It’s difficult to describe the past decade in gaming in a nutshell, especially when you throw the pandemic in to the mix. For much of the decade, it seemed the industry was on a certain trajectory, which unexpectedly shot off into the stratosphere and is now just normalizing. If there’s anything good to say about…
Category: General Commentary
The Duck’s Top 5 Events of the Decade: From Sketchy Practices to Movies and Beyond
For the Duck’s own list of the top 5 most important gaming events of the last decade, I’ve got a mix of good and bad. On one hand, certain companies have gotten greedier than ever. In the middle, we have well-intentioned developers who attempted to deliver a good product, failed, then tried their best to…
A Wild Ride: The Past Decade in Gaming
It’s kind of hard to believe that ten-plus years have already passed since we started Virtual Bastion (then “United We Game”) back in 2013. Our little space on the net isn’t quite what it was in the beginning, but I like to think that we haven’t changed all *that* much over the course of the…
Ace Attorney – It’s Good to be Back!
High on my 2024 “most anticipated” list was Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, a compilation released on the Switch in January. My first foray into the Ace Attorney series occurred seven years ago with the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy, which was old news by then. Still, I had a great time with the…
The Duck’s 2023 GOTY: Pikmin 4
Back in 2023, the Duck only played two games that were actually released in that year. Fortunately, they were both very good games, meaning I’m not going to have to compromise when it comes to my game of the year. My two options between which I needed to deliberate was The Legend of Zelda: Tears…
Cyberpunk 2077: Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes
If you’ve delved into the gaming Internet within the past few of weeks, they you’ve probably caught wind of Cyberpunk 2077’s “redemption arc” with its 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty DLC release. I admit that I was paying close attention, not so much for the DLC, but for the 2.0 update – the “thing” that…
Starfield, the Adventure Begins
After racking up about 20 hours in Starfield during its release weekend, it’s as good a time as any to throw my hat into the first impressions ring, the TL;DR of which is Starfield has so far been an enjoyable but imperfect experience. It’s different but also familiar, as if Bethesda simply placed a new…
Persona 5 Royal: Final Thoughts
Even though I’ve had some time to reflect on my time with Persona 5 Royal, I remain unsure how to best summarize my experience with the game. When I think about how it went, my brain stalls like a flooded car, because there are just too many things that I want to say and too…
Persona 5 Royal: The Longest Goodbye
Masayoshi Shido – the sureshot next prime minister and the Phantom Thieves’ final target. Or, maybe not? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because Shido was squarely in the thieves’ sights. Last time I grumbled a little about not having the best of times in two previous palaces, those of Okumura (the spaceport) and…
The hype is real…or is it?
If I’m being really, truly honest with myself, I can’t remember the last time I felt as hyped as I’m feeling now for two bigtime, upcoming releases: Starfield on the Xbox and Baldur’s Gate 3 on the PS5, both due on September 6th. Just how much space these two games are taking up in my…
VIRTUAL BASTION 