It's rare when something that's so clearly playing off of your nostalgia actually delivers and makes good on all of those memories you have of a game instead of just reminding you how flawed your brain is. It turns out that the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series was phenomenal and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 brings everything you loved about the series into the modern era extremely successfully...
Gut Check: Spiritfarer
You'd think that a game about aiding the souls of the recently deceased in completing their various unfinished businesses would be a downer, but Spiritfarer just might be one of the most pleasant gaming experiences I've had this year. I Spiritfarer, you play as a young child who has been tasked with taking up the … Continue reading Gut Check: Spiritfarer
Gut Check: Fall Guys
Approximately 17 years ago at the last E3, the folks over at Devolver Digital had their annual conference(?) in which they revealed among other things, Fall Guys. Looking at that initial trailer, I had no idea what to expect and immediately shrugged it off as some sort of Mario Party clone. Fast forward to just last week when it finally released on Steam and as a "free" PlayStation Plus offering, and it's completely blown up to the point where the servers couldn't handle the amount of people trying to play it. It turns out Fall Guys isn't a clone of a bad game from a bad franchise...
Gut Check: Ghost of Tsushima
I went into Ghost of Tsushima knowing very little about what the game was outside of it being an open world action-adventure game set during a Mongol invasion of Japan during the 1270's. A cool premise to be sure, but a cool premise alone wasn't able to change the fact that I wasn't having much fun with the game itself...
Gut Check: Among Trees
There is no denying that Among Trees is cut from the same cloth as the countless other survival games that have existed over the years, but leaving it at that would not only be dismissive and reductive, but fairly inaccurate as well. While Among Trees is one of "those" kinds of games, it sands down some of the rough edges of other titles of its ilk that usually lead me to avoid the genre entirely. But there's something about this particular early access survival game that has me so fascinated and eager to continue playing it...
Gut Check: Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a game that might have been made with me and my proclivities in mind. In Hardspace: Shipbreaker, you play as an unnamed "cutter" for a company that dismantles and salvages derelict space crafts for various clients, while making sure to pick through everything in an effort to get a little extra bonus cash. It's currently in early access which is reassuring considering its various and completely understandable technical issues, that hopefully will be fixed as time goes on...
Gut Check: Neversong
Neversong is a spooky little side-scrolling game that tries to blend so many elements together, but ultimately doesn't succeed at most of them. The spooky action, adventure and puzzle game has an interesting enough stylistic and plot hook to grab your attention, but many of the gameplay decisions are just dull...
Gut Check: Beautiful Desolation
Beautiful Desolation is a point and click adventure game that puts you in the shoes of a gloriously mullet-ed man who is investigating the presence of a mysterious triangular object that's appeared in the sky. Through a combination of puzzle solving, dialogue trees and aimlessly wandering around gorgeously rendered landscapes, you start to peel back the cosmic mystery that's upended your life...
Gut Check: Umurangi Generation
Umurangi Generation is a stylistic and serene game about being a photographer in some weird dystopian, vaguely cyberpunk world where somebody is paying top dollar for your random pictures of birds. It's actually a really neat concept that fumbles the execution in certain spots...
Gut Check: Maneater
Maneater is a genuinely fun game with an extremely unique concept that ultimately gets bogged down in repetition and monotony far sooner than you'd expect. One would think that a game about being a shark that's hell-bent on consuming and destroying any and everything in its path would be more exciting to play, and while the moment to moment gameplay achieves that desired level of excitement, the objectives and grinding required of you become very tedious, very quickly...
