With the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era nearing its twilight, we saw a number of high-profile franchises stumble over themselves with one entry too many. God of War: Ascension came and went without a care. Gears of War: Judgment I felt was a huge disappointment, as it played like a shameless cash-grab. After playing an hour or so of Batman: Arkham Origins, I’m disappointed to also toss Bruce Wayne’s latest into that pile.
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.
Aside from one attempt at a Need For Speed iPhone game, I’ve never played any of the games in this franchise. I’ve never held any sort of grudge against it, though its particular brand of racing action hasn’t really grabbed my attention, either. With Rivals, EA caught me at just the right point where their latest entry built up a lot of positive word-of-mouth during a weak console launch. Is this the game that hooks me in for good?
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First published in 2004, Ticket to Ride has grown into a modern tabletop classic. It is one that I only discovered last year and finally picked up for myself within recent memory. Since then, it’s become a favourite at Steff and I’s tabletop nights.
Ever since the release of WarioWare: Twisted!, most of Wario’s mini game outings also function as a showcase for new hardware. WarioWare: Touched! was one of the first games to harness the potential of the Nintendo DS touchscreen, and WarioWare: Smooth Moves gave players all sorts of silly ways to waggle their Wii Remote. Game & Wario attempts to demonstrate the Wii U Gamepad’s potential in the same manner, though it falls short of the bar set by its predecessors by providing an experience that’s short on content and replay value.
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.
Legendary: Dark City is the first major expansion to Marvel’s deck-building game. With 17 heroes, 5 masterminds, 8 new schemes and more, owning this would basically double the size of the experience. There’s definitely a surface-level appeal to having more of a good thing, but do the cards in the expansion improve on the core experience?
From the advent of bootleg Famicom cartridges, to the Nintendo World Championships, to WarioWare, the act of remixing classic NES games is not new. Recently, Nintendo surprised the world by dropping yet another take on those iconic NES titles with NES Remix on the Wii U. Featuring 16 titles, this compilation takes those works and splices them into hundreds of mini challenges. Are you ready for yet another take on games that you’ve probably played dozens, if not hundreds of times before?
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.
In Third Person 