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I have never been a big fan of the original Battletoads or any of its sequels, so when this new entry in the series was first unveiled, I didn't have very high expectations. However, as a big fan of the beat 'em up genre in general, and thanks to this game's easy availability via Game Pass, I couldn't resist giving the game a shot. Despite any reservations I may have had about the game, as well as the negative criticisms it may have received, I came away pleasantly surprised with the game overall.
Continue reading Battletoads
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By now the Mana series is one of the longest running, actively developed series in video gaming. This series has a few threads that bind each game together, but for the most part each game is its own, separate entity from the rest of them. However, like most works of media the series has had its ups, and then mostly downs. The first three games in the series, Sword of Mana, Secret of Mana, and Trials of Mana, all pushed the series further upwards in both quality and scope with each game release, with Trials adding multiple character points of view for a nonlinear narrative. In 1999 Squaresoft released the fourth game in the Mana series for the Playstation, Legend of Mana. A North American release would come the following year. Its not immediately obvious, but Legend of Mana is easily a candidate for the best game in this series, and it tends to be woefully overlooked.
Continue reading Legend of Mana
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The Yakuza series has been around for quite some time. The first game dates back to the later years of the Playstation 2, and the 7th main game in the series recently released in Japan and is set to come to the West soon. All the regular releases, plus the spinoffs, prequel, and slowly releasing remakes and upcoming remasters make Yakuza one of the most actively developed video games series to date. [iYakuza 6[/i] was developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega for Sony's Playstation 4. It was originally released in 2016 in Japan. A worldwide release followed two years later in 2018. This long running series has quickly been gaining popularity in the West, which has mostly been propelled by the prequel Yakuza 0. Sega's been spacing out the timing of their Yakuza releases, so the market does not become overwhelmed by constant releases as the West gets caught up with the main story on top of the remakes.
Continue reading Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
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After Capcom's highly successful remake of their classic survival-horror hit Resident Evil 2 last year, fans have been asking for a remake of the third entry in the series. With REmake 3 feeling like an inevitability, rumors of the game started circulating around the web, and it was officially announced late last year alongside the multiplayer experience Resident Evil: Resistance. Although both games came bundled together in one package, this review focuses solely on the Resident Evil 3 Remake and not the multiplayer portion.
Released worldwide on April 3, 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, Resident Evil 3 is an action/survival-horror title. Developed and published by Capcom, it is a remake of their 1999 title Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. It was packaged alongside the online multiplayer game Resident Evil: Resistance. The game has received mostly positive reception and successful sales numbers.
Continue reading Resident Evil 3
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When it was brought to my attention that September 2019 marked the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Sega Dreamcast in North America, I felt compelled to actually play something on Sega's short-lived final console, which is something I rarely do. Since the Dreamcast has a handful of exclusive survival-horror titles that have never been ported or re-released on other consoles, it only seemed fitting that I would check out one of these titles and see how it holds up. Being a huge fan of the Resident Evil series, I decided to go with an unabashed Resident Evil knockoff known as Carrier.
Carrier is a Sega Dreamcast exclusive survival-horror title that was developed and published by Jaleco. Released in North America, Japan, and Europe on January 31, 2000, February 24, 2000, and July 5, 2001 respectively, it was met with mostly mixed criticism. A sequel was planned to be released for the PlayStation 2 but was ultimately canceled. Carrier has since faded into relative obscurity as it was likely overshadowed by the much more popular Resident Evil CODE: Veronica which released only a month later in North America.
Continue reading Carrier
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The Metal Gear series is one of the most legendary in the entire realm of gaming. Rising from the obscurity of its roots on the mostly Japanese centered MSX computer platform, the reboot of the series with 1998's Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation cemented the series as one of Konami's flagships. Its unique stealth centered action design gave the gameplay a one of a kind feel that would barely be replicated despite the game and series' runaway success.
Konami would follow the first Metal Gear Solid's success with a mission based spin-off Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions before the main series would continue on PlayStation 2. Both Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 were some of the most successful games for the PS2. Sony had released a portable console in Japan in 2004, which released in the rest of the world in 2005, the PlayStation Portable. The next Metal Gear game would be Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP in 2006, followed by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on the PlayStation 3. Meanwhile, the team that developed Portable Ops was developing the PSP's flagship Metal Gear Solid game, Peace Walker. During the late PS3/XBox 360 generation, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes would be released; followed by its second part, The Phantom Pain. For long time fans of the Metal Gear Solid series, Portable Ops and Peace Walker feels like the definitive dividing line between the older PS1 and PS2 era games, and the HD PS3/PS4 and Xbox 360/Xbox One games.
Continue reading Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
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Resident Evil fans have been clamoring for a remake of the series' second entry ever since the excellent remake of the initial title. What seemed like a pipe dream for years was finally announced back in 2015, but many fans were skeptical at this point due to the direction the series had been going around this time. Although the positive response to Resident Evil 7 help assuage fears, early footage of the Resident Evil 2 remake still resembled the 'action-horror' titles that are oft maligned. I am glad to say that any fears were unfounded, and Capcom delivered what I feel is the best remake of their survival horror classic that they could have possibly made.
** Note: In an attempt to discuss all relevant gameplay mechanics, some mild story spoilers may be included. **
Continue reading Resident Evil 2
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The Yakuza series has been a long running saga starting on the PlayStation 2. It actually started fairly late in the console's lifecycle, and a lack of marketing made the first two games go overlooked by most of the Western gaming public at the time. On the other hand this was one of Sega's biggest hits within Japan since the Saturn, so they mostly focused on the home market. Western interest in the series was recently kicked into overdrive with the release of Yakuza 0 and the remakes of the first two games, and a remaster of this third game has already released in Japan. I had played the first Yakuza a couple years before the release of its modern PlayStation 4 remake, Yakuza Kiwami, so I saw firsthand what the improvements were, and the only downgrade in my opinion was the remixed soundtrack. The first Yakuza game I had ever played was Yakuza 4, which seems to be the first game in the series that received a decent amount of attention from Western audiences, but still a shadow of what Yakuza 0 and the Kiwami remakes have enjoyed.
Continue reading Yakuza 3
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As I mentioned in my article last month, we often like to search for hidden gems to add to our collections and eventually play if or when we finally get around to it. Sometimes, as was the case last month with Robotrek, we find a game that we feel is better left hidden and come away disappointed. Other times, as is the case this month with Skyblazer, we feel as if we have struck gold.
Continue reading Skyblazer
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Late last year, once all of the annual 'Best of' lists started coming out for the games released in 2016, I lamented the fact that I had only played a paltry four new release titles from the year and thus had no opinion on many of the games that were being discussed. So in 2017, I was determined to play more new release titles during the year in an effort to stay more up-to-date with all of the discussions going on for the latest and greatest games. And just like with everything I do, I went insanely overboard and ended up playing nearly 30 new release titles this year.
Instead of doing a traditional Top 10 list of the games I played this year, I wanted to focus on a select few that I thought were particularly great but may unfortunately go unnoticed and slip under the radar of most people. Most of these games really aren't what you would call obscure, but with the massive amount of great games released this year, it can be easy to forget about the ones that didn't get quite as much coverage. These also aren't necessarily my favorite games of the year, as I am intentionally leaving out some of the more popular titles that were released.
Continue reading Disposed Hero's Games of 2017
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As the storage size of digital media has increased, so too has the size of the video games that are played. Game worlds used to be quite tiny, and the length of games came from other areas of difficulty meant to make it hard to explore those worlds. Enemies were difficult and frequent; statistical balance was brutal. It would take players hours to get the right equipment, enough money, and high enough stats to be able to properly progress. Games have been expanded in many ways for decades.
The idea of playing through a game twice or more is quite old by now, with the earliest examples coming from some mid-80s hits and classics such as Ghosts 'n Goblins, The Legend of Zelda, and Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei. The rewards for this choice are varied, the true ending for Ghosts 'n Goblins, or an extra challenge in Zelda and Megami Tensei. It was only later when this idea was not only popularized, but received a name that has stuck with gamers for over two decades and counting now. Chrono Trigger rewarded players for multiple trips through its world by offering a variety of different endings that could be achieved by beating the final boss in any number of different ways and almost anywhere during the story.
Continue reading Old Game -
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Back in 2006, a game known as Prey was released for the Xbox 360 and PC. While it was met with positive critical reception, it has been mostly forgotten about over the 10 years since its release. Truth be told, I rented Prey back when it first came out, but I was very hasty to decide that I didn't like it and returned the game without investing much time into it. I have always wanted to go back and give the game a proper try since it contains some unique gameplay mechanics, but I have never owned a copy and likely wouldn't have gotten around to it even if I did.
Fast forward to June 2016, a reboot of Prey was shown at E3, and I was immediately intrigued by the trailer. It instantly reminded me of the original Half-Life, one of my all-time favorite games. It also contained glimpses of some very interesting gameplay mechanics that I was excited to experience for myself. Since this new game is not a proper sequel to the original, I had no qualms about jumping right in without playing the original. Make no mistake about it, this new Prey has virtually nothing in common with the original Prey from 2006, save for the name and a general sci-fi theme.
Continue reading Prey
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Since buying a Retron 5 nearly two years ago, I have invested a great deal of time and money into acquiring many of the great Super Famicom exclusive titles that we were not fortunate enough to receive in North America. Thanks to the Retron's ability to apply translation patches to the games (assuming that someone has gone through the trouble of translating the text and creating the patch for said game), not being able to understand text-heavy games because they are in Japanese is no longer an issue for those of us who don't speak the language.
Unfortunately, despite my ambitions of playing through all of these newly added imports in my collection, I have only played through a couple of these titles so far. However, I plan on putting forth a more solid effort toward playing more of these games in the future, starting with what will hopefully be the first of many Japan exclusive titles that I will be reviewing for this site: Alcahest!
Continue reading Alcahest
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The original Doom that was released back in 1993 was an extremely important landmark title in gaming. While not necessarily the first first-person-shooter to hit the market, it was definitely the game that popularized the genre. I have fond memories of playing Doom sometime back in the mid-90s on PC when I was less than the age of 10, with its gameplay and (at the time) mature content being unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Although the version I had only contained the first episode, I played through it multiple times, and it is still a game that I find myself going back to even today. After the Wolfenstein series got a great new entry with MachineGames' excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order, I was confident that id's other classic franchise would receive the same treatment when a new game in the Doom series, simply titled Doom, was shown at E3 2015. I was not disappointed. In fact, even after playing other highly acclaimed games from 2016 such as Uncharted 4 and Final Fantasy XV, I still feel like I enjoyed Doom enough to call it my Game of the Year for 2016.
Continue reading My GOTY 2016: DOOM
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Most people know that I am a huge fan of the survival-horror genre, particularly the Resident Evil series, so I was immediately intrigued when The Evil Within was announced back in 2013. This was a brand new survival-horror IP directed by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, and it promised to bring the genre back to its survival roots rather than the action-oriented approach of more recent horror games. While I still enjoyed more recent horror titles that have been given the label of 'action-horror,' the prospect of a modern title that recaptures what made the old-school games so unique and interesting was exactly what survival-horror fans had been hoping for.
Continue reading Spooky Plays: The Evil Within
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