VIRTUAL BASTION

It’s Official…I Have a Switch!

That’s right, I bought a Switch. For a time, I had no idea when I was ever going to buy Nintendo’s newest console. I mean, while Super Mario Odyssey looked amazing, I couldn’t really justify spending $300 when I would only buy one game. As was also the case with the Wii, I wasn’t truly…

Rare Scares: Kackle from Haunted Hall

Halloween is just around the corner, and for the Duck’s final Rare Scares post, it’s about time we dialed the spook-meter up a notch. Donkey Kong Country 2 is one of my favorite games, what with the pirates and the awesome team of Diddy and Dixie, not to mention my favorite world of the game,…

Rare Scares: Thaaank Yooouuu…

Good day (or perhaps good evening) to all you lovely citizens of the night! Halloween is almost upon us, and that means Rare Scares month has almost passed. They haven’t all been scares per se, but I’d say Rare’s oddly scary reputation still stands. This final scare isn’t really all that creepy at first glance…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #80

Happy almost-Halloween, everyone! The scariest day of the year is closing in, so why not celebrate by watching our YouTube Highlights? Okay, so maybe that logic doesn’t quite add up, but still. We are celebrating in our own way with an ongoing Let’s Play of Luigi’s Mansion. Follow along as Luigi cleans up a very…

Rare Scares: You Can’t Judge a Mechanical Shark by His Steel-Plated Exterior

The shark. One of nature’s most misunderstood animals? Or an unfeeling, destructive force of the seas? Maybe it’s best not to judge, especially since folks who have played Banjo-Kazooie know all too well just how tough it can be to be a shark, and a mechanical shark that’s used as a garbage disposal, at that….

Rare Scares: A Mysterious Encounter in Conker’s Bad Fur Day

This next Rare Scares post focuses on a game I don’t believe I’ve ever discussed before, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Having missed my chance to purchase this game on the N64, I finally ended up buying the Live and Reloaded version on the XBox. The reason I never speak of this game is because it…

Rare Scares: King Zing Sting

Rare Scares is in full swing here at Virtual Bastion, and we’re leaving no stone unturned as we look at all the ways Rare has managed to startle, spook, or outright scare us over the years. Most of the time the scares come from the obvious horror-themed zones like Haunted Hall, but there are time…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #79

Gather round, one and all…it’s time to grab a mug containing a warm beverage of your choice and cozy up to some YouTube Highlights! This past week, we bid farewell to the adventures of Ori and the Blind Forest, and we said HELLO! to the Big Bad Boo in Luigi’s Mansion. And things have been…

Rare Scares: Manic Mine Carts in Donkey Kong Country

What do you remember most about the Donkey Kong Country games? Their graphics? Collecting bananas? The sheer fun of just playing them? All valid answers. One thing from Donkey Kong Country that has forever shaped my memory is the dreaded mine cart, along with the somewhat sinister music that accompanied said questionable modes of transportation.

Festival of the Lost Has Returned to Destiny

October is in full swing now; this means that Rare Scares is in full effect here at Virtual Bastion and Festival of the Lost has finally returned to the world of Destiny. Since Destiny 2 only just launched last year, Bungie decided to skip the event, and considering all the cruddiness and controversy surrounding the…

Rare Scares: Creepy Sounds in Creepy Castle

The Duck’s newest Rare Scares illustrates just how much one’s own imagination can be their worst nightmare. Seeing as today’s post focuses on Donkey Kong 64, it should come as no surprise that the specific world I have in mind is Creepy Castle. I have had an increasingly rocky relationship with this game, as the…

Rare Scares: Kackle

Last week I kicked-off my segment of Rare Scares month with the Temple Guardian from DK64. I was pretty sure at the time that that would be my only entry from the Donkey Kong games, but here we are with another one, and from Donkey Kong Country 2 no less! DKC2 is probably my absolute…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #78

Happy Friday, good people of the Internet. We are back on this lovely day offering up more gaming goodness from our YouTube channel! We have been a bunch of busy bees with our ongoing Let’s Plays of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Ori and the Blind Forest, and — just in time for this month o’…

Rare Scares: The Haunted Cavern in Banjo-Tooie

While it’d be overdrawn to prescribe the adjective “terrifying” to the wonderful and wondrous Rare game Banjo-Tooie, like its predecessor, the game contains a couple…let’s call them unsettling sections. The one that always sticks out to me the most is the Haunted Cavern of Witchyworld, which we’ll explore here thanks to The Duck’s Let’s Play…

Borderlands 2 Is Coming to PSVR

Vault Hunters rejoice! Borderlands 2 is bringing its signature looting and shooting experience to PSVR! This new version features (almost) everything fans loved about the original, plus a few extras to make the VR experience flow just a bit more smoothly.

Rare Scares: The “Unforgettable” King RedEye

In video games, boss fights are often meant to be an epic affair where our heroes face off against a foe that is, more often than not, super powerful, huge, or both. For these reasons, only the most memorable of boss encounters can be chosen for our Unforgettable series, as we simply can’t pick them…

Rare Scares: Temple Guardian in DK64

October is here and the smell of leaves and spookiness is in the air. What does spookiness smell like? Pumpkins, obviously. What’s not so obvious though are all the various sources of those spooky vibes. I mean, of course horror themes shows and games are going to deliver some scares, but sometimes otherwise innocent media…

YouTube Highlights, Weekly Edition #77

Hey everyone, are y’all ready for another spread of gaming goodness from our YouTube channel? We’re certainly happy to share, because there’s some really great stuff going on in our Let’s Play of Donkey Kong Country Returns – though let’s be honest, everything the Kongs do is pretty awesome (well, except that whole thing early…

Rare Scares: The Spooky Mumbo Portrait in Mad Monster Mansion

For October of 2018, we’re going to be focusing on Rare Scares, a delightfully spooky series that’s all about the scarier moments in Rareware games. To start out the Duck’s own posts on the topic, I thought it was only fitting to discuss something that has haunted me since ducklinghood. It’s creepy and just a…

The Collector’s Mentality

This particular post is something that I wrote…a long time ago, but never got around to publishing until today. It involved a question that arose about my gaming habits while I was replaying Kirby 64 several years back, and I thought it was about time I finally got around to voicing this question out loud…

Are You Ready to Live?!

It’s finally happening everyone! After 8 long years of waiting, Animal Crossing is finally, finally getting a new console release! What’s more, it’s been five years since its last entry on the 3DS! No matter how you slice it, it’s been a long time since we’ve had the chance to live the chill kind of…

Nintendo Switch Online is Now Live

With the exception of Fortnite, online play on the Nintendo Switch now requires a subscription to Nintendo’s newly-launched online service. Subscriptions range from $20 per year for an individual or $35 for the family plan. Subscribing gets a player access to online multiplayer for games like Smash 4 and Splatoon 2, cloud saves*, as well…

Star Fox Adventures and Some Deep Thoughts

I often feel as if video games double as a means to time travel. This is true of many things, like the hard strawberry candies that never fail to transport me back to my childhood, when my parents and I used to visit my great grandmother. Memories are a powerful thing that can make the…

Playing Forsaken While Eating My Words

I’ve not been kind to Destiny 2 or its developer, Bungie, for a good portion of this year. As I’ve said in several of my posts, I’ve been a Destiny fan for a long time, and I was particularly disappointed with Destiny 2 at launch. It was enough to get me to stop playing the…

Hello Neighbor is Getting a Prequel

Some months back, the full version of a little indie game called Hello Neighbor was released. Though I had high hopes due to how interesting the Alpha and Beta versions of the game were, I was ultimately disappointed in the final game because it failed to successfully answer the questions I had going in (namely…

Still Feeling Cautiously Optimistic About Anthem

“Anthem looks interesting.” That’s more or less what I’ve been thinking ever since the game was announced. Plenty has been released about it; plenty has been shown, but I’m still not feeling all that much excitement for the game. This latest trailer, like all the others, shows a game that looks very promising. And yet…

Octopath Traveler is the Right Kind of Simple

I’ve been finding myself drawn to games that don’t require all that much thought lately. I mean that’s not exclusively what I’ve been playing, quite the opposite actually. Now that I’ve finished Vampyr (finally!), I feel like I can act on this attraction (such as it is). It’s kind of strange, but as my working…

Makers of ‘Until Dawn’ Trademark ‘Shattered State’

For many “Until Dawn” was one of the better horror experiences to come about during this console generation. Sure, it was more or less just a spooky walking-simulator peppered with QTEs, but that spookiness came across in a major way. “Until Dawn” sold its players on its atmosphere and managed to send a chill down…

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Might Just Live Up to Its Name

I usually don’t let hype get the better of me when deciding whether or not I should buy a video game. Trailers are still fun to watch, and I often talk animatedly with my friends about this announcement or that reveal. However, I still like to think myself as a rational gaming consumer most of…

It’s Official…King. K Rool is in SSB!

I’ll admit that, in recent times, I haven’t really bothered to keep up with gaming news. Life’s taken up too much of my focus, plus I haven’t felt the need to spend a large quantity of cash on the Nintendo Switch when it only possesses one game I actually feel like playing (Super Mario Odyssey,…

Destiny 2: Solstice of Heroes Looks Interesting

Destiny 2’s brand new summer event, Solstice of Heroes, is now in full swing. The month-long event gives players access to new gear, remixed campaign missions, and new challenges to complete. This appears to be a special event aimed specifically at players who’ve stuck with the game through all the goofiness its gone through thus…

Vampyr and the Torment of Temptation

In some ways, Vampyr is very frustrating. It features frequent load times. It’s combat is kind of clunky and never quite allows the player to have the upper hand against their enemy; this leads to frequent defeats and sitting through the above-mentioned load times. Resources feel finite, and leveling-up comes with risks. Now, what if…

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Has a Hub City This Time

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is promising a somewhat different experience from that offered by the previous two games. The trailers shown thus far certainly show a darker story about (among other things) Lara (finally) being confronted with the consequences of some of her decisions. Pretty cool, no? Well it looks like the story isn’t…

There’s No Escaping the Backlog

It wasn’t too long ago that I used to be a different kind of gamer. The kind of gamer who spent every moment of free time they had on finishing their next game. The kind of gamer who would play games through multiple times, and then revisit them every year to relive the experience. I…

Sunday Video Round Up: Oct 28 – Nov 3

After taking a week off, the Video Round Up has returned and is once again ready to bring you the best trailers and videos from the week that was. We had a lot of new video content arrive on the interwebs this week, so let’s not waste any more time and dive right in. Enjoy!…

Sunday Video Round Up: Oct 14 – 20

The end of the week is here and so too is a brand new Video Round Up. Per usual, I’m bringing you the biggest and best trailers from the past seven days so buckle up and crank that volume. Here’s a little sneak peek at the entire list waiting for you below. We’re now less…