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(07/09/18 1:00pm)
By Eli Sokeland
Ever since “Mario Tennis Power Tour,” the series has been rather disappointing on multiple fronts. The lack of modes, mechanics, and customization in recent entries pushed me away from playing them entirely. However, with the promises that Nintendo made for “Mario Tennis Aces,” there is a lot that the game has to live up to.
(07/05/18 4:47pm)
by Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the Nintendo Switch version of the game and was played primarily in docked mode. This copy of the game was provided free of charge by the developer for review purposes.
When Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was announced for the PS4, long-time Playstation fans were both shocked and amazed. Finally, a developer was going to give Crash Bandicoot the love it was missing for so long since the IP was acquired by Activision. However, the more incredible thing is that for the first time, the entire Crash Bandicoot trilogy would be available on non-Sony platforms. Particularly, die-hard Nintendo fans could finally experience the trilogy on a Nintendo console. Aside from the fact that Nintendo has claimed the head of another former rival mascot (first Sonic, now Crash), portability for these games is also something that’s great to have in theory.
The Switch port has everything intact from the PS4 version, along with all additional content that was added after release but now with portable capabilities. It’s nothing too special, but for those who’ve never gotten to experience one of pioneers in 3D platforming, it’s a very good treat.
(06/29/18 6:43pm)
By Tanner Kinney
(06/29/18 3:55pm)
By Trevor Sheffield
The art of the video game/movie tie-in is a long lost one in this day and age. Up until a certain point, if a blockbuster was in cinemas (especially if it was animated), you knew that there would be a video game adaptation rip roaring and ready to go on store shelves.
Most of them, however, were garbage made for a quick buck.
Case in point, The Incredibles. Released in 2004, the film was among the many animated films of the era that received a home console adaptation to capitalize on its release. Heck, it was one of the few tie-in games that actually got a semi-canonical sequel (The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer), a rarity in of itself. Cut to FOURTEEN years later, and with Incredibles 2 in theaters, a new game featuring Pixar's first family of superheroes has hit the scene, backed up by a brand new game. However, the blockier format isn’t just a graphical limitation.
(06/23/18 6:00pm)
By Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the Nintendo Switch version of the game and was primarily played in docked mode.
The Nintendo Switch has proved itself to be a very versatile console to match a versatile company like Nintendo. A console that houses both DOOM and Pokemon Quest within the same shop makes for an interesting line-up. As Nintendo slowly gets their main franchises to the Switch, with Pokemon, Metroid, Yoshi, and Smash Bros. coming soon, it’s the constant drip-feed of titles that keep the console alive during dry spells. One of those games is Sushi Striker: The Way of the Sushido. Nintendo, in conjunction with indieszero (developers of the Theatrhythm Final Fantasy series), created an incredibly charming, though somewhat imbalanced game.
(06/12/18 7:11pm)
Nintendo’s abandonment of the traditional E3 press conference has been a huge boon for the company. No longer tied down by audio issues and strange gameplay demos, the company can focus on neatly produced game showcases, and give proper time and attention to bigger titles. With some showstoppers like a new Smash Bros, Metroid Prime 4, and the next mainline Pokemon games coming soon, Nintendo had a ticket for the best show in town. If only they actually showed those showstopping titles, aside from Super Smash Bros.
(06/12/18 7:09pm)
Sony had set the tone for their conference early in the week by announcing they would be revealing five new games coming to PlayStation in the five days leading up to E3. With some smaller announcements out of the way, Sony left time in their conference for some big reveals, so let’s take a look at what they showed off.
(06/11/18 10:36pm)
Ubisoft had a very positive 2017. Sure, For Honor had one of the roughest launches for an online game in recent memory, but the year quickly turned around for Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed: Origins boasts some of the best reviews since Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, setting the series on a more positive course. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was hailed as an unexpected success on the Switch. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon opened to tepid review scores, but updates and patches have transformed the game. Ubisoft has also had success this past year with the release of South Park: The Fractured But Whole and Far Cry 5.
(06/11/18 6:56pm)
Square-Enix, despite being a long time publisher and developer with dozens of franchises under their wing, has spent very little time with E3 press conferences. Their last E3 showing was three years ago, where they showed trailers that were already shown at Sony’s conference that year. With two long-awaited titles in Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy VII Remake finally happening (eventually), Square has a lot to show, with room for plenty of surprise announcements. If fans are expecting something on the level of Microsoft yesterday or Sony later tonight, they’re going to be disappointed.
(06/11/18 4:39am)
Bethesda’s theme at E3 this year was “create”. They wanted to create something unique and new that nobody was expecting them to do. And while some things like Rage 2 had been leaked beforehand, there were still plenty of huge surprises Bethesda had yet to show off. I, for one, can’t wait to play Skyrim on my Etch a Sketch.
(06/10/18 11:32pm)
Microsoft, and in particular the Xbox brand, has struggled to get a leg up over the competition throughout the current generation. The Xbox One was controversial out of the gate, and even with continuous effort from Microsoft to improve user experience they aren’t keeping their customers. With previous major releases like Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2 underperforming and potential system sellers like Scalebound getting cancelled, Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up. With only Crackdown 3, another Gears of War, another Halo, and another Forza on the horizon, Microsoft needs to make some major announcements of big, and most importantly new, exclusives to get people back on Xbox.
(06/10/18 6:44pm)
This week, Steam announced that it no longer plans on moderating any content put on it’s store, barring things that are “illegal” or “trolling.” What this means is obviously open to interpretation, with legality varying from country to country and trolling being possibly the most vague term they could have chosen.
(06/10/18 6:37pm)
The latter half of 2017 and the fist few months of 2018 were very eventful for Electronic Arts. Visceral Games was shuttered, and EA acquired Respawn Entertainment. The company almost singlehandedly launched a wave of government regulation because of the loot boxes in Star Wars Battlefront II. A Way Out was released and was very positively received by critics and players alike. More recently, the trailer for Battlefield V stirred controversy by showing a woman fighting in WWII (the gall of them).
(06/08/18 10:00am)
By Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM.
Shaq Fu is sort of a legend in gaming culture. This bizarre 16-bit fighting game featured East-Asian culture, mysticism, magic, and Shaquille O'Neal in the middle of it all. If that at all seems interesting, the more interesting part is that the game is completely irredeemable. Shaq Fu was buggy, slow, unfair, and easily one of the worst fighting games of the 16-bit era, possibly of all time. Yet, its infamy garnered a significant following among an internet culture obsessed with ironic enjoyment of things. So, in March 2014, at the height of a fundraising craze sparked by Mighty No. 9, Big Deez Production (yes, that’s the real name) launched an Indiegogo campaign to create the long-awaited sequel, Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn. $473,000 and four years later, it was finally released.
The best thing that can be said is that it is better than the original. But that’s a bar so low, it’s buried underneath Shaq’s wine cellar. This game doesn’t deserve to be graded on a curve.
(06/03/18 8:30pm)
By Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM.
Castlevania is one of the original platformer franchises and a legend among fans of the genre. Yet Castlevania, along with its NES brother-in-arms Mega Man, was mishandled by the publisher for the longest time until eventually just getting put in cryostasis until someone could figure out what to do with it. While Capcom has decided to revive Mega Man in a big way with Mega Man 11, Konami has let their respective franchise fade to dust, with only a pachinko game being released under the Castlevania name. The producer behind Castlevania, Koji Igarashi, made a Kickstarter to launch their own spiritual successor to Castlevania, named Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This isht similar to when Keiji Inafune swindled desperate Mega Man fans into funding a poorly managed rush-job called Mighty Number 9.
Fortunately, if Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (developed by IntiCreates, rather than Igarashi himself) is anything to judge by, the future is looking much brighter for fans of classic Castlevania.
(05/25/18 12:49am)
(05/25/18 12:42am)
[embed]https://soundcloud.com/user-519363288/the-coven-s4e11-bullyhunters[/embed]
We're back witches, with another magical episode of the Coven Podcast. This week, we're looking at Bullyhunters. So it's no secret that gaming online can be a really toxic, and playing online as a woman or a person of color comes with the hazard of ten year olds targeting you for that. There's plenty of evidence of this kind of griefing online, but what can be done? Systemic overhaul of the problematic culture around gaming? Turning off voicechat? No... clearly the only effective solution is hunting the bullies down. Bully Hunters was a failed venture launched earlier this month that claimed to shut down "bullies" is CS:GO via an elite hit squad of vigilante female gamers. During an error-ridden, cringe-y livestream, Bully Hunters showed off how they'd shut down bullies "at their own game" by targeting and taking them down in-game. Bully Hunters has since shut down after a relentless onslaught of criticism: fighting fire with fire is dumb, the campaign used inaccurate and misleading statistics and it did more harm than good to female gamers. Where do we go from here? Was there a right way to do bully hunting? How can gaming be made less toxic? Is this cyber bullying? What can be done to avoid/shut down cyber bullying? Let's gather around the cauldron and talk on this week's episode of The Coven.
Hosted by: Daley Wilhelm, Matthew Yapp, Tyler Wheatley
Edited by: Phil Akin
Graphic by: Daley Wilhelm
Graphic by: Isabella Torres
(05/24/18 11:30am)
By Tanner Kinney
When the game series Shin Megami Tensei comes up, it generally raises eyebrows and gets confused looks. Despite being one of the tentpole JRPG franchises, the series has only recently started to gain a more significant following in the West, which is almost entirely attributed to the Persona spin-off series. And while the Persona games are definitely great, the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games are a unique experience that is hard to find in other games within the genre. The games tackle more mature themes and philosophies up-close and personal, rather than through the veil of a high school anime. Although the mainline has become more diluted by excessive anime in recent installments, they haven’t gone full Fire Emblem waifu simulator. Yet.
So when it was announced that Atlus would be re-releasing one of the mainline titles, Strange Journey, onto a more modern console, I was pretty excited. The original is a very good game that could only be improved when stepping away from the limited Nintendo DS hardware. Unfortunately, Altus did what Atlus does best: re-use as many assets as possible. At the very least, they didn’t ruin an incredible title through their laziness this time.
(05/16/18 8:25pm)
By Tanner Kinney
Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM.
Flash gaming has a significant place in gaming history. Both indie games and mobile games owe a lot of their tropes and gameplay models to older Flash games. Angry Birds was inspired by Crush the Castle, for instance. However, since the slow death of Adobe Flash Player, many of those Flash developers have moved onto creating mobile games or smaller indie titles. Some of the biggest Flash games have even found revivals on the Steam platform, which is a joy to see. Epic Battle Fantasy IV, for example, is a fantastic and relatively successful game that stays true to the Flash originals, but adds enough to make it worth the full release. Similarly, Infectonator 3: Apocalypse keeps the essence of the original games alive, but in this situation, fails to really make itself noteworthy on a legitimate game platform.
(05/14/18 6:42pm)
By Phil Akin
This was played on the Nintendo Switch
This review mainly focuses on the new Funky Mode
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on the Switch is a challenging port. Not to mention that it’s a stunningly beautiful game both in docked and handheld modes. If you’re only in it for the visuals, you won’t be disappointed. Never before has Donkey Kong’s hair looked this good. I’ve never played a Donkey Kong game before, and what better way to jump into the series?