Category: Game Reviews

Game Reviews

Nintendo’s Smash Direct: The ‘Ultimate’ trailer video

Nintendo fans everywhere rejoiced as Nintendo big wig Masahiro Sakurai graced the audience with his presence in last week’s Smash Direct. The hardworking director of the soon-to-be monstrous hit “Smash Ultimate” planned the Direct out three days ahead of time, and the hype that went into the momentous event wasn’t just well justified: it was blown out of the water, completely. New characters, new modes, even modifications to modes of old and, of course, a few cliffbreakers, highlighted the mega direct.

Let’s recap and review: Continue reading “Nintendo’s Smash Direct: The ‘Ultimate’ trailer video”

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Game Reviews

Hosted Games: A titan in its field that’s stumbled, but hasn’t fallen

In the world of online gaming apps, there are a lot of failures. Games that had potential but didn’t get their due diligence. Every now and then you have a successful game which falls flat, usually due to the higher-ups’ poor decision making in some regard. You have your “Clash of Clans” types that have a five year bask in prominence, but for every one of those, there’re 1,000 which fall flat on their faces right out of the gates. Continue reading “Hosted Games: A titan in its field that’s stumbled, but hasn’t fallen”

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Game Reviews

Dead Frontier — A trailblazing game that overstayed its welcome

Last week, the “Dead Frontier” franchise announced that its long awaited-sequel to its first game, fittingly named “Dead Frontier 2”, will be released very soon, and even released a trailer offering a glimpse at the highly-anticipated game.

Before it comes out, though, it would be impossible to ignore its predecessor. Despite the headline of this review, I didn’t by any means dislike DF1. DF1, when was a revolutionary game for tis time that filled every zombie lover’s biggest wishes: Take the very tried-and-true zombie formula and backdrop, and make a MMORPG with it, filled with thousands of players taking on their own custom-built personas to survive in it, either with or against each other.

While the game isn’t first person, it’s the next closest thing to “if this was in real life, would I have the wits to survive, or maybe to even thrive?” Yet, it wasn’t perfect by any means. In fact, it was truly anything but. As the game grew older and less “fresh,” its imperfections shone in a brighter and brighter, and this was not helped by a less-than-perfect developing crew. Continue reading “Dead Frontier — A trailblazing game that overstayed its welcome”

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Game Reviews

Retrospective Review: A look back on Smash 4 from a competitive gamer

With Nintendo having released the trailer for “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” and officially declaring a release date, the time of Smash 4 is coming to an end. The game has been out for a few years, but unlike its predecessors, it didn’t have a lot of time before being replaced by a newer Smash. “Smash” 64 only lasted a couple years, but Melee came out … Continue reading Retrospective Review: A look back on Smash 4 from a competitive gamer

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Game Reviews

Rebuild 3 — this time, third time IS the charm

The last review I wrote spoke of a series whose third iteration totally tanked. Now I want to give focus to a trifecta of games in another series which was absolutely brilliant — the “Rebuild” series. Right in Sonny’s backyard (flash game, moderately popular for a period of time, zombie game, defunct for awhile before getting a third installment, the whole enchilada), “Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville” was an absolutely reanimating success in virtually every way imaginable. Mechanically, structurally, this game picks up where its predecessors left off and raises the bar miles high in the sky. Continue reading “Rebuild 3 — this time, third time IS the charm”

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Game Reviews

Sonny 2017 — third time’s not such a charm

When talking about contemporary gaming, and what dominates the interwebs of today, the “Sonny” franchise is hardly, if ever, mentioned. That’s probably because, until the tail end of 2017, the franchise was defunct, lacking a title since 2008, without one being confirmed to even be in development until very late in 2016, about 6 years after anyone who like the first two “Sonny” games or their flash brethren stopped caring about the series and flash games in general.

The first two games, while pretty good in the case of the first, and great for its time in the second, weren’t so unbelievably incredible that they were going to be engraved into the average gamer’s memory for a whopping eight years. They were pretty good flash games, not “Shenmue II.”

Even though award-winning music director David Orr performed debatably his finest work in the first two games, it was not enough to give the franchise that kind of following. And yet, it came anyways, stumbling onto the game marketplace in 2017. That said, it’s not all gloom and doom here, because as I said, the first two “Sonny” games were certainly solid in their own right. What could be the harm in making a third? Continue reading “Sonny 2017 — third time’s not such a charm”

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