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?
Grand Theft Auto may have created the open world genre, though it’s clearly not the only game in town anymore. Since the release of GTA IV, the genre has been taken to new heights by the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Batman’s Arkham games, Saint’s Row, Infamous and many more. Despite my ambivalence towards Red Dead Redemption, I respect the fact that it progressed the open world formula in a number of meaningful ways.
With so many new components to draw from, what influence would they have on Grand Theft Auto V? Based on the final product, not much. The latest installment in the series feels like Rockstar ignored the work of others and continued down their own path to make things bigger and better. Can’t necessarily blame them for it, as this is another fine effort from the pioneers of the open world genre.
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In Card of the Dead, players have two simple objectives: get out of the zombie-infested city and don’t get eaten. This is simpler said than done when the undead are everywhere. While the game does manage to turn many zombie tropes into actual gameplay, the experience as a whole does have a few faults that stop it from reaching its full potential.
The premise for Pushmo is deceptively simple. You control a character whose job it is to scale to the top of a block formation. This is done by pushing and pulling pieces of that formation until they form something scaleable. During the first few challenges, I had a hard time grasping why people loved this game so much. However, it doesn’t take long for that classic Nintendo brilliance to kick in.
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.
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.
Steff and I’s entry into the tabletop gaming scene was Dominion. We were quickly captivated by its deck-building mechanics and it’s been the feature game among us and our tabletop gaming night friends ever since. As much as we’ve tried to introduce others to it, the learning curve for it can be steep for players without experience in more advanced tabletop games.
While we were looking to purchase the latest Dominion expansion from the Snakes and Lattes booth at Fan Expo, the knowledgeable staff recommended we try out DC Comics Deck-Building Game. Besides being similar in nature to a game that we adore, they also billed it as being easier to learn. In hopes of using it as a gateway drug to Dominion for our friends while having a great time, we decided to give it a shot.
The free-to-play business model is something that fighting games are beginning to dabble in. Tekken Revolution was the first out of the gate, which provided a smaller Tekken experience that limited the number of times you could access each mode. Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate Core Fighters takes a different approach by primarily gating characters instead. Does this approach provide a less scummy experience?
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?
Of the big titles this generation that I had on my to-do list, Red Dead Redemption has stuck out like a sore thumb. Having won over 160 game of the year awards (according to the cover art of my game of the year edition), it’s one of those must-play titles that I just never made time for. Why? Well, partly because of my general aversion to long games, and partly because of my general aversion to anything western-themed. If it weren’t so critically acclaimed, I probably wouldn’t have made any time for it at all. Better late than never, right?
In Third Person 