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[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/KIyfupq.jpg[/img] Swarm Riders
Shortly after I bought my Nintendo Switch, I caught wind of the trend of ultra cheap games on the eShop (shout-out to our very own Russ Lyman for making a video on these which was one of the things that initially got me into them). Since then, I've been adding about ten bucks to my account every few months and checking the eShop weekly to see what games are on sale for under one US dollar. I have many games on my Switch now. Make no mistake, many of them are not very good, but the low risk and potentially high reward have yielded some diamonds in the rough that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Here are a few of them.
Continue reading The Nintendo eShop is a haystack. Here are some needles.
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/WFcchKR.jpg[/img]
I hate seeing a major title misfire right out of the gates. Sure, there is some serious opportunity for schadenfreude, especially when the game in question is released by a cynical, consumer-hostile publisher like EA. When Mass Effect: Andromeda was announced, I was very excited for it. Although I believe the series declined from its initial entry, I was excited to see how Bioware and EA would create a new story within the Mass Effect framework.
Continue reading Don't Believe the Negative Hype - Mass Effect: Andromeda
[img width=605 height=550]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-182/bf/U-182-S-01820-A.jpg[/img]
I've been a casual fan of the modern variations of the LEGO games since the first LEGO Star Wars game. I love playing them with my wife and the easy, low-stakes gameplay makes for a balanced experience for players of differing skill levels. Last year I played LEGO Batman 2 on the Nintendo DS and I thought it was a fine hand-held counterpart to the console version of the game. I knew then that LEGO games on hand-helds had the potential to be great, and was looking forward to trying another one in the future. I recently played through another LEGO title on a more advanced piece of hardware. How did it stack up?
Continue reading Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins
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This is going to be a follow-up of sorts to my previous entry. Writing that post was quite cathartic, and putting into words feelings which I had trouble identifying over the past year or so. A month later I realize how down I really was about my fleeting passion for gaming and I knew I would need to bounce back, or my interest would fade further. I was hoping that hosting The Secret of Mana for the community playthrough and playing it on original hardware would light that spark, but to put it simply, it didn't happen that way. Instead, a combination of a few things happened concurrently. I soft-modded a secondhand Nintendo Wii and loaded it with emulators. I did the same thing to my phone. I started playing games wherever I could in an effort to add games to my post in the "Games Beaten" thread to get my count up in January for a big start to the year. So far I've played a lot of handheld games (because they are shorter), and I'll tell you a little about them in a bit. First I want to mention the other project I'm working on that has fired me up a bit when it comes to gaming.
Continue reading On Sharing - A Follow-up
[img width=700 height=397]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Psp-1000.jpg[/img]
As with most Sony consoles, I purchased my first PSP solely for the purpose of playing the Metal Gear Solid title for the platform. It wasn't Portable Ops though, it was Peace Walker. This means I acquired my PSP pretty late in its life cycle. However, I have played it quite a lot and physical PSP games make up a nice chunk of my overall game collection. I recently added a second PSP to my collection and decided to spend some time with a few games I've never tried before. If I've learned anything from watching MetalJesusRocks on YouTube for years, it's that the PSP is home to many incredible racing games and rpgs. In fact, the first two games here have been mentioned by MJR so many times that once I got back into playing the PSP they were the first games I checked out.
Continue reading PSP Three for One
[img width=600 height=330]https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/08/14/sports/basketball/14rizzuto3-600.jpg[/img]
The baseball season is in full swing and after a few years of my baseball fandom fading away, I've begun following the MLB and my beloved New York Yankees again for the 2016 season. The Yankees stink, but I'm also fortunate enough to live close to one of the nicest minor league parks in the country, that being the Dell Diamond of the Texas Rangers' farm club, the Round Rock Express. So as I rekindle my love for America's pastime, I've decided to take a look at some of the baseball games in my collection throughout the generations. Though I typically don't collect sports games, my game library is peppered with some of the better baseball titles from the past. I am by no means contending these to be the best baseball games from each generation, they are simply the ones I own because I happen to enjoy them quite a bit. Let's play ball!
Continue reading Talkin' Baseball
[img width=400 height=185]http://www.giantsparrow.com/games/swan/swan_logo.jpg[/img]
It's amazing for me to think that I don't like indie games as much as I "should." When I was growing up, I tended to restrict myself to listening only to bands who were on a short list of only the most exalted independent record labels. Everything else was "sold out" or "too trendy." Yeah, I was one of those kids in high school.
You might think given that kind of holier than thou upbringing I'd be heralding the current indie boom in video gaming, but quite frankly, I'm not really feeling it. Don't get me wrong. I am certainly cheering on smaller teams making games that are touching a select amount of players with whom their work resonates. After all, month after month on the RFGPlaycast it seemed I would try to break down the "problems" with modern triple-A video game design, and the indie movement is providing so many answers to my pleas for innovation. Having said that though, every time I try an indie game, I rarely get into it enough to bother finishing it, despite the fact that they tend to be shorter than mainstream titles. There have been a few exceptions like Limbo, but I haven't gotten deep into an indie game in a while.
I recently sat down with The Unfinished Swan and although I can't say I have changed my tune on indie games, I did enjoy it more than most others.
Continue reading The Unfinished Swan
[img width=550 height=762]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-075/bf/U-075-S-02650-A.jpg[/img]
I am on record as proclaiming that Sin & Punishment: Star Successor on the Nintendo Wii to be an "objectively perfect" video game. The excitement and wonder of that game, as well as the motion and scale of the scenery, left me floored after playing it. I thought it would be a long time, if ever, before I found a game that combined the thrilling gameplay, amazing atmosphere, and grand scale of S&P in the same perfect mixture. I haven't had to search long, as I have just finished my first playthrough of Panzer Dragoon Orta for the original XBox.
Continue reading Panzer Dragoon Orta
[img width=700 height=487]http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h32/grayghost81/skiparacart_zps3sx89upo.jpg[/img]
Once upon a time, I convinced my mother to buy me an Atari Jaguar on clearance for sixty dollars at our local K-B Toys store. I had a nice stack of games with it including some of the 'good' ones like Alien Vs Predator and Checkered Flag. However, two games my sister and I played together for hours on end were Ruiner Pinball and Val d'Isere Skiing and Snowboarding. Ruiner Pinball is a pretty basic pinball game with some great sound effects. I remember Val d'Isere Skiing and Snowboarding to be a pretty good downhill skiing game, and for its time it may have been, but as it turns out, I must have had my nostalgia-colored glasses on.
Continue reading Ski Paradise
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