For those of you who love breaking the mold and being your own person, bandwagons and the people who join them are probably the center of your derision, and often with good cause. Bandwagons have led to terrible things, from racism, to fascism to Donald Trump’s recent presidential campaign. But what if the bandwagon actually leads to somewhere good?...
If anything, “Life is Strange” showed me the viability of episodic game releases. I tend to have an aversion to paying for things I have to wait for, and my only other experience with episodic game releases was Valve’s “Half Life 2” debacle from 2007. Why yes, I am still bitter after all these years.
While this does mean that...
After much rumor and speculation, Nintendo’s seventh major home console has finally arrived in the form of the Nintendo Switch. The aptly named tablet-based console lets users seamlessly “switch” from playing on the TV to playing on the go wherever and whenever they want. So if you’ve already got your hands on Nintendo’s latest gaming machine but are unsure...
Released nine years after “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4” (2008), “Persona 5” makes its debut on eighth generation consoles. Being a Japanese role-playing game (JRPG), “Persona 5” is confined to the conventions of the genre with the usual linear storyline and same repetitive turn-based combat, or so one would think.
JRPGs have been losing their luster in the past...
“Call of Duty” is the most ubiquitous video gaming franchise for relatively good reason. While incredibly repetitive, each new installment since “Call of Duty 3” has featured fine-tuned controls and rewarding online upgrade systems that make for a dependable (if often mindless) experience. And with the addition of the wave-based Zombies mode first introduced in “World at War,” players...
It’s 1996. “Resident Evil” is out. It creates this genre called survival horror. Basically, you’re scared and nobody can help you. People love it, it sells like mad.
Now it’s 2002. “Resident Evil” is out again. The remake adds more content, overall is a better game. People love it, but it doesn’t sell. Capcom decides survival horror doesn’t work...
E3 2014 was — per usual for the video game industry’s largest trade event — a hodgepodge of phoney, often cringe-inducing, pandering and gimmickry in between the announcement of a few eyebrow-raising AAA titles. Unsurprisingly, “Bloodborne,” “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End” and the then-unnamed “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” were met with intrigue and intensive coverage, though...
Have you ever wanted to know what was on the other side of a brick wall? Did you want to know so bad that you slammed face-first into that wall until either your face or the wall gave way? Did you love every second of it, knowing that it didn’t matter if your eyeball just popped out, because that...
“Disorder” is a game about depression. As strange as that may seem, and given that games usually aren’t realistic about depicting real-world issues (which is why we’ll never see “God of War: Kratos visits his therapist for anger management”), “Disorder” does a fantastic job at doing just that. While the game is almost too short to purchase at full...
Double Fine has finally revived one of Tim Schafer’s best-known and least-played adventure games from his days at LucasArts. Those of us who were too young or bound by the limits of our computers always heard of it: tales of the greatness, the splendor, the sheer Dia de los Muertos-esque grace, of “Grim Fandango.” And now it’s finally available...