Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Review
April 13th, 2019 I’m not able to pin point the exact moment I fell in love with ninjas in video games, so I’ll just blame it on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (though Scorpion in Mortal Kombat was pretty cool too). Gray Fox walking down that hallway in his “first” appearance, completely untouched and effortlessly blocking bullets certainly made an impression, and subsequent playthroughs of Ninja Gaiden didn’t help dissuade my enthusiasm. Now here we are with Sekiro, a difficult game that tries to truly embrace a brutal fantasy ninja experience…albeit with a magic prosthetic arm. Liked Combat: The combat in Sekiro is similar to what you’d find in Nioh (the OTHER Dark Souls-style game set in historical Japan) where the whole point is to break down your enemy’s defenses and then hit them while they’re staggered. The key difference in Sekiro is that a hit on an enemy…
Devil May Cry 5 Review
March 18th, 2019 Eleven years ago, in an attempt to sate my hype for Ninja Gaiden II, I walked into a GameStop and pre-ordered Devil May Cry 4. A month later I was writing a scathing review that complained about poor combat flow and terrible music, but two years after that I was writing an article for the Badger Herald where I complained about Capcom ruining the Devil May Cry franchise by catering to what they thought Western audiences wanted. So what changed? Devil May Cry, as a series, is one of those franchises that gets better the more you play it, with your first playthrough of any given game acting as little more than a tutorial, with forgiving (though it may not feel like it) enemy attack patterns as you learn new skills and acquire new weapons. As you replay on harder difficulties you’ll slowly start to learn what…
Resident Evil 2 (2019) Review
February 9th, 2019 There are several large gaps in my video game experience, and one of them is the Resident Evil series. I started with Resident Evil 4 and never looked back, relying on spin-off titles like Umbrella Chronicles to keep me in the loop about Resident Evil 0, 1, and 3 without having to suffer through their fixed camera angles and auto aim. The remake of Resident Evil 2 (henceforth referred to as “REmake 2”) provided the perfect opportunity for me to fill in the gap of my Resident Evil knowledge, and fortunately it’s also really good. Liked “Survival”: REmake 2 is probably the closest I’ve gotten to a true survival horror experience, though I haven’t played any of those lovely indie games like Outlast. Ammo is scarce, enemies are incredibly durable, your knives break if you use them too much, and it all comes together to create a…
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review
January 11th, 2018 Those of you that played Witcher 3 may be familiar with Gwent, the absurdly popular Witcher 3 minigame that was made into its own stand-alone video game after approximately a million people asked for it. I’ve always thought that CD Projekt Red seemed a little miffed that people wanted a “simple” card game over their graphically intensive RPGs, so the announcement of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales didn’t surprise me that much. After all, what’s better than a free-to-play card game based on a minigame in a video game based on a book series? Obviously it’s a card game video game based on an untold story from a book series with a video game series that inspired the card game. Thronebreaker is based on a relatively unknown part of the Witcher series, specifically Queen Meve’s guerrilla activity during the second Northern War. Those who read the books will…
Spider-man Review
January 11, 2018 I’ve been in a bit of a slump when it comes to reviews, so I’m going to revert back to my old style of positives and negatives. The “too long; didn’t read” is that Spider-man is a good super hero game, probably the best Spider-man game of all time, but certain design quirks and lackluster DLC keeps it from being as good as something like Arkham Asylum or Arkham City. That being said, let’s dive in. Liked Web swinging: the web swinging is definitely great and you can do a lot with it, thanks in part to a few additional movement options that weren’t available in earlier Spider-man titles. The ability to quick turn, zip to launch points, or simply pull yourself forward to maintain speed/altitude makes the web swinging feel amazing, but it does feel a little more floaty compared to how the great web swinging…