Rating of
4/5
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
When All Else Fails, Bring Out the Beds
Nintendo took me completely by surprise when, in September 2024, they stealth released a new entry in their stories ‘Legend of Zelda’ series. I was not overly enamored of their seminal 9th Generation entry in the series, dubbing it “Break of the Weapons,” since the acronym fits and that’s about the only thing I actually remember about the experience. My initially more-favorable-than-not view of that game only dropped as I broadened my horizons and experienced some more Sandbox games and found that Nintendo had just completely ripped-off and copied mechanics from other games, ruining a perfectly good ‘Zelda’ game in the process. This dismal view of their open world efforts has lead me to not even bother with the sequel to …
Rating of
3.5/5
X-Men: Children of the Atom
Another good Capcom 2D beat 'em up that's basically Marvel Superheroes with just the X-Men characters. It's more challenging but its over-reliance on special moves makes it feel more limited and less fun to play as a result. Still a very good quality fighting game with some super-cool characters though.
Rating of
3.5/5
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
Back in the day, there were something called arcades where people of all ages would go... to play video games. Yes, well before consoles, computers, tablets and even cell phones made gaming easy, you had to seek out games. Even in my youth, arcades were waning but before they went out, they gave us some amazing experiences. Among my favorites were the huge four-player beat-'em cabinets that gave us The Simpsons, X-Men and, yes, Ninja Turtles beating down enemies before taking on the level's boss. Many, many, many quarters later, I can say that I beat every game at least once. You may be asking yourself "Why is this clearly senile middle aged man talking about arcades when he should be reviewing this game?" - first, get off my lawn you …
Rating of
3/5
Dark Souls
Death Comes Easy, Victory Comes Hard
You play the role of the Chosen Undead, a cursed undead human who escapes the undead asylum in the kingdom of Lordran, who embarks on a perilous journey battling powerful foes, and must decide whether to rekindle the flame and prolong the age of fire or embrace the coming age of darkness.
Presentation
Dark Souls presents a dark atmospheric world, with intricate level design, and countless areas to explore. The game came out in 2011 on console, and in 2012 on PC, so the graphics are quite dated. I installed a graphics update known as DSFix, that improved the graphics dramatically. Definitely a must to enjoy the game fully.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Dark Souls is challenging, rewarding, and unforgiving. Simple as that. I chose a …
Rating of
3.5/5
Demon's Souls Remastered
Difficult, Frustrating, and also Rewarding
Demon's Souls is a remake of a game with the same name on PS3. It's a beautiful, difficult, and rewarding game that lacks when it comes to controls and explaining things.
I had never played a game in the "Souls" series before starting this so when I began I only knew a couple things. First, the series is pretty popular and second, that it's viewed as extremely difficult. By the time I finished I understood both of these things very well.
The story of this game isn't that intriguing. In a land called Boltearia an evil presence is taking over. A fog is enveloping the area and there are evil creatures and demons strung about. Once you're in there is no escape and it appears there's a evil being making people like you kill …
