My Miitopia Crew

Last year, I started in on something that I did not expect to turn into a long-term relationship. That “something” was Miitopia. Spurred to make the purchase thanks to The Duck’s excellent playthrough of the same, I knew some of what to expect going in. This was a fun, quirky, and somewhat odd game that…

Sakurai Discusses Smash Bros. and Online Play

In a recent video, Super Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai took some time to talk about his feelings regarding the series in online play. As longtime fans of the series might have expected, it turns out that he’s not really a fan of supporting online features for Nintendo’s popular character fighter. It’s something that…

The Duck’s First Week with Tears of the Kingdom

Well, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released just over a week ago.  While I’m usually behind most people when it comes to playing new games, you’ll typically find me at the game store on the release date of any new entry into the Zelda franchise.  I’ve now been playing this game…

Monopoly for Nintendo Switch: Demo Review

Seeing as I had recently gotten back into playing traditional board games, I was curious to try out the Nintendo Switch version of the most classic board game of all, Monopoly.  Surely most people are familiar with this game, where you buy property, try to get a monopoly by owning all property of a single…

Signalis Hit Harder Than Expected

I’ve brought it up a couple times already, but I just cannot seem to get Signalis out of my head lately. It’s not so much because of its gameplay though. Classically good as its systems and mechanics are, I found myself much more spellbound by everything surrounding it: the artwork, the atmosphere, the characters, the…

Saints Row (2022) First Impressions

For me and the new Saints Row game, playing it was never a matter of if but when. Yes, it released to a flurry of mediocre reviews last fall; and yes, I put off purchasing it then because of them. But the one positive notion that I took away from that mountain of middling was…

Looks Like Microsoft is Going to Buy Activision Afterall

For a minute, it looked like Microsoft’s buyout of Activision was going to be averted thanks to the EU not being on board with the merger. Unfortunately, it seems these sorts of mergers are all but inevitable. It was just announced a day or so ago that the EU’s regulatory body, the European Commission, just…

Compelling Inconveniences

It’s probably safe to say that most of us dislike inconvenience. I mean there’s almost no reason not to dislike it right? Having to wait; having to make extra trips or having to do extra chores, it’s all annoying, right? I feel that this is as true in games as it is in real life…well,…

The Street Fighter 6 Demo was More Enjoyable than Expected

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d play the Street Fighter 6 demo. For my household, this game is an automatic buy, so I figured that I’d just play when we got it. But, upon hitting a lull over the weekend, and feeling that itch for a little something different from all the turn-based mania of Persona…

Atari Announces ‘Mr. Run and Jump,’ and It Looks…Good?!

I don’t know about you all, but after the nothing burger that was/is the Atari VCS and all the crazy crypto shenanigans of the past year or two, I kind of wrote-off this so-called new Atari as little more than a jaded attempt to quickly cash-in on nostalgia. Yet, the VCS (such as it is)…

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain: Demo Review

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain is one of those educational games similar to Brain Age that help you to exercise your brain with a variety of activities that challenges your mental prowess in five categories: identify, memorize, analyze, compute, and visualize.  The demo includes three mini games.  Whack Match challenges you to whack moles…

More Classic than Classic

I had a thought dawn on me a little while ago, one that’s been poking at me more and more as of late. It started out as more of a inkling than a thought; a feeling that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. As I’ve played more “throwback”-style games though, the more defined this…

Valheim World Modifiers in the Works

Late to the party as ever, through my blog feed, I recently saw “difficulty settings” and “Valheim” mentioned in the same span, and I just had to investigate. I knew that the game’s developers were in the throes of putting together a new update/biome, a volcanic region called the Ashlands. What I didn’t know until…

Final Fantasy XVI’s Monster Clashes Look Awesome!

Square Enix just put out a new short trailer for Final Fantasy XVI today showing off some of the Eikon battles players will get to take on. I guess it’s technically called a “Summon Beast” battle at the moment, but it still looks pretty cool. Check it out!

More Games Need a “Pet the Dog” Feature

It can be funny how much of an impression fairly small features can make. They usually aren’t enough to elevate a good game into something great or a bad game into something good. Nor is their absence enough to really hurt an experience. Still, they can make a enough of a difference that they leave…

It Seems Atomic Heart is Selling Rather Well!

Good news for fans of AA-level games: Atomic Heart is actually doing fairly well. As reported by Mp1st.com, the publisher of Atomic Heart, Focus Entertainment, released a revenue report that claims that the company’s overall revenues are up about 36% from last year. This inlcudes everything that the company publishes, but Atomic Heart sales in…

Hunting Down Missing Strawberries in Celeste

A couple years ago, I wrote a review about my experiences with Celeste, a super difficult game about climbing a mountain.  The game was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it was also quite a trial.  And while I did manage to complete the main game (chapters 1-7), there’s a whole lot that I didn’t…

I’m Kinda Glad Morality Systems Went Away

You know, I used to quite like morality systems in video games. They had a way of giving one’s choices some narrative weight and were often what a game’s different ending hinged on. That said though, I’ve found my opinion on the mechanic changing over the years. It’s not that the idea itself is bad,…

Dragon Age: Origins is Both Better and Worse 13 Years Later

It’s amazing to me that 2009 is already practically ancient history as far as video games are concerned. Yet, a lot has indeed changed, especially when it comes to presentation and storytelling. Where everything was (for some reason) meant to be dark, gritty and very brown back then, now vibrance carries the day.

Redfall is Going to Have Denuvo DRM, Yay…

I don’t know why, but I get the sense that neither Microsoft or Bethesda want Arkane Studios’ next game, Redfall, just doesn’t want i to succeed. How else do you explain the series of L’s the game’s been taking in the weeks leading up to release.

The Gardens Between: A Beautiful Tale of Friendship 

The Gardens Between is a puzzle game about two friends, Arina and Frendt, who find themselves on a series of islands where time flows in both directions.  Each island represents the pair’s memories of their time spent together, and the two must work as a team to reach the top of each island, all culminating…