I never realized how weird this sequel to the The Legend of Zelda actually was until now.
rpg
Jett Plays the Legend of Zelda on the NES Classic
We work our way through the first dungeon before ultimately getting lost in Hyrule.
Early Impressions of Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go mania is sweeping the planet and I am not immune to the madness. My background in the franchise is fairly limited, but I did beat Pokemon X, so I get the gist of what the core games in the series are about. Unlike those, this one uses the power of GPS and augmented reality to put you at the heart of the action. On paper, this should be the franchise in its ultimate form. So far, does the game look to be on track to meet or exceed the lofty expectations in front of it?
Steff Plays South Park: The Stick of Truth
A few days back, I got cozy on the couch and watched Steff play South Park: The Stick of Truth. It’s one that she’s had some interest in for quite some time and one that she pulled recently purchased. Due to the franchise’s poor history with video games, I had concerns that this one would be another bust. Thankfully, from the few hours I saw of the game, it looks like the South Park game that we’ve all been waiting for.
Pokemon X/Y Review
Jumping into the world of Pokemon for the first time this late into the franchise’s life like I did is daunting. It immediately throws you into a world where you’re mom is totally cool with letting you travel across a giant city on your own by foot. It’s a world where everyone from toddlers to grandmothers are constantly picking battles with you for no apparent reason. Beyond trying to grasp the ridiculousness of its fiction, I found that Pokemon X/Y is a dense game that assumes you’ve already played every entry in the series before. While I’m sure that master Pokemon trainers would enjoy how this cuts to the chase, as a newbie I floundered through its first 8 hours and almost gave up on it.
Then, after crossing what I thought was the most frustrating stretch of the game, it suddenly clicked for me. I finally got a grasp on many of the RPG elements that the game doesn’t really teach. The path forward became clear…most of the time. Most importantly, I began having fun with it.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Impressions
I’ll be the first to admit that Japanese role-playing games are not my cup of tea. I’m generally not a fan of menu-based combat, level grinding or stories that take dozens of hours to complete. The only JRPG I ever played and loved was Super Mario RPG on the SNES. Pretty much everything else from Chrono Trigger, to Final Fantasy VII and everything up to this point has completely passed me by. Quite frankly, I don’t even regret being mostly oblivious to that whole aspect of gaming, because it’s just not my thing.
So why even bother with Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch? Well, for one, its phenomenal visuals went a long way towards grabbing my attention. Then, the positive word-of-mouth just wouldn’t go away. I figured that if I was going to give this genre a fair shake, I might as well try the best.
Project X Zone Review
With a cast of over 60 feature characters from dozens of different Namco, Sega and Capcom franchises, it’s no wonder that fan service is such an important aspect to the Project X Zone experience. There’s no shortage of neat moments for these characters to build cross-dimensional relationships with one another. There’s also more than enough tag-team action to show off everyone’s combat prowess. As great as it is to hit those marks, it clearly came at a cost, as there are other aspects of this strategy RPG that are sorely lacking.
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Top 10 Games Of This Generation – #3 – Mass Effect 2
Commander Shepard has the best of friends. While there are so many wonderful aspects to Mass Effect 2, from its great combat, to its wonderful story, this is a game that I feel is defined by the relationships you make with your crew.
Top 10 Games Of This Generation – #8 – Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Just before playing Skyrim for the first time, I watched my brother play Oblivion for an hour. We had a copy that was given to us years ago that we just decided to crack open. Man, that game didn’t age well. Besides the obvious degradation in graphical fidelity, its take on the middle ages appeared very rote and the mechanics looked like Dungeons and Dragons to a fault.
Skyrim blew the doors off of its predecessor and pretty much every other game out there. There wasn’t a game with a world as big, graphics as pretty, or an experience as immersive. For dozens of hours of my life, I thought the game was damn near magical.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Review
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.
In Third Person 