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Review – Hotline Miami
Killing without consequence is something that video games seem to share with action movies. Regardless of how heroic a protagonist is supposed to be, they usually leave a wake of dead bodies. In reality, each of these deaths would have serious repercussions, from families robbed of father figures who made questionable decisions to severe problems with the law. But according…
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Review – Celeste
Celeste is a game about climbing a mountain in both the literal sense and allegorical one. And while I feel I'm climbing my own mountain right now, and can relate to a protagonist struggling with depression and anxiety, I'm not sure the view is worth the effort.
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Review – Undertale
Undertale has become one of the most influential indie games of all time, which is interesting, since it clearly contains a lot of DNA from Earthbound and Love-de-Lic joy-makers. Putting that aside, however, it's easy to see what made it so effective, and I'm not talking about the art style.
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Review – Chex Quest
My mother had tight control over the cereal I ate when I was a child. I never got to have Fruity Pebbles or Trix, which I always enjoyed when visiting a friend or relative, but I was allowed to have Sugar Crisp, which is, essentially, the sugariest cereal in the universe, so work that out. Also, I don’t like Sugar…
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Review – Super 3-D Noah’s Ark
On the ashes of Atari, Nintendo forged an empire in the late 80’s through a mix of good games and evil business practices. Nintendo of America’s early days were marked with anti-competitive practices that broke down in the 90’s under the weight of how illegal they were. That’s a topic for another day, but suffice to say that Nintendo held…
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Review – Coffee Crisis
The beat-’em-up genre is one of the simplest formulas in gaming. During the early 90’s, following the release of Final Fight in the arcades, the genre exploded and found itself host to all manner of licensed tie ins. If you had a super-hero, action movie, or mascot that you needed to cram into an interactive format, the conveyor-belt beat-’em-up was…
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Review – Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
The follow-up to Maniac Mansion drops the horror/sci-fi pretense to attempt full comedy. It features a tabloid writer looking for an escape from his job. Or something. Honestly, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders could do with a head shake. But it is a SCUMM adventure game, so it's not all bad.
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Review – Maniac Mansion
Whenever I explore a new facet of video games, I have a tendency to go in hard. If there’s some revered series or sub-genre that I’ve yet to touch, I’ll dive right in from the beginning and blow through as many titles as possible before my endurance is expended. So of course I had a point-and-click adventure phase, what (formerly)…
