The city of Lost Heaven got hit hard by The Great Depression, and the advent of Prohibition in America means lucrative business opportunities for mobsters. The Salieri and Morello crime families vie for control over Lost Heaven, even as it’s few honest policemen scramble to maintain order. Thomas Angelo’s humble life as a hard-working taxi driver is forever changed after a fateful run-in with the Italian ...
At the beginning of “The Last Campfire,” I had a nagging sense of deja vu. The main character — Ember — looks like he’d belong in the 2012 indie megahit “Journey,” while the art style, storybook narration and music feel like an indie game playbook. Cutesy artwork; bright colors; melancholy story; understated soundtrack; mysterious narrative; and so-on. In some ways, it’s hard to believe this game comes ...
Back when the Summer Game Fest Demo Event was going on with Xbox, I had a hard time keeping up with what was being offered. Part of it was pure laziness, part of it was I really didn’t know where to begin considering all of the demos available for a short period of time. So I reached out to my audience and said, alright folks pick out a bunch of games and I will play through them and stream them.…
The remake of the first two Tony Hawk Pro Skater games — recently released on Xbox One and PS4 — continues the recent Activision trend of stellar updates of classic games from the 1990s. This package, more than any remake or remaster in recent memory, speaks almost directly to me. The original games were among my favorites on the original PlayStation. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 perfectly captures the ...
Who knew that a TV series following gangsters with Brummy accents could have such selling power? Birmingham has become the unlikely setting of Peaky Blinders, one of TV’s most popular British shows, giving our second city a focus outside the meat market and that funny shaped shopping centre. It only makes sense that a game was going to follow, and Mastermind has come along to fill that gap. What you end up ...
Released yesterday, Marvel's Avengers is, surprisingly, the first big-budget Avengers game available on PC and current-gen consoles. Despite the overwhelming success of Marvel's movies and TV shows in the last 12 years (since 2008's Iron Man re-ignited their franchise), their heroes have been noticeably absent on the gaming scene. Other than some mobile games and the latest installment of the always enjoyable ...
Once upon a time there were two mischievous little goblins. They worked tirelessly to help the beautiful princess keep her hideaway in the woods liveable and together they were hard-up but happy. Everything felt almost like a fairy tale… until it got very real. Tell Me Why is the story of what happens after once upon a time, and of the dangers of romanticizing the past. People will talk a lot about Tell ...
What do you get when you take Harvest Moon, take out all the RPG elements, add some really simple puzzles and then charge £17 for it? Well, you get Harvest Moon: Mad Dash, and you might well wish you hadn’t. Here is a game that’s almost entirely the opposite of what Harvest Moon is all about, but with the name splashed all over it and the familiar sprites front and centre. It’ll almost make ...
Golf, I would propose, is the real-life sport best-suited to translate into a video game. The sport’s electronic history dates back more than 40 years, and has had its share of highs and lows. The latest simulation golf game, PGA Tour 2K21, is unequivocally one of the best representations of playing a round of golf. It’s also a game more than seven years and four games in-the-making. Developer HB Studios ...
Once upon a time, games were made to work as well as possible, and any janky physics or annoying glitches were the result of mistakes or oversights by developers. Today, as with Brunch Club, janky physics and annoying glitches are the game. Apparently it’s fun. We’ve seen it time and time again. Goat Simulator and Surgeon Simulator put their awfulness front and centre. The only reason to buy into it ...
Finally, the answer to the question “Do you have Battletoads?” is an emphatic “Yes!”, at least if you have an Xbox One (or PC) and subscribe to Gamepass (which…c’mon man. If you’ve got an Xbox One, you should have Gamepass). Anywho: 26 years after the franchise last appeared in the arcades, and 27 years after the last console release, the Battletoads have returned to kick some tail. The game tries ...
Fingerboarding, along with having really, really good Pokemon, was one of the main ways of proving you were cool when I was in school. I remember it well – wearing a leather jacket and awesome sunglasses, armed with a stick used to beat off the girls, I’d flick my way through the schoolyard with my tiny skateboard. It wasn’t the size though, dear reader, it was what you did with it, and that ...
The original Destroy All Humans came out in 2005, and became somewhat of a cult game for many players, myself included. The crazy sandbox that was created that allowed mass carnage, mayhem, and fun wasn’t common in games during that era. So when THQ purchased the rights to the IP a few years back, I genuinely got a little excited over the thought of Crypto making a return in an all new adventure. Hopefully ...
Videogames are often about defeating the big scary monster that’s tormenting the humans, but if you’ve ever wanted to flip the script and be that scary monster, Carrion is for you. The folks over at Phobia Game Studio have put together a metroidvania style game that makes you feel powerful, clever, and has some of the most fluid movement of any game this year. Carrion puts you in the role of an ...
The same complaint that a lot of annual sports video game franchises receive is (mostly) true with NASCAR Heat 5. This year’s game feels basically like a roster and car paint update compared to previous versions. The driving model feels a lot better — my cars don’t just spin with the slightest contact, and I’m finding it easier to get involved in drafts and pushes. The game also just looks better, though that ...
In this modern age of gaming where remakes and remasters are a standard, ONE SPONGE stands alone (not really Patrick and Sandy are there too) to try and breath life again into the platformers of yesteryear? But does this one get the job done or does SpongeBob just leave us all wet? The original game was developed for PS2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube back in 2003 believe it or not. While a major commercial ...
It’s the bottom of the 9th inning. The Sirloins trail by 2. Men (well, 1 man and 1 woman) on 1st and 3rd. 2 outs. Hammer Longballo steps up to the plate. Yes, you read that right: Hammer. Longballo. The slugger is well known in the minds of Super Mega Baseball fans. A hitter of epic proportions, both in his head size and on the stat sheet. He’s older now. Has been in the Super Mega ...
irst wrapped up my playthrough of Minecraft Dungeons on the default difficulty, I thought it was a fun game, but perhaps a bit shallow. I came away from it thinking I'd seen all that the game had to offer, and that the Adventure and Apocalypse difficulties would, for the most part, be more of the same. After all, I'd unlocked a couple of hidden levels, and felt that I'd explored each map from head to toe. By ...
Fury Unleashed is a 2D-action-platformer-roguelike set in a comic book. That’s a lot of different genres thrown out there, but in reality, the game is similar to others already on the market, most closely resembling games like Enter the Gungeon or Rogue Legacy. Players explore a hand-drawn world, spanning four different procedurally-generated comic worlds, fighting off themed enemies as the titular Fury, ...
I’ve never played a game quite like SnowRunner, a follow-up to the cult hit MudRunner and part of the overall SpinTires series, from developers Saber Interactive and Focus Home Interactive.
Stranded Deep, originally released in Early Access on PC in 2015, has brought its island-hopping survival experience to consoles. It’s an addictive and enjoyable experience, but one that still feels several steps away from greatness. The game, like many others in the genre, drops you on a deserted island and requires you to craft, explore, and survive, while hopefully advancing the barebones plot. That ...
The best part of Curious Expedition is its concept: You choose a famous historical explorer and set off on a journey to a remote location, searching for treasure and the location of a golden pyramid. You’re in a race against other intrepid explorers to become the most famous finder of rare antiquities in the world.
One Piece is a Japanese anime television series adapted from the manga of the same.. The story follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a boy whose body gained the properties of rubber (Think Mr. Fantastic doing martial arts) after unintentionally eating a Devil Fruit. With his crew of pirates, named the Straw Hat Pirates, Luffy explores the Grand Line in search of the world’s ultimate treasure known as ...
Last month, Ubisoft dropped the expansion that promised to rekindle the dwindling fires of The Division 2’s hype and excitement. Featuring a full-fledged campaign, 4 new districts to explore, a raised level cap of 40 and an overhaul of many core game mechanics, who wouldn’t be excited to step back into the world of The Division 2 and enjoy what the Warlords of New York has to offer? I know I couldn’t wait to see ...
I was not familiar with what One Piece was other than seeing the occasional artwork, cover, or game released every once in awhile. So for those like me not used to the source material, as best I can tell, it goes like this.
Opening day has come and gone, and we still don’t have any baseball. With major sports brought to a standstill by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the only outlets for sports is video games. RBI Baseball ’20 would very much like to be one of those outlets. Believe it or not, this year’s release is the seventh in a row of the more modern iteration of the franchise. RBI Baseball generally flies ...
So just what is TT Isle of Man exactly? You might think oh, this is a bike racing game. You're not wrong, although I found the history behind it to be very interesting. The Isle of Man TT is run in a time-trial format on public roads closed to the public. The event consists of one week of practice sessions followed by one week of racing. It has been a tradition, dating back as far as the 1920s. More ...
As a fan of the show by the same name, as well as a long time Mortal Kombat enthusiast, I could not wait to get started playing One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows. At first, it seemed like a match made in heaven. While some aspects of the game were more in-depth and impressive than I would have suspected, others were equally less impressive than I had hoped. Let’s dive right in and see what awaits us in One ...
Ori and the Will of the Wisps, available as a part of Game Pass or $30 to own, is a fantastic game that’s worth whichever price of entry you choose. During the review period, it was clear that there were some issues with performance, and while Microsoft assured us these would be addressed with a day one patch, they still recommended that the game be played on an Xbox One X or Windows 10. Not one to do what ...
Bayonetta, one of the most iconic action-adventure games from the previous generation era, has been remastered and released on the Xbox One and PS4. As mentioned previously, you don’t see too many successful action-adventure games being released these days, with even some of the biggest franchises experiencing a slump in sales. With this in mind, it would be fair to say that a Bayonetta re-release would have a ...
