VIRTUAL BASTION

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #109

Up this week: Sonic Adventure 2 (GameCube, 2002) – 3D platforming with everyone’s favorite speedy hedgehog Star Fox Adventures (GameCube, 2002) – blast off with Fox, Falco, and the rest of the Star Fox crew in this launch title for the GameCube Neverwinter (PS4, 2016) – an action combat MMORPG set in the Dungeons &…

Finally Finished: Fallout 4

Last Listmas, I made a few gaming promises to myself, one of which I actually just made happen. I finally finished Fallout 4! And it only took four years! In thinking about how to sum up my Fallout 4 experience, fragmented as it was over many months, I can’t help but briefly compare it to…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #108

Digesting Death Stranding

After three years of mild secrecy and teases, Kojima Productions has finally unleashed upon the world a massive (eight plus minutes) trailer for Death Stranding, the studio’s highly anticipated release that was first announced at E3 in 2016. And not only did we see long snippets of story and gameplay in it, but we also…

Day 21: Game with the Best Story

Once again, I am slowly working my way through 30 days’ worth of video game topics. And once again, I am taking the task far too seriously. The next topic on the list is the game with the best story, which is an exceedingly difficult question, if you ask me. I mean, there are so…

For Some Reason, Super Mario Maker 2 is Really Exciting

Despite having been a gamer for about 24 years now (holy cow!), I still can’t say for certain which games will pique my interest and which won’t. I know what genres gravitate towards, features I tend to value, roles I like to play and content I like to avoid. That should be enough to know…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #107

The PS5 and Gaming without Boundaries (Maybe)

Earlier this week, Sony revealed a bit of footage showing the new Spider-Man game running buttery smooth on its next-gen console (deemed the PS5, for now) versus the same game’s performance, with load screens, on the PlayStation 4 Pro. Further, at its recent investor relations conference (IR Day 2019), Sony revealed more details about its…

Outer Wilds is Coming May 30, Looks Awesome!

Anna Purna Interactive and Mobuis have finally announced a release date for their space exploration game titled Outer Wilds. I haven’t been following it all that closely, but it looks quite impressive based on what I’ve seen so far. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it looks fantastic. Just take a…

Playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf with Mother Duck

Ever since its origin on the GameCube, Animal Crossing has always been one of those few games that both Mother Duck and I enjoy playing. While she prefers more peaceful games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, it is rare for me to play a game that doesn’t involve some grand adventure, platforming, RPG, or…

Rage 2 Isn’t Everything I Hoped It Would Be, And That’s Okay

Earlier this week, I wasted no time in picking up a game I’d been waiting for since I heard about it during E3 last year. All the pre-release media looked good and all the preview coverage I’d read sounded very promising. I was certain that Rage 2 was going to be an excellent game, and…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #106

That Time I Made Friends with a Deathclaw in Fallout 4

When I first started up Fallout 4 way back in 2015, I didn’t get very far before feeling overwhelmed. There was just too much. Too many places to explore, too many people needing help, too many things to loot and carry. I managed around thirty hours of play then before becoming distracted by other things….

OddWorld: Soulstorm is Still on the Horizon

There was a time when it looked like the Oddworld series was going to be left behind by gaming. It was never a blockbuster series, and its last entry was an original Xbox exclusive. Series that are dormant for an entire console generation rarely make a comeback, yet this one did. A remake of Abe’s…

Mysterious Squirrels in Sly Cooper 4

Yesterday, I was working on my second playthrough of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time when something bizarre happened. I was in the third location, the Ice Age, just running around, looking for the final clue bottle. And then it happened…

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is a Pleasant Surprise

With all the noise, fanfare and controversy surrounding triple-A games these days, it’s very easy to forget that there’s a whole world of independent games out there just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. I’ve been diving into this world more and more over the past year or so, and the amount of quality titles…

BloodStained: Ritual of the Night Gets a Release Date!

It’s been four years now since Koji Igarashi and his team introduced the world to their vision for a proper spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. That’s four long years of work for the developers and of patience for eager fans. The team never went radio silent, and they were extraordinarily willing to…

Live Action Sonic is Scary, But That Could Be Fixed

Well, everyone, if you’ve been following news on the live action Sonic the Hedgehog movie, then you’ll know that the trailer has been released on Youtube, and it’s…um… It’s…interesting?…

Jurassic Park: Warpath – A Fighting Game That Actually Exists!

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the 90’s really were a special time in gaming. Games were simpler, they had all the draw that modern games do, and (perhaps most importantly) they were just different. We got games in the 90’s that would never get made today, and that’s a fact….

Borderlands 3 Gets Cool ‘ECHOcast’ Twitch Extension

Not content to just release a new Borderlands game later this year and let the money roll in, Gearbox has announced a brand-new feature that’s certain to get streaming fans pumped for the chance to watch it on Twitch as well as play it.

A Ni no Kuni Movie?

It seems like a lot of video games have been adapted into movies lately, and fortunately, this one is not live action. That’s right, folks, they’re apparently making a Ni no Kuni movie, which is, thankfully, keeping the animated look of the games. The only unfortunate thing…right now, there’s no word of it being released…

There’s Something About Star Fox 64

The Nintendo 64 is a system of classics, there’s no really no debating that. It had fewer games than it’s biggest competitor, was less technically sophisticated and had a controller most gamers seem to hate (for some reason beyond my understanding), yet even some of its most minor games are celebrated as classics even today….

Just Cause 4 Leans into it’s Inherent Silliness With Destruction DLC

Ever since Just Cause 2, the series has been more about seeing how many ridiculous things one can pull off with Rico Rodriguez’s insane arsenal than anything else. There’s always a story involving liberating this state or that country from a cartoonish dicator, but they always take a backseat to goofy grapple tricks and chain…

Catching the Bus to the Borderlands

When Borderlands first released back in 2009, I was still too wrapped up in Halo 3, Uncharted 2 and Assassins Creed 2 to care much about Gearbox’s goofy looter-shooter. I looked at it as a novelty rather than the prototype for the modern live service game it turned out to be. So, I missed it….

PSN Users Can Finally Change Names

Well, they did it; they finally did it. After years and years of PlayStation users requesting the ability to change their online ID, Sony has finally figured out how to make it possible on PSN. Why it took them almost two console generations and 13 years to implement is still anybody’s guess, but the feature…

Halo: Reach is Finally Coming Back!

So, it’s finally happening. After years of answers like “we’re definitely interested” and “maybe” whenever they were asked, 343 Industries has finally announced that Halo: Reach will be added to Halo: The Master Chief Collection later this year. It’s a announcement many of us (myself included) thought would never come given that the Halo compilation…

Yooka-Laylee’s 64-Bit Tonic is Finally Ready!

Despite a mostly lukewarm reception upon its release in 2016, Playtonic games has been faithfully supporting their debut title, Yooka-Laylee, for the past three years. This dedicated support has mostly taken the form of ports to additional platforms, bug fixes, quality-of-life updates, and such. All of these are very important, and they definitely show that…

Marble It Up: Marble Blast Ultra Finally Has a Successor!

Back in the early days of the Xbox 360, there were only a handful of games available for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Some of them weren’t so great, but many like Geometry Wars and UNO have cemented their places as classics of the time. For me though, the one that stands above them…

‘Persona 5 R’ Revealed to Be ‘Persona 5: The Royal’

Back in December, Atlus released a brief trailer teasing the existence of a brand new project involving Persona 5. No real information was given of course, but fans at least got the project’s code name, “Persona 5 R” to chew on until the next bit of info dropped sometime in March. Well, that time finally…

Sonic’s Getting a Live Action Movie

In recent years, live action adaptations have been quite the trend. Disney has been producing live action remakes of their animated features, there’s a live action Detective Pikachu movie in the works, and now…Sonic the Hedgehog is getting the same treatment.

Google Announced Their ‘Stadia’ Game Console, And I’m Concerned

Yesterday at GDC 2019, Google officially entered the console space. Well, that’s what I would be saying if the company had actually unveiled a new console. What they actually announced was “Stadia,” yet another attempt at a video game streaming service.

System Shock 3 Gets New Trailer at GDC 2019

I’ll be honest, I forgot this game was even coming. The System Shock series of games has become the stuff of gaming legend over the years, so the idea that another one is in the works is still taking some time to sink in. Regardless, System Shock 3 is coming, and we have a new…

Nintendo Labo VR and Possible Switch Mini

Two sets of news concerning Nintendo’s current (and possibly future) plans for the Switch have cropped up recently, the release of a Nintendo Labo VR and the possible rumor of a Switch Mini (I must emphasize that the latter has not been confirmed by Nintendo). And I can’t help but speculate that, if rumors of…

Holding Back the Backlog

With all the shady business and pushy live services present in the modern video game industry, it’s very tempting to think that there’s very little worth getting these days. That is, of course, absolutely false. There’s still plenty to get excited for every year, more than ever before actually. It’s great, but it’s also kind…

Haven’t Heard of ‘Seven’ Before, But Am Glad the Enhanced Version is Coming

Isometric exploration games have always been a rare breed. They never play quite like anything else out there, and usually it takes a a certain kind of gamer to appreciate them due to the unusual gameplay mechanics they tend to employ. Those that do it well can definitely find great success within that niche; one…

Are You Ready for Devil May Cry 5?!

There’s something about games like Devil May Cry,, Persona 5 and DOOM that just plain makes them exciting, even if they still aren’t necessarily appealing. This has always been true, but I think the state of modern gaming makes it even more acute. There are so many joyless, dull-as-dishwater-looking games coming out these days that…

Shenmue III Delayed to November

It looks like Shenmue fans are going to have to wait a little while longer before they can get their hands on the series’ highly-anticipated third entry. Indeed, the game has been delayed once more, but not by all that much this time. Eager fans and backers are only going to have to wait until…

Challenge Mode: Racing Canary Mary

Though gaming is easily my favorite hobby, there are a few things about it that I really don’t enjoy. At the top of the list are any challenges that require me to press buttons quickly. As silly as it sounds, I absolutely hate having to do this, as my weak noodle arms do not possess…

Observation is Worthy of Attention

More and more often these days, I find myself wondering exactly what is that keeps me playing games year after year. Obviously I enjoy them; I enjoy them enough to spend a fair amount of time writing about them even. Liking them isn’t the issue, it’s the why of it all that weighs on me….

New Pokemon Stuff on the Horizon

Nintendo and the Pokemon Company held a “Pokemon Press Conference” to tell fans about many new developments coming to the franchise. The first of these was a follow-up to “Detective Pikachu” coming to the Nintendo Switch sometime in the next year or so. They didn’t really elaborate beyond that, but at least fan know it…