Posts in Essay
Quick Thoughts On: Groove City

Let’s not beat around the bush, Electronic Super Joy was flipping amazing! A high intensity platformer fueled by an addictive electronic soundtrack, it chewed me up and spit me out, and I loved every second of it! Taking a cue from Giana Sisters: Rise of the Owlverlord, Groove City is a mini-sequel spanning slightly more than a dozen levels, as you and the pope embark on a quest to save Groove City from a giant robot stripper who’s gone on a rampage because her laser nipples have been stolen!

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Richard & Alice - Review

It’s hard to say if I actually “enjoyed” Richard and Alice. It’s an incredibly bleak adventure that at times is hard to stomach from how emotionally taxing just being such a hopeless world is, let alone what occurs within it. It’s not a “fun” game (or really much of a game at all in many ways), but it is an immensely well crafted experience that does more with less than a handful of characters in just a few hours, than most games ever manage. It’s a captivating character study, that absorbed me from the second I set foot inside Richard’s extravagantcell up until its undecided ending, which leaves just enough unanswered to keep you wondering and filling in the gaps yourself. Some might say its lazy storytelling, but to me it was the only possible way to end a story that was never going to have a happy or finite conclusion. After all, the world is still turning, and humanity along with it, through the best and worst of times.

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Quick Thoughts On: Gomo

It's a well know fact that dogs are man's best friend. A lesser know one is they're also pals with strange sack doll people, who don't take so kindly to having their pet kidnapped by demanding aliens. But what are friends for besides rescuing each other from extra terrestrial life, while dooming the planet in the process, and thus Gomo sets off on a mission to steal a powerful crystal and save his canine buddy from the slimy captive. Unfortunately he isn't able to save his game as well.

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Bloodrayne: Betrayal - Review

Far away from the teenage romance novels and goofy Dracula renditions that have come to be associated with vampires, Bloodrayne explores a darker take on the age old monsters, its titular femme fatale being something of a female counterpart to Van Helsing out to rid the world of the demons that threaten to destroy it. Betrayal from WayForward acts as a departure from prior games in the series and stands as a rather polarizing title from every angle; as instantly dismissible as it is alluring.

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Always Sometimes Monsters - Review

Always Sometimes Monsters isn't without problems, but like the characters in it they are simply part of a whole that you can still love despite their obvious flaws. Nothing and no one is perfect, as the decisions you're forced to make in the game and your own life can hold testament, but if you're willing to look past them there's something very special laying underneath.

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Crysis 2 - Single Player Review

For many, the graphical powerhouse Crysis is more notorious for its tendency to bring even cutting edge PCs to their knees, than for its gameplay. While it offered tons of eye candy for those that could run it, the fact remained that most were forced to watch from the sidelines as it was simply impossible to play on anything but the best hardware. But all that changes with Crysis 2, a ruthlessly optimized machine that finally lets all those wondering about the series a chance to see what it’s all about. Unfortunately, it never lives up to its reputation in any way than being a pretty face, and once you look past the visuals quickly evaporates into a game I couldn’t wait to leave.

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FEZ - Review

2D is a special little dimension. Forgoing that pesky thing known as depth, it's a world wholly unlike that which we see and live in everyday; an otherworldly place where being flat isn't a negative, but a wondrous and unique expression of the universe. The residents of Fez know this better than most, being a group in and in love with the 2D space they inhabit. But what if this world isn't as flat as they believe? What if there is an entire other dimension right beneath the surface? What if all it took to discover it, was for a tiny little guy named Gomez to put on a Fez?

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Yet Another Zombie Defense - Review

I could likely sum up this entire review by simply stating the title of the game in question: Yet Another Zombie Defense. Intended as a sideways joke at the ridiculous number of zombie themed games flooding the market, it extends beyond the name to every aspect of the game, resulting in a bland and unimaginative isometric shooter that even for the low price is hardly worth a second glance.

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LYNE - Review

In a similar way that many treat Sudoku and crossword puzzles, LYNE has something of a habitual quality; something you can go back to every day to help keep you sharp and relax after the more trying events of a day. The structure is tailor made for this style of play, with puzzles grouped into sets that are just long enough to be rewarding but not fatiguing. Random daily puzzles (though you’d never know that do to them being just as well designed as the base sets) provide consistent new content, at which point I can think of little more I could ask for.

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Master Reboot - Review

Here lies the basic premise to Master Reboot, a wildly ambitious project from the small team at Wales Interactive, which places you inside the Soul Cloud at the point of its downfall as an unknown protagonist just as lost as you are admist its bizarre architecture and endless hallways. It's a game that is hard to categorize because from each moment to the next you are found doing something entirely different, though all in the attempt to discover who you are and what has happened to an invention hailed as one of the most important in recent memory.

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Quick Thoughts On: Giana Sisters: Rise of the Owlverlord

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is without a doubt one of the best things to come out of the great retro platformer deluge, which began somewhere around the release of Super Meat Boy. It was stunning to look at, a joy to play, and managed to feel fresh yet familiar at the same time. As with any good thing fans are bound to want more, and Black Forest Games has now delivered just that with Rise of the Owlverlord; a standalone expansion that in many ways is even better than the game which spawned it!

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Journal - Review

Journals are personal things; housing our thoughts, experiences, and deepest secrets as we pour our hearts out into their pages. In a similar way Journal the game is also deeply personal to its developer, Richard Perrin, being kicked around for nearly a decade and only just coming to fruition after passing through numerous different forms and surviving setback after setback.

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Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - Review

For a game billing itself as a retro platformer, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams almost seems to go out of its way to break the mold that has formed out of such a rapidly populating genre. Shunning away from its restrictively minimalistic, outrageously challenging and graphically simplistic peers, it preserves and refines the classic platformer gameplay while giving it a modern facelift. Giana Sisters is one of the most visually impressive games the genre has ever seen, but it's when you combined its looks with how well it plays that it becomes something really special.

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