The Skylanders franchise fell victim to the sophomore jinx. Skylanders Giants failed to address the issues of its predecessor while its biggest innovation was a boring character class that actually made the game less fun and more difficult to play. Clearly having learned its lesson, the Skylanders are back in their best adventure yet.
How often does a video game make you question your own humanity? The Walking Dead does throughout in brilliant fashion. At every turn, the game puts you in one terrible circumstance after the next, demanding that you make one gut-wrenching decision after another. By the end of its 5 episode run, I was moved to tears.
Season 2 of The Walking Dead video game puts you in the shoes of Clementine. Despite being a little bit older and painfully aware of the world around her, she’s still very much a child. This is the theme that drives episode 1 and will likely carry through the season if she manages to make it through. After playing through the events from All That Remains, I really hope she does make it through.
How do you follow up one of the greatest games ever made? Well, if you’re Nintendo and you’re trying to create the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, you wait 22 years before making and releasing The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS, it retraces some of the steps of its predecessor while introducing some of the boldest innovations to the formula yet. The end result is a game that brought out the same child-like joy I felt playing as Link at his 2D best while set in the freshest Zelda adventure in a long time.
“Silly Jett. Games are for kids!”
Though not expressed in those exact words, this is the stance my dad has taken on video games for many years. Though he spent much of his teenage years playing arcade games, and watched me grow up with the medium, he never understood why I’ve held on for as long as I have. The reality now, is that people don’t grow out of games, and games have started to grow up with us. Heavy Rain is a great example of the latter.
Gaming’s favourite attorney returns in Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies on the Nintendo 3DS. While he’s made cameo appearances in the more recent Ace Attorney games, this will be his first starring role in quite some time. As a huge fan of his original trilogy, I’m picking this up as quickly as I can.
Unlike previous entries in the series, this one is not available in a physical format. Instead, you can only download it through the Nintendo 3DS eShop. I personally would prefer to have a physical copy, but if the business realities are such that this is the only way we can get it, I’d prefer that than not having it at all.
Not having played it yet, I can’t say if this is any good yet. However, I highly recommend the original trilogy to anyone, even if you don’t like point-and-click adventure games. I don’t like the genre as a whole, but the Phoenix Wright games are so well written and fun to play that they easily overcome my criticisms of the genre. Tracking down DS copies may prove difficult, though you can try out the HD remake for free on iOS right now if you want. Be on the lookout for impressions from me on Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies soon!
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Up until the reviews hit, I was hotly anticipating the release of Beyond: Two Souls. As the latest creation from the makers of Heavy Rain starring Ellen Page, this seemed like a surefire winner. However, it’s hard to keep my fervor going after seeing the divisive reviews from critics. In particular, concerns from some of the most outspoken critics in regards to its weak story and gameplay issues have cooled off my intentions of buying this one for the time being.
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?
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.
My track record with art house games is not good. Last time I stuck my neck out there for a game like this, I skewered Journey for being a pretty hiking simulator. While I love how these games approach graphics and sound in a daring manner, I generally find them to be lacking in the gameplay department. For instance, I thought Journey was nothing more than running and jumping in a world devoid of anything other than some scarf pieces and “point B”.
Based on what I’ve seen of the marketing for The Unfinished Swan, I had my concerns that the end result would be the same. Here’s a game that looks gorgeous, appears to have only one gameplay mechanic and involves a lot of walking. Did this one end up missing the mark for me as well?
In Third Person 