A lot of people forget that the original Luigi’s Mansion on Gamecube wasn’t heralded as a premiere Nintendo experience when it first came out. Many knocked it for being too short and repetitive, which caused me to avoid it completely. Despite that, the game’s legacy grew with time to the point where we now have Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon on the 3DS more than a decade later. Was it worth the wait?
The Tomb Raider franchise means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some associate her with their original love of PlayStation. Others adore her for being a pioneer of girl power in video games. There might be one or two people for whom Lara was their first crush on a video game character. For me, she didn’t mean much. As a diehard Nintendo fanboy during her heyday, I wanted nothing to do with that series. Nor did I feel I was missing much, as the series never won me over during the few times I actually played a Tomb Raider title. This reboot may have rubbed some purists the wrong way, but this is definitely more up my alley.
Ever since I got it as a birthday present a few months back, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon has been a part of my morning routine. Though the game isn’t terribly long, it’s taken me forever to work through it. The frustrating part of it all is that it really doesn’t have to be this way.
Much of my time with The Last of Us wasn’t pleasant. Granted, some of that unpleasantness is by design, since this is a survival horror game in many ways. However, some of the displeasure I felt playing the game wasn’t intentional. After starting things off with a bang, the pace drags to a crawl as it establishes its core gameplay. Worse yet for me, that gameplay is primarily stealth-based, which generally isn’t my cup of tea. On top of that, I had a hard time investing into the moment-to-moment action when the gameplay and context balance just felt off during its first half.
Having said all that, it eventually hits its stride to provide one heck of a closing act.
Trials HD still stands as one of the most successful games in the history of Xbox Live. You’ll be hard-pressed nowadays to find someone who hasn’t tricked their way through its insane motorcycle obstacle courses. For the longest time, I was one of those people. I’d saw and heard a lot of feedback about the game being difficult, and that was enough to keep me at bay. Had it not been for a Splitkick community game night that featured Trials Evolution, I probably would have passed on the series completely.
It’s sequel won me over in a big way last year, though I’ve only gotten to HD now. While I still have a blast working my way through every course, it’s definitely not a series one should play backwards.
I should have known better.
A Contra remake on iOS sounds totally rad on paper. At a price of only $0.99, how could this go possibly wrong? Let me count the ways.
At this point, Dark Souls is viewed upon as legendary among the gaming community for it’s unapologetic difficulty. Taking heavy cues from action and adventure games of yesteryear, it brutally punishes mistakes and is a rather obtuse experience to comprehend. With virtually no context given, the game gives you a key to free yourself from your cell and it’s essentially up to you to figure out the rest.
This style of game is generally not my thing. Even as a child, my tolerance for difficulty was relatively low. However, it’s crossed that point where as a gaming enthusiast, I just have to play it in order to experience first hand what everyone’s been talking about. Also, I started playing ZombiU, which many people say takes influence from Dark Souls, and I didn’t have that experience under my belt to say otherwise. Did I make it out alive?
Ridiculous Fishing is the latest iOS game to catch a ton of positive buzz from the gaming press. Had I not heard this game talked about on every podcast I listen to over the past few weeks, I probably would have let this one slip by. Then again, sometimes the gaming press has led me astray. Did this one win me over like it supposedly won over every gaming journalist on the planet?
The Sleeping Dogs origin story has been documented ad nauseam, so I won’t do that here. Nor did it matter to me much, anyway. I’d never played a True Crime game before, and even after it came out to mostly positive press, it still wasn’t a game on my radar. Had it not been for its awesome demo, I probably would have let this one slide. Though I can’t speak to the game’s quality before it came out, the end result is pretty rad. This is one of the most fun open world games I’ve played since Grand Theft Auto IV, and might be my favourite one yet.
In Third Person 