Indie Review – Sequence

Sequence is an interesting game. It is the first outing for indie video game developer; Iridium Studious. In fact, the original release was not on any major service, but just on X-Box Live Indie games. This service is home to games generally made by extremely small groups, with minimal budget, and often just for practice. In addition, it is a combination of a rhythm based game and an RPG. With such an interesting marriage of genres, it begs the question; can a game with such a clash of styles be worth playing?

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Indie Review – Avadon: The Black Fortress

Third-Person Isometric RPGs have been around for a long time. Some of the most famous are Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, and the well-loved Fallout series. They’ve fallen to the wayside lately however, replaced with different styles. Even Fallout 3 now uses the same first-person system as Morrowind. Independent games have been taking up the slack, especially Spiderweb software, which has two series of games, concentrating on scripting with incredibly detailed character customization. Will their newest game; Avadon, be as good as Avernum and Geneforge?

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Review – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I sat inside of an inn, basking in the warmth of the fireplace as I read over a few books that I had collected along my journey. The quaint establishment was full of chatter that ranged from talk of a thieves guild I had helped re-establish to a bard playing his lute while singing a song I had heard many times. Patrons interacted with each other independently of my influence, and even gathered around the singing bard, waving their cups in the air along with the song. It was a small moment, one of many, but one I couldn’t help but to seep myself into as I sat on my own couch in the real world eating a meal that would keep me going for a few more hours. I had barely delved into the main quest to rescue the world from the threat of the dragons that looked to end the world, but I had cleared my way through many dungeons and conquered what they had laid out before me. Uncovering many stories within that I might otherwise had missed. It was this sense of discovery in a world that never ceased to give me things to do that inspired me to impart so much of my free time into a game that rarely failed to immerse me in a way I had never been before in this medium of entertainment.

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Review – Dark Souls

In 2009, FromSoftware gave us Demon’s Souls, a notoriously difficult action-RPG that earned a massive cult following. For its fans, Demon’s Souls’ mix of punishing gameplay and bizarre multiplayer marked it as one of the most interesting titles ever made. Now, FromSoftware brings us that game’s spiritual successor, Dark Souls.

Aside from a new open-world structure and story, Dark Souls looks and feels almost identical to its forebearer.

Just like it’s father, Dark Souls is the Tim & Eric Awesome Show of video games.

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Review – Monster Tale

DreamRift rewards fans of their previous sleeper hit, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, with a room-crawling*, beat’em up, platforming adventure in Monster Tale.

* Since I’ve called a personal moratorium on the awful term “Metroidvania“, I’m going to define that type of game as a room-crawler.

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GolgoHypeMachine – Islands of Wakfu

Square-Enix and Ankama Group are bringing the world of Dofus and Wakfu to XBLA with Islands of Wakfu. Islands of Wakfu is a dungeon crawler beat-em-up bullet hell co-op RPG. Sounds good to me!

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Review – Pokémon Black

To call me a fan of the Pokémon franchise would be an understatement.  While I’ve never caught ‘em all, I’ve definitely played ‘em all (the games, not the adorable little Pocket Monsters themselves), and am still a huge fan of the biggest thing to come out of Japan since sumo wrestlers.

(I was going to go with a much less tasteful joke there, but given that it hasn’t even been two weeks since large parts of Japan were left in waste, I opted not to.  Probably a wise decision.)

Anyway, Pokémon: Black Review: I CHOOSE YOU!

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