When I was in 12th grade I spent the majority of a partly cloudy Saturday in a classmate’s basement reading through Tolkien’s magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Not out of personal curiosity, mind you, but as a…
Reviews
Velocity 2X Review
The arcade space shoot em up is, quite literally, one of the oldest genres in gaming. From Spacewar! back in the 70’s, “shmups” have taken the last 50 years to iterate and refine the art of flying in one direction…
Tales of Xillia 2 Review
Tales of Xillia was a huge departure for Bandai Namco’s Tales franchise. It’s sequel continues that trend in a new way, introducing mechanics and elements not only foreign to the Tales series, but also to most JRPG franchises. Pushing to…
Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 2 Review
Be warned this review does contain spoilers. It is recommended you play Season One and Two of Telltale’s The Walking Dead before viewing. Clementine’s struggle is very real: she is a child in a horrifying and unforgiving world, and the…
The Walking Dead: No Turning Back Review
Warning: this review contains references and suggestions that could be seen as spoilers. The finale of Telltale’s second season in the world of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead had a lot of buildup, but it completely fumbles the landing, making…
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth1 Review
Full disclosure: I’ve never played any of the Neptunia games.They were much too niche for me to even be aware of their existence. With the relative drought in regards to meaty content for Vitas in the last couple of months,…
Abyss Odyssey Review
Saving Chile (and, you know, the world) can be pretty difficult. Especially when you’re frenemies with the source of the impending doom. You deride the Abyss and its both effortless and indiscriminate destruction throughout the 19th-century South American countryside, but…
The Wolf Among Us Season 1 Review
The pages of any Raymond Chandler or Chester Himes novel can make almost any reader feel like a hardboiled gumshoe. You can live in the dark, twisted corners of fictionalized versions of real-life locales, dirtied by the urchins who grow…
The Wolf Among Us Episode 5: Cry Wolf Review
Who’ll protect you from the Big Bad Wolf? TellTale puts a big emphasis on choice in their games these days. The Wolf Among Us’s final episode “Cry Wolf,” and really the series as a whole, manages to become a new benchmark…
Shovel Knight Review
The shovel is a really dynamic hero’s weapon: it can dig up treasure, a well-timed scoop can deflect projectiles, and it helps bring courage in spades. Though really, a shovel-wielding knight doesn’t sounds like a too-reliable hero, but Shovel Knight…
Mario Kart 8 Review
Images bend together as you propel yourself past the rest of pack. The roaring hum from the motor drowns out, fading to a white noise. Dilated pupils and a racing pulse are a damn good sign you’ve tapped into adrenaline…
Monster Monpiece Review
Monster Monpiece poses a lot of pretty easy questions to the player: do you like anime? Do you like anime girls? Do you like card games? Do you like viciously rubbing pictures of girls on cards to make those cards…