Onelargeprawn
Art Academy for the Wii U is more of an app than a game, but its object is to teach people to draw and paint using the Wii U gamepad. A test of whether it is successful would be whether the skills learned within it are transferrable to proper pencil and paper media outside the app. I pulled out my easel and plonked the gamepad on it. Oh the conclusions I’ve drawn!
One of the most anticipated games this year has been The Witcher 3, and it was expected that it would raise the proverbial bar in many ways. The game series, as I’m sure you are already aware, is based on the books by Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski, and since the games have introduced the west to his world and characters, his books have become popular in parts of the world where Polish isn’t the natural language. Thankfully, you don’t need to have read the books–nor, for that matter, have played the prior games in the series–to understand the events of the game. But if you’re still sitting on the fence about the game, let me leave you fully enlightened after this review.
Right in time for the release of the new Jurassic Park film, we have a non-Jurassic Park game to review. But it still features dinosaurs. It’s like what would happen if you combined Pokemon with dinosaurs. Except the dinosaurs are called vivosaurs for no discernable reason. Sounds fascinating? Hop into the Bone Buggy and let’s go for a ride down to the corner of Archaeology Lane and Catch-em-all Avenue.
It’s not every day that big video game companies create new IP, instead preferring to rely on the name impact of existing, highly successful titles instead. This is why Mario has his face on so many Nintendo titles. Creating new IP is adding extra risk to what is, admittedly, a highly costly business. So it’s with no surprise, really, that we learn that Mario was originally supposed to be the face of Splatoon, Nintendo’s new third-person online battle arena game. I fill my super soaker with multicoloured ink, dunk my paint roller, and head for the urban parkways to see what Splatoon is all about.
No one should have any excuse for not knowing Erwin Schroedinger’s famous thought-experiment about the cat that was both alive and dead at the same time, as a metaphor for quantum states. For those of you who forgot, in short, there’s a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison, a detector, and a radioactive isotope. If the isotope decays, the detector detects it, breaks the vial, poison is released and the cat dies. If it doesn’t decay, the cat is alive and well. Without opening the box, how do you know if the cat is alive or dead? You don’t…until you open the box and observe the cat, it is both dead and alive at the same time. Don’t worry, though. No real cats were harmed in this experiment. Does all this have much relevance to the review? Why yes. Yes it does. Read on to find out why.
What happens when you mix Terraria (or Minecraft, if that’s your poison) with a strategy game, a tower defense game, and a healthy predilection for soup? You get PixelJunk Nom Nom Galaxy, a new game from the masters of addictive gaming, Q-Games and Double-11. Let me show you just how addictive making soup can be. Trust me: it’s more fun that it sounds.
Anyone who has seen or played Fantasy Zone will instantly recognize the insanely cute graphical stylings of an insanely difficult game (one of the few games that belong to a genre called, appropriately, “cute-’em-ups”). It has a long and very checkered history, with ports onto almost a dozen different platforms, including the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Megadrive, and of course, an appearance in video arcades. The 3D release of this game has now been released on the 3DS, and I get cute to bring this review to you.
From Software are famous for their extremely hard games, and from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls to Dark Souls II, you know you’re not going to have an easy time of this developer’s games. And like button-mashing masochists, everyone keeps going back for more punishment. Myself included. And this brutality is why we’re going to review Bloodborne, From Software’s first PS4 outing.
If you’ve not heard of Puzzle and Dragons before, odds are you don’t play many match-three style games on Android or iOS devices. The game is insanely huge, especially in Asian markets, and now the game is coming to Nintendo 3DS, along with a new Super Mario Bros. mode. I got a chance to review the bundle, so let’s dive in.
Codename S.T.E.A.M. is a new, turn-based, tactical action game for the Nintendo 3DS. The game is set in a Steampunk Victorian age during an alien invasion of the planet, and it’s up to your team of S.T.E.A.M. agents to save the day. Can you muster up the…you know…smoky stuff?