JazGalaxy

lIS:Reunion feels like Robocop or Rambo. That is to say, a series whose first outing was intelligent, meaningful, purposeful and artful that is then reduced to a charicature of what it was in order to play to the audience who loved it… but never really understood, or cared to understand, what it was really about. TV Tropes calls this ‘Flanderization’, named after how the subtle, nuanced satire of The Simpson’s neighbor who somehow had everything in life better than Homer Simpson slowly turned into a catch phrase spouting lunatic Christian bigot. In the same way, Rambo turns from Vietnam commentary on how the US abandoned its veterans into an action movie about an invincible one-man army. Robocop turns from a body horror film about the monstrosity of modern technology into a superhero movie. And Life Is Strange turns from a heady and spiritual rumination over adolescence and leaving the world of childhood behind as you step into the scary and dangerous world of adults into… a crummy dime-store pulp romance about superheroes. And maybe that’s fine. The original LIS never truly needed a sequel, and so maybe it never truly got one. This is a game for the people who want exactly what this is. And maybe that’s fine has its place. But is it “good”? Not even in the ballpark.

I REALLY like this game, but after about 15 hours and in the back half of the game, I have to admit that it's falling below my expectations as someone who was thrilled by the first game. I don't like "guessing" about why a game isn't what it could be, especially in situations such as this, but it really feels like the loss of Justin Roiland hurt HOL immensely. The game feels a few degrees "off" from the previous game, and the new direction is toward "generic". I don't really care **** is "funny". I play for gameplay. The fact that HOL1 was funny was just icing on the cake. HOL 2 is... amusing... at best, and a lot of the writing feels like Duke Nukem Forever level writing. You're still getting a ton of creativity and things you've never seen in a game before, but the more intelligent satire and cynical philosophical musings are replaced with (shudder) "breaking the fourth wall". And a LOT of it. Also, the improvisational feel of the guns commenting on the game as you are playing is basically ENTIRELY gone. It's replaced with a script that is telling a "Story" as you play and the game's now-large cast "radios" you their lines... like every other videogame. Again... I like this game. I think it's quite good. But it's like when a band you love puts out another record and you say, "Okay. It's good. But... this is enough. Don't do this again. Because if you do it again, it's going to be embarrassing." A huge part of being "cool" is knowing when to quit.

Wonderful. It's more "High On Life" and that's exactly what I wanted. HOL never got the credit it deserved from people who seem not to understand what it is. WAY too much emphasis is put on it being a "comedy game" which is irrelevant. Sure, it IS a game that makes me laugh out loud on occasion, but the core of the game is a love letter to 90s toy culture. Everything in the game is built to look and function like a toy from the 90s and the game plays like playing with all of your toys the way you always wanted to as a kid. At the very beginning of the game, you get a skateboard from a rival bounty hunter who is clearly an homage to the Ninja Turtle figure of Mondo Gekko (which the game calls out). His weapons are clear, see-through, lazer guns with yellow and purple accents just like a toy gun from the 90s. THOSE kinds of details, combined with the super saturated secondary color (Orange, purple, Green) harkening back to the Nickelodeon era of Gak, Ooze, and the like is an aesthetic that doesn't exist anywhere else in gaming. Combined with the PHENOMENAL soundtrack, the entire game is a 90s punk fever dream. And along that line, the AMAZING gameplay is built to harken back to that era of videogames. The game is NOT easy to play. That does NOT mean it's bad. It's incredibly complex and asks a lot from the player. But for people who could play well enough to beat Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (which also gets called out), this should be a cake walk (even if the games play completely differently and there are no transferrable skills). The game suffers from not having Justin Roiland. That can't be ignored. But it's still incredible and fills a space in the gaming industry that nothing else does.

Little Nightmares 3 reduces a brilliant series to a much more streamlined and "modern" design: That of a walking simulator. All of the challenge and cerebral texture of the series has been drained one of the victims of it's unforgiving world. Gone are the mysterious breadcrumbs of environmental storytelling. In their place are modern "cut scenes" that beat you over the head with a very straight forward story. Gone are the large environments with multiple paths to escape a very present and realistic predator. In their stead is a one-path-only style of gameplay that mostly consists of holding the joystick to the right while the player avatar walks across the room to a door. Then you hit the button to enter the door. Sure sometimes the "door" is a crack in a wall, a grate, a metal lid (as in previous games), or a literal door, but they all serve the exact same function. Walk across the room and enter the door. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. What makes one room different from the next? Well there is likely to be something different in the non-interactive background. Sometimes a giant baby is observing you. Sometimes it's a vista of a desert or a factory. But the function is the same. It's just the background in front of which you press right until there is a door to open. I can't overstate just how LITTLE gameplay there is in this game combined to the previous games. They are barely in the same genre.

I was playing this game just hours ago and so utterly ENGROSSED that I felt like I had to write a review and give it a "10". This is absolutely a 10 ****. It manages to so fully and completely make a definitive game design statement and it fully creates a gorgeous world that is transportive and wonderous to exist within. A lot of people are criticizing the game, but I feel like the main thing that this games lack is "content", The social web 3.0 chum invention of "content". There is nothing to grind in Mario Kart World. There are no "dailies". There are no numbers that endlessly go up and ask the player to mindlessly chase some phantom sense of accomplishment. What exists is just purely gameplay. And the gameplay is delightful. Beyond just "fun", transcending into something else. I love this game.

I REALLY don't like this game. South Of Midnight is another in a long line of frustrating "Cinematic Videogames" wherein almost everything bad about it is due to the fact that it is a videogame that wants to be a movie. I only played the first few chapters before uninstalling it, but I kept having "Why?" pop in my head from frustration to frustration. Why do I have to complete tedious quests like "Walk up to each knick-knack in a room and press a button to acknowledge them for pretentious story reasons" when that could be done so much more quickly and efficiently in a cut scene. The art and presentation are top notch, and it would make an awesome movie. Yet we are forced to experience it all through tedious action beats and combat that lack fun. Meanwhile the character has lots of annoying vocal lines, talking out loud to nobody, PURELY because it's a videogame and she has nothing to actually be talking about. If it was a film, this wouldn't happen. Meanwhile, much of the tone of the game is inconsistent because it's straddling the line between being a game and a "narrative experience". The character will scream and shout in a state of panic as a "story event" happens, only to IMMEDIATELY speak with calm dispassion about a "Gameplay event" because the two things are completely incongruous yet happening at the same time. This is just a frustrating experience all around. No thank you.

Dustborn is a mixed bag and how you feel about it will depend on your personality and, maybe, age. I'm 42 and an avid lifelong comic reader. The first thing that jumped out at me about Dustborn is just how good it looks. It looks just like a comic book. And not just that, it looks like a GOOD comic book. The kind they don't make anymore. It looks like a Cliffhanger comic from the late 90s when the spared no expense on production and artists had proper inkers and lavish colorists. The art character designs heavily evoke Adrian Alphona's work on Runaways and Jamie McKelvie's gorgeous art on Phonogram. I would be shocked if those books weren't inspirations for Dustborn both in art and themes. That being said, playing Dustborne also reminds me heavily of Kevin Smith's Clerks and Mallrats films. I remember seeing those films and being BLOWN AWAY by the representation of seeing nerds like me on a movie screen. But SO MUCH of Kevin Smith's avant garde appeal was him seeing an unrepresented people-group and putting it in media. If you don't identify with that people group... you're probably not going to like the movie. ...and that's the problem with Dustborn. The central cast, and the plot of the story, is largely unlikable to me as a 42 year old black man. I've seen people call the writing in the game bad. I completely disagree. I think it's great. It's just what it's writing ABOUT is unbearable. Yes, sure, the game starts by declaring that one of the characters is a "them". But if Chris Claremont was writing an Xmen comic in the 80s and one of the characters called themselves a genderless "them", nobody would bat an eyelash. That's not the problem. The problem is just how deftly and adroitly the writers sprinkle in ultra-leftwing philosophy and talking points. Like, for example, the characters boldly yet matter-of-factly stating how much they don't want to be alive. The game's narrative often reads like a literal Reddit thread. Or how one of the characters boldly and plainly, almost as recital, talks about how emotionally distant their parents were. It's not Cameron from Ferris Bueller dealing with the EFFECTS of emotionally distant parents, it's a cold recital of self-aware "trauma" that feels like the characters are used to competitive trauma-offs where they try to outdo one another with just how badly they have it. In short, Dustborn feels like a very real capturing of the essence of people you have seen in real life, but don't hang around because... who would want to? They are awful. In the very beginning of the game they choose to run from police who they admit may-or-may-not be chasing them. By trying to outrun them in a car, they trigger a truck to lose control and crash into the police car, killing them both in an explosion. The driver begins to freak out but our lovely main-character assures her, "remember... it's not your fault." Like... what? I have absolutely no idea how old the people who made this game are, but I wonder if they will be embarrassed about it in 20 years. Like Clerks, it feels like it will age badly. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Capturing the spirit of a moment isn't entirely bad. I just wish this game worked harder to capture a genuine moment instead of just a singularly petulant point of view.

HOLY COW. The tone of this game is SHOCKINGLY bizarre. I'm literally astonished Square made this game. The tone of the game is almost a PARODY of Final Fantasy 7. As someone who doesn't love 7, I'm actually alright with the parody tone, but if they took this tone with my beloved 6 or 4, I would be very upset and I'm shocked more FF7 fans don't hate this. The game is INCREDIBLY goofy. Aerith, especially, who can become incredibly grating. Overall I'm not sure who this game is for.

Tchia is boring. It literally put me to sleep more than once. I played the game for several hours because I wanted to get to the “main game”, which takes hours to get to, before I pronounced that I hate it. I hate it. In more ways than one, it feels like a game for “cat people”. Like my friends who show up with cuts all over themselves and holding a thing that seems to hate them yet talking about how much they love it. The “do nothing”, mellow, “jack johnson”, “the journey is the point” gameplay is too slow, boring and tedious to be with the time of a busy person.

I struggled as to whether to give this game a “9” or a “10” and ultimately went with ten. It’s just too good to not reward even if I don’t think such a niche game can appeal to everyone that a “10” should. It’s amazing. FAR too much effort goes into dissecting whether it’s “funny” or not, which is largely beside the point. It’s like trying to argue about whether Earthbound is “funny”. It’s not the humor, it’s the relentless creativity, self awareness, and genius e understanding of gameplay that, in many ways, could only be made by an industry outsider. I freaking loved this game and it’s heavy 90s influences.

As a massive fan of Thimbleweed Park, I was extremely disappointed by Monkey Island. I basically kept playing in order to finish it despite being bored most of the time. The game's writing is basically exactly what you would expect. It's relentlessly silly, but in a predictable way that an AI could generate if it was fed the previous 2 games. Everyone says pretty much exactly what you expect them to all of the time. The games graphics are amazing, despite what you may hear. The vector images and textured art allow your brain to activate your imagination to interpret a scene, which is an element of pixel art that HD renderings often miss. The game feels more "alive", as a result, than other HD games. The inference is terrible, however, and feels made for touch screens. It's context sensitivity ruins a lot of the exploration from previous games and feels hollow. Where the previous game allowed the PLAYER to take actions, and then the game generated pithy outputs, the new game literally puts a prompt to "comment on x" on the screen that is literally a quip generating button. It's less fun and takes power away from the player. But the real reason the game is below "fun" is that the puzzles are tedious, boring and obtuse. For instance, one puzzle has to feeding an NPC who complains of his food being bland. The solution to the puzzle is to apply fire to it. Like... what? There is an in-game hint guide, so it's impossible to be stuck and have it not be by choice, but once you look up a solution and find that the answer is absurd, it ruins the game. You no longer want to put up with any frustration because the answer might be stupid and you would never figure it out. In the end... this game is just unfun. It's a MASSIVE disappointment because of how much I loved Thimbleweed Park. I hope Gilbert to returns to TP and abandons Monkey Island.

Tedious and boring, Bradwell operates on an amateurish level that emulates the “right” games, but doesn’t have the confidence or talent to truly own its existence. Like listening to a 90s Peal Jam knockoff, you can see all Bradwell’s influencences starkly. The remains of a hastily exited gala scream “Bioshock”. A plucky corporate product reel screams “Portal”. And yet the game itself is neither funny, nor scary. It’s not challenging, clever or technically impressive. It’s just… there. And no fun to play. If I KNEW the people who made this, maybe as a school project,it would be astounding. But as a commercial product, it wasn’t even with the time spent playing it. I quit and will never return.

TInykin is a competently constructed game. The controls are great, the camera and graphics are well done, and the style is competent. ... it's just not particularly fun or mentally interesting. Do not let the pikmin comparisons trick you. This game is NOTHING LIKE PIKMIN. While you do have several different kinds of "tiny kin" who follow you around in a mob, Ala pikmin, you do not choose which tinykin to deploy and they are all bound to one button to use. The game "auto" deploys whatever tiny kin are necessary for a task, and the task is always highlighted on the screen. This braindead interactivity is MUCH MORE CLOSE TO SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE than Pikmin. Except in Sunshine, when you saw gunk and pressed a button to "fix gunk", you at least had the gameplay element of moving the controller around to eliminate the gunk. In Tinykin, you see an obstacle, you place your reticle over the obstacle and press the "tinykin button" and they jump out and solve the issue. It is completely brain dead. This is another example of a modern brain dead video game that others would describe as "chill" and "relaxing". To me it's just a waste of time, tedious and boring. Minus all of the pointless embellishments, Tinykin is a 3D platfomer with no danger, no death, no strategy, and no challenge. Zero. It's not present. It's just a game where you jump around on platforms collecting widgets and occasionally press a button to interact with a background object.

Straight to the point: I LOVED this game, beginning to end. This is what video games SHOULD be. It's a game for a specific audience: People who like puzzles and "escape rooms". It is not for anyone else. There is no "good story", there are no "great graphics!", there is NOTHING to try to convince people outside it's audience to play the game. And because of that, it is all killer and zero filler. I had top fun from the beginning to the end. My ONLY complain that keeps it from being a perfect score is that it's NOT "Portal 2". It's not a game that goes the extra mile to be legendary. It's great. It's not legendary. Kudos to the developers.

Squadrons is a phenomenal GAME. It’s “old school”, which means it’s better than pretty much anything EA has put out in the past 20 years. This is a GAME about dogfighting spaceships. Period. If you are good, you win. If you are bad, you lose. There are a TON of people this game is not for. It’s not for people who care more about their copilots sex lives than they do flying spaceships. It’s not a game for people who care more about outfitting their pilot than they do shooting down the enemy. It’s not for people who’s want a Star Wars movie. (Those already exist.) This game is for people who want a serious (but lighthearted) game with deep technical detail. This is a game that you can play, sans any story, alone or with friends in any time increment you like. You can be in the game and fighting within minutes. You can tweak almost every option of the game to your liking. It’s what PC games used to be like before the consolization for the masses. It’s a worthy sequel to x-wing and Tie Fighter. This game is the best thing EA has done in decades. It’s going to be a lot of people’s favorite game ever and many peoples “it would be better if it made these changes that would make it an entirely different game” game. EA needs to do more of this and less of everything else. Stop trying to be all things to all people.

I don't believe in "nostalgia", so I will refrain from using that word when talking about Curse Of The Moon 2. Instead, I will say that Curse Of The Moon is a brand new game that focuses on forgotten and underused game design that relies on timing, trajectories, reflexes and item management. In these things, the game is exceptionally well designed and a great deal of fun. If you loved Curse OF The Moon, there is no reason not to get COTM2. It is more of what you love with some streamlining of things that didn't quite make sense like the interplay of "lives" and "continues". If you have not played COTM, this game is a must-play for fans of reflex driven action games that emphasize precision and self preservation. The only reason I give it a 9 Instead of 10 is because it's too much like COTM1, in the grand scheme of things. I would have loved to see COTM2 reference Castlevania 2 in design instead of Castlevania 3, yet again.

The problem with heavily "multimedia" games (Games where the appeal lies in a combination of graphics, gameplay, story, music, etc.) is that no matter how good any one part may be, you can only judge it by its whole. TLOU 2 is an expensive game made by talented people who were all laboring towards a bad idea. As a result, TLOU 2 is just a bad game. PARTS of it are outstanding. But the parts can never escape the whole. Ultimately TLOU2 feels pointless. It's characters are the weakest element. They all seem created to feel like "real people", but are slavishly tied to a thread of "fate" that feels often inexplicable. The romance between Ellie and her love interest feels most egregious because the characters relationship advances like a rocket against the least romantic backdrop imaginable. When Ellie casually calls her partner "babe" and casually works in an affirmation of "love", I was like... "what?!?". It's the script trying to go someplace that's completely unearned despite trying SO VERY HARD. And that's the main criticism with the writing of TLOU2. It's trying EXTREMELY hard to do... SOMEthing. But just what is inexplicable. TLOU2 is a perfect example of why narrative games shouldn't be so expensive (to produce). It hurts to have to call them out for not living up to the expense.

I've been playing Dr Mario for a multiple sessions over a few weeks and I love it. It's a great game. It's a little on the easy side, but I do not use any of the special abilities available to me and that makes the challenge decent enough to keep from being boring. But I would still like it to be more difficult. I am never truly in jeopardy of losing and 3-star most boards without having to repeat them. There is grumbling about the pay-mechnacis, but personally I believe the pay mechanics are PERFECT. That is to say, completely optional. I do not interact with ANY of the pay mechanics and it has not affected my game in the slightest. So for all intents and purposes, they don't exist to me. It's just a game. Any potential buyers DO need to be aware, though, that this is NOT classic Doctor Mario as it was released on the NES years ago. This is a bit of a "reverse" Doctor Mario that plays in a different manner. It is much more complex but, when you get the hang of it, just as fun.

Any review of Lost Sphere which mentions the word "nostalgia" should be summarily dismissed and discarded as trash. The games industry is trendy and insularly focused on it's own pop-culture. Lost Sphere exists outside of that... sphere. Like a really good Swing Band that gets it's start in 2018, Lost Sphere has to fight it's way through critics who hate it simply because it dares to exist at a time when what it's trying to do isn't what last years Game Of The Year did. But what Lost Sphere DOES do, it does incredibly well. My only complaint is the soundtrack which makes a small-budget game FEEL smaller than it needs to. I BIG sounding soundtrack, ala Chrono Trigger, would make this small-budget game feel much more expansive and substantial than it's critics would like to make it out to be.

A lot of people don't remember that when the PS1 came out, we had to sacrifice a lot of perks that Super Nintendo had in order to get a few advancements. For instance, The SNES had ZERO load times. The PS1 had you staring at a black screen for sometimes over a minute between scenes or levels as it loaded off the CD. The benefit was 3D gameplay that we had never seen or experienced before. VR is a similar leap forward in technology. It has it's drawbacks in the form of lower resolution. But what it gains is ASTONISHING. Skyrim VR is the fulfillment of what I have wanted to experience since I was 8 years old. It's the feeling of truly being an adventurer. It is worth every penny over and over again.

Farpoint is a generic first person shooter THAT YOU ARE INSIDE! That alone is worth the cost of admission, to me. I play a standing up and an explosion early in the game startled me so much it nearly knocked me off my feet. I feel like I'm the kids in commercials I used to mock growing up as they dodged and crouched playing NES games. But in Farpoint, all that is for real.

Crystal Rift is a game that attempts to do one of my favorite things, but comes up unfortunately short. Simplicity is under-rated in game development. Game developers are pressured to throw everything and the kitchen sink into their game designs, but it's incredibly difficult to make something great with all those moving parts. Any master chef will tell you that they would be more impressed with an expertly done dish that was simplistic than an elaborate, exotic dish that was done poorly. Crytal Rift attempts to go back to the roots of first person RPG adventures and capture the essence of dungeon crawling experiences like Eye Of The Beholder and Zork. The game fails, though, in it's inability to create a quality design out of it's simplistic ingredients. It tries to capture the humor and storyline of Zork (with a few direct references) and the dungeon crawling action of EOTB. But where those games aspired to be more and tried to punch above their weight class, Crystal Rift feels like it's a mediocre effort that could be more spirited and clever in nearly all aspects. Traps need to be more dangerous. Puzzles need to be more clever. Writing needs to be sharper. Etc. In the end, Rift fails no bigger than most AAA games on the shelf, and it's just as fun to play. But it's low budget, low inspiration feel will fail to provide the usual excuse of AAA games in that they provide a premium experience to make up for the lacking gameplay.

I am Setsuna is an incredibly strange game. Inevitably you will hear how "classic" it is, in both positive and negative reviews. But in reality it's not very "classic" at all. It is actually VERY experimental in terms of JRPG games. It's very much like Chrono Trigger, if Chrono was much deeper in it's mechanics, and didn't try to make you like it one bit. I am Setsuna is a moody, charisma-less game that took me a few hours to get into, but once i started to understand it, I really, really started to like it. It's like sitting down to talk with a stranger and spending the first 30 minutes thinking how weird the person is only to come to find that they are actually fascinating once you get past the weirdness. Weirdness in the case of IAS being it's quirky acoustic-piano soundtrack, omnipresent snow, tedious menu-system and off-kilter mechanics. What you come to find, though, is a compelling story about duty and purpose, a uniquely melancholy tone and atmosphere, and DEEP RPG mechanics that are fun and rewarding to master. HIGHLY recommended for any real JRPG fan, but understand that this is fruit you have to work to get a taste of.

It is inexplicable that Uncharted should get so many awards and so much praise and King's Quest would get short shrift. Beautiful graphics? KQ looks like a living cartoon, utterly gorgeous in every way and just as expressive as Uncharted, if not as realistic. Climbing gameplay? KQ has the exact same climbing gameplay as Uncharted, but much less of it, which is the reasonable and perfect amount for a game. Shooting? It even has a few shooting (bow and arrow) elements are are fun and challenging. Moving storyline and breathtaking action scenes? Check and check. The main thing that KQ lacks and Uncharted has in spades is incalculable amounts of wholesale murder. That's about the only difference. Chapter 3 is charming, smart, "cute", and had me smiling the entire time. My only complaint is that the puzzles in this particular chapter leaves the reservation a bit in terms of making sense BEFORE you solve them. This is a huge problem with adventure games. I should be taking an action because I am relatively sure of it's result. Or I THINK I am sure of it's result. KQ Ch3 had me taking actions because i could and I wasn't sure why until after the fact.

Great writing and voice acting are stymied by a terrible plot and conclusion that leave the player scratching their head and wondering why this was a story that needed to be told at all. As usual gamers give too much credit for what is attempted rather than what was achieved. Player choose is mostly cosmetic. In short, want to read a murder mystery where the ending is that nobody was ever actually killed? Your answer will give you the answer as to whether you should play firewatch.

KQ Chapter 2 is a very, very strange and very welcome chapter in this amazing adventure. Where chapter 1 was a fun, all ages romp, chapter 2 takes a bizarre "Empire Strikes Back" turn into a somber, dark, dreary, emotional quest. Reviewers seem to recoil at this shift in tone, but daring shifts in tone are what make great works of art. I remember when everyone hated Weezer's second album because of the dramatic shift in tone. Now it is considered one of the greatest albums of all time. KQ chapter 2 feels this way. The Odd Gentlemen deserve kudos, roses and dollars thrown at them for reminding people that "adventure games" were never JUST about talking to people and watching animations. KQ chapter 2 suddenly asks players to make decisions, live with consequences, and make choices. This is something that will bounce off a lot of modern gamers who don't like having to commit to anything, and HATE the idea of losing. That said, I had a blast and I can't wait to see what comes next.

A VERY fun game, but inferior to Hitman Go in almost every single way. LC Go is more "modern video game" in it's animations and presentation, but this is actually a strong negative. Hitman Go, I played to 100% excuse it was just that fun. Lara Croft Go introduces lengthy animation and longer stages which brings with it the requisite WAITING that plagues video games. Every time Lara picks up a treasure, you have to wait about five seconds while the game shows you what you picked up. 5 seconds sounds short, but in a game like LC Go, it is FOREVER. This might sound nitpicky, but realize, this isn't necessary. It could just as easily NOT be there. The worst aspects of LC Go are the way that it treats "special content". In Hitman, the game tracked your total number of moves and gave you alternate objectives on every board. LC Go does not do this, instead having you point at and tap "hidden" treasures on every board. This can be a tiny bit of fun, but i you miss one, there is nothing but annoyance at having to play an entire board over again just to find the one you missed. This is the complete opposite reason why 'special content" should exist. Getting 100% should be fun, as it was in Hitman. Not tedious. If nothing else, it's great to see true Lara again.

Kings Quest 1 might have been the first video game I ever played. It was the IBM PC Jr. version. I remember struggling with it because I couldn't type. Most people couldn't, back then. But what I remember most was the incredible sense of adventure and boundlessness that Kings Quest provided. It quickly became one of my favorite series of games all the way through KQ6. Going into the new King'sQuest, I wasn't sure what to expect. I wanted them to get it right, and that meant It needed to be CLEVER, it needed to be GOODHEARTED and it needed to be CHALLENGING. What KQ winds up being is almost impossible to review. Or, rather, I haven't digested it yet. Clever? Oh, it is so incredibly clever. Goodhearted? The game oozes with charm all over the place and makes you fall in love with it's world and characters. Is it challenging? no. Not in the least. Does it live up to Kings Quest? ABSOLUTELY. But what's baffling is that this isn't JUST a King's Quest game. It also manages to attempt to be a sequel to The Princess Bride film, and manages to succeed on that level as well. It's astonishing. You will find nearly as many references to that movie as you will the original King's Quest game, including a PHENOMENAL appearance by Wallace Shawn enacting variants of some of his best scenes from the film. The first 30 minutes of the game filled me with disappointment, as the game essentially plays out as being a modern day dragons lair. I was all set to write the game off when all fo the sudden the world opens up to a size that is at LEAST the size of KQ1 and 2 put together. The first chapter alone lasts 5 hours, or so, which is about the time it would take you to play KQ1. I was blown away by how truthful to the series it is, allowing players to solve puzzles multiple ways and with multiple moralities. You WILL pick up items. you WILL have an inventory with 9 or 10 items in it at once. You WILL use those items to solve puzzles. And MAN does it feel like King's Quest. Some decisions will irk longtime fans. I, for one, do not like Chropher Lloyd's portrayal as King Graham. He sound nothing like the character I know. But the game is trying to take KQ into the 21st centry,and builds up Daventry to be not unlike the fairy tale world from Shrek. I like that decision and I like this game. I highly recommend it to everyone. Kids to adults.

This is a textbook example of a 9, or 10, rated game. Anyone rating it less doesn't know what they are talking about or has an agenda. The level of quality of the product is absolutely top notch, and the package is fully featured with almost everything you could want. Criticism of the game seem to feature nitpicks that the reviewers blow out of proportion and then assign heavy review-score weight to that nitpick. For instance, I frequently see people saying that the story doesn't make sense. That'd dumb. of course it does. It's not even complicated. It just features a lot of characters that the game doesn't introduce. It assumes you to already be familiar with all the characters. Is that a reasonable assumption for the 10th game in a series to do? You be the judge, but that's a nitpick. Fantastic graphics, fantastic gameplay, fantastic package. I will be playing MKX for weeks and I don't even play online. Great game, well worth the purchase.

Tesla Effect is a game where you play a detective who walks around looking for clues. It does this extremely, extremely well. It seems like most of the negative reviews for this game seem to focus around the complaints "I don't want to be a detective" or "I don't like looking for clues". It's hard to take those criticisms with much sympathy. I see the game criticized for having poor graphics, but this also doesn't make much sense to me. Games with beautiful environments that try to make their blocky puppet looking human characters emote often come across looking laughable or downright unsettling (Mass Effect). And yet this game uses fantastic looking video to portray real emotions and had less stellar environments and people say it looks poor. I'd much rather have the latter than the former. In any event, if you like Detective games and adventure games, this game will be adored by you. If you are looking for it to make you like a genre you hate, well... keep looking.

Dd neon is one of the most surprisingly amazing ages I've played all year, and for many years prior. Its the beat me up I've always wanted minus a few small flaws. The overall goal of the game seemed to be that the developers didn't want to make a button masher. In this, they succeeded with flying colors and o the apparent ire of game critics. It's a highly technical game that is a joy to play. There's no spazzing out on the controls and hoping to do something tht looks cool on screen and makes you feel good about yourself. If you don't play with your brain, the game will feel sluggish. The benefit, though, is that you actually CAN play with your brain which is incredibly rare for this genre. Moreover, if you get hit, you know it's because you screwed up, and there's never a doubt in your mind that good players can play through the whole game without taking damage. The games sense of humor is at the same time outlandish and yet wittily restrained. For instance, one second the main villain is calling you "knob sniffer" and the next second billy will have picked up a gun, and instead if using it to shoot, will either beat people with it or throw it at them. The restraint at the joke is what gives Dan it's sence of wit and masterfully aiming at both being clever and vulgar. In the end, people who dislike the game seem to be ad that it doesn't play like a remake of the old games, and then seem to add on "and nobody wants to play those games anyhow". On the contrary, if you love engaging games that force you to pay attention, and even ask you to replay scenes when your skills don't yet meet the challenge, this game is a gift from heaven for you.

This isn't the best Twisted Metal package. That honor goes to Black, in my opinion. But what it is, is absolutely amazing. The graphics are incredible. (people who say they aren't are probably the same people who complained that GTA3 looked bad. You sacrifice some things to get the scope this game provides.) The cinematics are fantastic. The music is great and the gameplay is honed to a level most games don't dream of. The only problems so far are poor voice acting from Calypso that really knocks this game down a notch. It's that bad. Also, the overall game design is hurt by the decison to do the story mode in the way it is done. Wrong choice, flat out. Buy this game.