GangsterSwedish

If you have a child under 10 at home that loves watching you play RPGs but is a little too young to play them, Destiny Connect should absolutely be at the top of their holiday gift list this year. It's not Chrono Trigger, no, but it's charming, entertaining, and does an amazing job of introducing younger minds to the concepts and patience required to enjoy a good RPG. Not enough games this generation are catering to the young (or young at heart), Destiny Connect does, and deserves a fair shake accordingly.

Fix the combat and you've got a very good game here. Otherwise, Vampyr is a tedious slog through some amazing environments, coupled with poorly realized button-mashing and wayfinding that borders on cruelty. The Switch version holds up well, but the source material wasn't strong enough to warrant a port in the first place.

I blame my love all of things SEGA for the fact that I preordered this atrocity. Having played (and enjoyed) the Wii original, I knew what I was getting into. What I didn't expect was just how poorly the motion controls would be ported to joy-con. If I wanted motion sickness I'd have worn my Oculus. Thanks, but no thanks.

Trust me, look past the sometimes overly-floaty jumping and movement, endure all-too-frequent (and somewhat lengthy) loading screens, and have patience with a very pedestrian first act. You'll find that Ghost Parade is a highly enjoyable, exceedingly beautiful, and altogether clever platformer. It's difficult to recommend it to just anyone, but for the right player, this is almost perfection. I enjoyed every moment I wasn't waiting for the game to load the next level.

I keep trying to love this game only to realize that I barely like it. I’m a fan of Sony’s third person, single player exclusives - are there any other kind? - but man, I’m just not into it.

Fallout 76 feels like a work in progress. An EARLY work in progress. Still, if I’m judging the game entirely on whether or not it’s entertaining me, it’s actually a lot better than most are giving it credit for. Oddities and bugs aside, it’s fun if you get over your sequel expectations.

Someone put this buggy, unoptimzed mess out of its misery already. Thanks to this expansion, I’m sorely reminded of the $40 I wasted on the Ark season pass all those months ago. Yup, still runs like crap. Yup, still a slog. Thank but no thanks.

i played through the entirety of Hitman 2 in a single day. On day 2 I played through it again. I can’t wait for day 3. What an amazing game. IO has made the perfect sandbox game. Sorry RDR2, you’re going to have to wait. I’m having too much fun assassinating.

I’m not sure which game all these haters are playing but so far Battlefield V has exceeded the previous two entries in the series in my opinion. Battles are epic, everything seems balanced, and I’ve yet to see a single glitch. As for the single player campaign, well, who plays Battlefield single player anyway?

Too many of the critics reviews seem to approach this one like it should be living up to AAA quality. The fact is, if you’re an old school Road Rash fan, you’ll enjoy Road Redemption quite a bit. While the roguelike elements are a bit of a miss, everything else is classic EA-style motorcycle anarchy done right. In reasonably short play sessions, Road Redemption has become my mindless time killer between rounds of loftier, lengthier games. Worth the price of admission.

A game about a deaf guy that can only be appreciated by blind people. As a middle-aged gamer that's getting a little tired of the lack of ideas in the industry these days, I was genuinely excited to play this one. That enthusiasm faded pretty quickly though when the game reached a scene about 30 minutes in where the protagonist and a female character get into the backseat of a car and proceed to have a (mostly) one-way conversation for the next 10 minutes. Given that my character is deaf, there was no dialogue for the entire sequence, leaving me sitting there wondering what the f**k this woman's problem was. I mean, who does that? Who sits next to a deaf kid in a car, presumably knowing full well that he's deaf, and engages him in 10 minutes of conversation? There's a special circle of hell for that kind of ignorant cruelty – a circle of hell that should now be reserved specifically for game developers that create games that contain such scenes. I respect Square for trying something different for a change, but holy crap is this game trash. The idea that I need to play through a SECOND time to "get the story" is rubbish. Few would subject themselves to the full 3 hours of torture that The Quiet Man brings to the table, only the most masochistic among us would do it twice.

The Vita might be dead or dying (some of us can't just admit that it's been dead a long while now) but games like Chasm are giving it a long, amazing, proper send-off. If you've even a mild curiosity about the Metroidvania fuss, Chasm will more than school you in how to do one right. Ignore all of the 'procedural' garbage – it's mostly nonsense and won't have much impact on your first play-through anyway, and what you're left with is 2D platform-questing excellence. I know when I appreciate a great Vita game when they sell me cross-play and I never once bother to boot it up on my PS4. Chasm is that good – possible the best Vita action game of the past two years. And when I think of all the great Vita action games we've had recently, Iconoclasts among them, that's heavy praise. Chasm deserves it. I've noticed that Chasm got some rather mixed reviews on Steam. I'm going to assume that the fine people using Steam (myself included) are spoiled for choice at times and didn't give it a fair shake.

I've been a fan of this series since the Colin McRae days and have always looked forward to each new release with quite a bit of anticipation. Dirt 4 was definitely no exception, particularly after reading stellar reviews of it the day before release. What happened? Dirt Rally on Xbox One looks top-notch but DIrt 4 looks more like a mid-cycle Xbox 360 title than a step up. Textures are ridiculously low-res, leaving trees feeling fake and the ground completely flat and lifeless. The driving itself feels great but it always has, it's just very disappointing that the world around it is so barren and awful looking as to distract almost entirely from the experience.

I'll be honest. I didn't believe the hype, not one bit. I'm a 2D Zelda fan and have always preferred A Link To The Past and A Link Between Worlds far more than Ocarina, etc. I'm not a hipster by any means, I just always got lost, confused, and bored when playing 3D Zelda games. Nonetheless, I was a die hard Wii U fan for the little bit of time that it was relevant so I gave Breath of the Wild a shot, knowing that it would be the last Wii U game I'd ever buy. I'm absolutely stunned. This isn't the best game I've played this year - for me that's Watch Dogs 2 - but Breath of the Wild is definitely the first time in a long, long time that I've agreed with game critics reviews 100%. This is Zelda defined. I'm barely 10 hours into this thing and am so blown away by it that my face is numb from smiling so much. Think that sounds cheesy? Consider that I'm a 45 year old gamer from the stone age - and I'm loving every minute of this. Kudos Nintendo. Way to send the Wii U out with a bang - and usher in the Switch.