first and third iterations of the franchise, Contra as a whole has way more misses than hits. The franchise has struggled to find new ways to freshen up the formula, especially when it haphazardly forayed into 3D. As a spiritual successor to Contra, Hard Corps: Uprising gives the series an anime twist thanks to the handy work of Arc System Works, who are best known for Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.

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Disney Infinity Toy Story Play Set Review

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While I generally like Disney Infinity, I don’t have any particular attachment to the source material these Play Sets draw from. However, that all changed with the release of the Toy Story Play Set. I hold those fantastic films close to my heart and have been anxiously awaiting to experience the franchise within the game. In hindsight, I’m not really sure what I was expecting from a Toy Story Play Set, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed with the final product.

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Mega Man 10 Review

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Mega Man 9 was hard. Admittedly, I didn’t put that much time into it, but the bit of time I spent with it made me feel more anger than enjoyment. I felt that way too much of that game came down to trial-and-error alongside surgical precision to the point where it wasn’t fun.

With that bad experience fresh in my mind, I immediately went into Mega Man 10 with the difficulty set to easy. 2 hours later, I was watching the end credits roll without having broken a sweat.

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Early Impressions of Ninja Blade

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Best known for their work on Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, From Software created Ninja Blade before that; a Ninja Gaiden inspired chopsocky game exclusive to the Xbox 360. If you don’t remember it, that’s cool, cause it came and went within the blink of an eye. For years, I patiently waited until it hit the bottom of the bargain bin before picking it up. After finding it brand new for $5, I decided to take the bait.

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Disney Infinity Review

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To say that Disney Infinity is simply a knock-off of Skylanders is rather disingenuous. The toys may work in a similar fashion at a base level, though the actual gameplay experience is quite different. There’s also a level of nuance with the figurines and discs that goes beyond the groundwork laid by Activision. But are these differences enough to justify going with one over the other?

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The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time 3D Impressions

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To this day, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time is considered by many as one of the greatest video games of all-time. I definitely side with that mentality. I even gushed about it before on this very blog. With that said, the Nintendo 64 original and Gamecube port don’t look so hot by today’s standards. The textures are a blurry mess, everything is overly blocky and they both only run in 480i resolution. It would have been a shame if this classic got lost in time. Thankfully, Nintendo is breathing new life into it with a 3DS iteration that’s a bit more than a port.

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Early El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron Impressions

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El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron has been a game I’ve been meaning to play for quite some time. It first caught my eye with its arresting visual flair, though the mixed reviews kept me at bay until I could grab it on the cheap. A few months back, it hit rock bottom on Xbox Live, as it was on sale for a paltry $3. Having played a little bit of it now, I’m not sure if the game was worth the wait.

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Saints Row: The Third Review

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Saints Row: The Third did not win me over right away. Having only played the demo of the first game before and hating it, this from a gameplay mechanics perspective felt as derivative and janky as its predecessor. Having said that, it becomes readily apparent that gameplay is not the focus here. Instead, this is all about playing a Grand Theft Auto-like experience with the humor and ridiculousness pushed to extremes. Once the game heats up, it manages to dress up relatively unremarkable mechanics and turn them into a title that’s arguably more fun than it should be.
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