Musings from a mercurial mind on all things gaming
Financially, making a sequel to a well-liked game is pretty safe. There's a proven audience that payed for and enjoyed the type of product you're putting out. This is part of why there are so many sequels. Artistically though, making a sequel is hard. The best games are often the ones that show us something … Continue reading Forbidden West and the Challenge of Sequels
With 2021 in the review mirror, it's time to take a look back at another year of gaming and highlight some of the best and brightest. There were some real bangers this year, and I even managed to snag a PS5, so all in all I'd say from a gaming perspective it was a good … Continue reading My Favorite Games of 2021
The “metroidvania” genre owes much more to Metroid than Castlevania, even if the namesake includes both. The labyrinthine maps and power-ups that peel back said maps’ layers have been present since the beginning of Metroid, and the series built on these ideas, even successfully bringing them to 3D with Metroid Prime, one of the finest … Continue reading Metroid Dread: The Weight of Legacy
While I'd dabbled before, Nuclear Throne is the game that sold me on twin-stick shooters. I've sunk over 100 hours into Vlambeer's arcade perfection, and I still go back to it when I feel my trigger finger get that itch. So when the next big thing in twin-sticks, Dodge Roll's Enter the Gungeon, dropped the … Continue reading Patience and Pandemonium: A Tale of Two Twin Sticks
I’ve been going back and forth with my colleague Toasty about scoring in video game reviews the past few days. (You can listen to his excellent as always take here.) What’s the value of numeric scores? How should we assign them? Should we even use them at all? If you’ve read my About Reviews page, … Continue reading Review Scoring: Let the Bottom Drop Out
I was reading Toasty's excellent Dragon Quest restrospective, and never having played the games, I was surprised by his description of this 35 year old entry. Combat is always 1v1, there aren't many actions to choose from, and numbers are low. I jumped on the RPG train a bit later, and got accustomed to damage … Continue reading Turn-based Combat: Making Every Turn Count
Visual novels are usually associated with Japan. While early western adventure games like Mystery House share quite a bit of their DNA with visual novels, the conventions we associate with visual novels today were cultivated in Japanese adventure games, while western adventure games largely explored other modes of presentation (you can read a fascinating deep … Continue reading OELVNs and Japan
Fair Plays by Wes 