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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 – Shadowrun: Hong Kong
I'm always hungry for Shadowrun. Shadowrun Hong Kong builds off Harebrained Schemes' previous games to present something that is similar, improved, but also deficient in some ways. Or over-ficient, maybe. Listen, I'm not sure how much to give away in these blurbs. Maybe just read on to see what I mean.
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Review – Deltarune: Chapter 1
As much as I adore the game, I don’t want a sequel to Undertale. It’s not that I think that developer Toby Fox wouldn’t do a decent job of it, but it’s a self-contained story that wraps up in a satisfying way. Any attempts to extrapolate on it would feel cheap and lessen the impact. Luckily, for his follow-up game,…
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Review – Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut
Shadowrun Returns set the groundwork for Harebrained Scheme's trilogy, and Dragonfall picks up the ball and runs with it. Wait... I guess "builds on it" would be the better follow-up to that analogy, but it's not as fun as taking a ball and running with it.
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Review – Celeste
It dawned on me recently that a lot of the games I played this year didn’t actually come out in 2018. I mean, you can look back through the blog and get a good account of what I played through; not a lot of new releases. Hell, I spent the first month of the year playing the early Elder Scrolls…
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Review – Undertale
I purchased Undertale shortly after its initial release way back in 2015, but I never finished it. This is because my initial experience was interrupted when I ended up enduring a period of emotional unrest (to put it lightly). I’m not prepared to get into all the depressing details, but the events were so traumatic that I’ve been avoiding certain…
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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 – Never Stop Sneakin’
I have a pretty severe distaste for Metal Gear Solid, but I will readily admit that it is stylish, which is probably a big factor in its lasting popularity. It copied its MSX predecessors’ palette of cool blues and greys, giving it a cold and sterile appearance, then bloated it out into full 3D. It really owned its blocky, pixelated…
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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 – Fallout 2
I admit it, I’m part of the unwashed filth that was first introduced to the Fallout series with Fallout 3, but since I first dug into that game, it had been my intention to visit the games that had initially spawned the franchise. Fallout 1 frustrated me by placing my character in borderline unwinnable scenarios. In Fallout 2, I couldn’t…
