How do you follow up a year like 2023 that featured multiple all-time great games in Baldur's Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Alan Wake 2? From the get go, 2024 had quite the uphill battle, and while I don't think it produced any clear cut all-timers, it was still … Continue reading My Year in Gaming: 2024
In the mid 2000's gaming lost a little something. After years of a never-ending rotating cast of platforming mascots of the week, Sony decided to take a grittier, more grounded approach with the PlayStation. While this led to a wealth of wonderful titles and sad dad adventures, a little sparkle left us that only Nintendo … Continue reading Astro Bot: The Good, the Bad, and the Mascot
Four years after the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake and over 26 years following the original's debuted, the most expansive realization of the epic journey of Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, and friends to heal the planet and stop Sephiroth has finally arrived. In many ways, Remake had it easy. It just had to turn the … Continue reading Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: The Good, the Bad, and the Mini-Games
Judging by my writing output this year (2 whole posts!), you might think that 2023 did not have a whole lot to talk about in gaming. In fact, it was quite the opposite as the year provided us with one of the most memorable gaming feasts of all-time to rival 1998 and 2018. From the … Continue reading My Year in Gaming: 2023
Note: 2023 was a fantastic year in gaming. I may have written this back in May and then gotten too caught up playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baulder's Gate 3 to actually publish it until now! Enjoy this very late review to see how Cal Kestis's second adventure builds upon … Continue reading Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – The Good, the Bad, and the Rancor
As 2022 draws to a wintery close, the gaming gods have given us one final contender to attempt to unseat Elden Ring as this year's GOTY. Kratos and Atreus are back trying to stave off the end of the world and plunder a few chests along the way in the follow-up to my 2018 GOTY … Continue reading God of War Ragnarök: The Good, the Bad, and the Boy
In honor of this year's The Last of Us Day, which, as we all know, marks the day the Cordyceps Brain Infection overtook the world, I thought I would share some of the best screenshots from my recent trek through the PS5 remake of my favorite game of all time. As an added service, I … Continue reading The Last of Us Part I: A Photo Album of Good Times in the Zombie Apocalypse
One of my favorite gaming experiences of the last generation of consoles was Guerrilla Game's 2017 hit, Horizon Zero Dawn. Bolstered by a thrilling post apocalyptic world that melds the primitive with the high-tech and a breakthrough performance by Ashly Burch as the outcast Aloy, HZD established a character and setting with seemingly limitless potential … Continue reading Horizon Forbidden West: The Good, the Bad, and the Robot Dinosaur Apocalypse
Sitting back and taking a moment to soak in all the glory of a game just isn't something that typically crosses my brain to do. I don't just play games; I tend to burn through them. I mean with over 90 games played last year alone and over 80 the year before, what choice do I really have? Sure, I may take time to do a ton of side quests if it's a particularly enjoyable game, but I have one goal above all else - to beat the game as quickly as possibly so I can move on to the next in my infinitely expanding backlog. On occasion I even find myself getting stressed out or angry when a game is taking longer than How Long to Beat tells me it should. Clearly, this isn't the best way to approach my main relaxing activity, and I know this will only get worse with a second child on the way and my first beginning to rebel against the notion of frequent napping. That's why I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it when Hitman 3 made me take a minute and slow things down.
It appears the days of consoles launching with cutesy mascots may be long over. Sure, the PlayStation 5 comes pre-loaded with the delightfully nostalgic tech showcase Astro's Playroom, but the real console exclusive that has people trying to get their hands on one of these elusive wonders is Bluepoint's remake of FromSoftware's Demon's Souls. At last, those without access to the Souls game that started it all way back on the PS3 can experience this intriguing historical document of a game that laid much of the foundation for the far more heralded Dark Souls trilogy. It both feels somewhat old as many of the constructs found within have reappeared multiple times in the ensuing decade plus of Soulsborne titles but also thrillingly new as massive improvements to graphical fidelity, frame rates (a Souls game running at a consistent 60 fps might be the most impressive thing Sony has ever done), and that wonderful haptic feedback the PS5 controller is becoming known for. While I may not have found myself slamming my head against the wall out of frustration like most Soulsborne games are notorious for (I suffered a mere 79 deaths versus the thousand or so I usually do, but I mainly attribute this to that smooth frame rate and tons of prior Souls experience), I still found myself completely absorbed in the fog-covered world of Boletaria, loving learning how one of my favorite genres of games got its start.
Pwned and Operated 