Category: Game reviews

Dr. Mario World (Mobile)

Who loved Dr. Mario as a kid? Well if you did there is great news for you. Dr, Mario World is now out on mobile. The sound is as nice as you would hope and the controls are a bit easier to deal with than I expected. Basically, you use the touch screen to slide the pills up and tap the screen to twist them. The game is free to play, so there is no risk in trying it out, and there is also some stuff to buy with real money. I didn’t touch it so I can’t tell you if it’s worth it or not, but it does exist. Nintendo needs to make some cash somehow to be fair.

I honestly have never hidden the fact that I am not big on puzzle games, so this one will get boring quick for me. With that said tho there isn’t anything that made me dislike the game. The sound was nice and the controls work with the game and that is all you need. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Killers (2010)

Killers with Kathrine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher is a 2010 Assasin comedy that was met with some mixed reviews. for example, it got a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 5.4/10 on IMBd but 89% of Google users like it. It also basically flopped in theaters with a 75 million dollar budget and a 98 million dollar box office.

The movie itself is about an Assasin, Spencer (Ashton) that is on a mission and meets a woman, Jen (Kathrine) that has just gone through a break-up and is on a family vacation. They quickly fall in love, get married and Jen never finds out about Spencer’s real job. They end up with the perfect suburban life. That is for the first about three years.

Around three years, Spencer’s old boss comes knocking and tries to drag him back into the business, and when he refuses a $20 million bounty is placed on his head and his neighbors literally start trying to kill him. Somebody has been placing sleepers in his life for years, and they are trying to collect.

The movie has its funny moments and of course, the acting is well done. I also enjoyed the entire concept and while the ending was pretty easy to see coming it was still pretty cool to see happen. This is one of those movies for fans of romantic comedies with a twist, it’s a great movie. For everyone else, maybe not so much. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Game of Evolution Click & Merge (Mobile)

Game of Evolution Click & Merge is clearly a clicker mobile game, and not a good one. You start with a single celled organism and combine them together. Each time you do this they will make a bigger creature. They eventually turn into land creatures such as dinosaurs, monkeys and people. Each increasing more advanced creature will be worth more money.

The problem is the game is never fun. There is no challenge to it, and the only fun part is that the creatures do look pretty cute. The sound is repetitive as well, so honesty while this is a short review, you shouldn’t waste your time playing this game. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dragonball Z:The Frieza Saga

dbz frieza

After defeating Ginyu at the end of the Dragonball Z: The Namek Saga , Goku is rushed into a Revitalization chamber while Ginyu hops around, stuck in the body of a frog. Frieza, a tyrant of seemingly unstoppable power, is approaching. While Vegeta sleeps, Gohan, Krillin, and Dende attempt to summon the dragon undisturbed. They manage to revive Piccolo and there Kami as well, and have Piccolo sent to Namek where he fuses with a dying Nail, becoming stronger than he thought possible. Frieza finds them, unleashing a new transformation just when our heroes believe they can win. Frieza brutally kills Vegeta, who tearfully tells Goku that he was a slave under Frieza his whole life and he never had a chance to be anything else. Angered Goku faces against Frieza’s final form but even with all his strength he can’t match Frieza’s might. His final solution: drop the biggest Spirit Bomb on Frieza he possibly can, having his friends try to hold him off. At first, it appears the bomb worked, but there hopes are quickly smashed when Frieza emerges, wounded and pissed, killing Krillin and mortally wounding Piccolo in a blink of the eye. Goku is furious, unleashing his rage in a frightening display, becoming the golden haired, aqua eyed Super Saiyan of legend. Suddenly the tables turn on Frieza, who is suddenly completely outmatched. However, he has a final transformation under his belt and uses his power to destroy the planet. Can Goku defeat Frieza before Namek explodes?

Here is where DBZ sold me. Frieza is a simple villain but his multiple, strange transformations and iconic voice make him one of the series most memorable bad guys. We see Gohan, Krillin, Vegeta, and Piccolo at some of there most badass but let’s face, Goku steals the show with his Super Saiyan transformation. Super Saiyan Goku vs Frieza on dying Namek is on of anime’s greatest battles and Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation set the standard for epic transformations in anime for decades to come. The finale is suspenseful as hell and ends on a great cliff hanger. This is one of my favorite sagas, despite the fact it’s pretty much one fight and Frieza does get annoying at times ( not to mention that son of a bitch can’t tell time to save his ass) but because of the awesomeness that is Super Saiyan and the suspenseful as hell climax and satisfying as hell end to Frieza, it’s one of my favorites and well worth a watch. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den

bs2 minervas den

I don’t really play many DLCs but if it’s a game I really love, I go all out. Minerva’s Den is a side story told alongside Delta’s story in Bioshock 2. We play as a Big Daddy named Sigma set off to venture into Minerva’s Den, the computer heart of Rapture. You’re sent by a man named Porter to search for the Thinker, which is said to be able to predict everything. It’s protected by the co-creator, Reed Wahl who’s gone mad from splicing…

I have to say there is some really cool new stuff in the levels. I love the Gravity Well plasmid, which has a awesome final form that can decimate a group of enemies at one. The addition of the ion laser is really nice too which is cost efficient when it comes to ammo and does quite a bit of damage. The Lancer Big Daddies are tough and filled me with dread each time I fought them. The story has a good twist at the end and its a pretty sad story. The only drawback is that it isn’t very long and there’s a lot of searching that can get pretty tedious. In the end, If you are craving more Bioshock this is a fun bite sized entry. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bioshock 2

bs 2 A great lesson in life is just because that its better to have small flaws than fix them and break perfection. While Bioshock is one of my all time favorite games, Bioshock 2 had a lot to live up to. Let’s descend into Rapture again..

After the fall of Ryan and Atlas, a new force took over by means of Sophia Lamb’s “Family”, turning the Splicers and down-trotted of Rapture into a cult. Before Rapture’s decline under Ryan, Lamb had her exceptional daughter turned into a Little Sister, protected by Delta, one of the first Big Daddies. Lamb, using a plasmid to control him, makes Delta seemingly kill himself so she can experiment on her daughter more, trying to make her the messiah of the Family. 1968, Delta is woken up again from a coma by Tenebuam, feeling his Little Sister Eleanor call out to him. Can Delta save Eleanor from the clutches of her mother?

There are some tiny improvements to Bioshock 2 but it doesn’t hold a candle to the first. The Story, while fine, feels copy and paste in certain areas; what hurts it is the fact that the choices you make don’t carry the same weight at the end as they do in the first. Although the weapons themselves are bigger, they don’t seem to do the damage they did in the first game either. I do like the fact you can use melee attacks with every weapon and the drill does some heavy damage later. While most of the plasmids and gene tonics are carried over from the first game, there are new enemies including the badass Big Sisters who were a great addition to the series. The characters are pretty good. The graphics are a huge upgrade but I can’t help but notice that they try too hard at times to be creepy with the setting. It was cool to live as a Big Daddy and gather Adam with the Little Sisters but like much of the game itself, it does get stale. Things like hacking, photographing enemies, and tonic storage are really simplified  combined with much more straight forward missions makes the game lose some charm. In the end, Bioshock 2 is a good game that could have been great but still worth trying if you loved the first. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bioshock

bioshock

There are few games I’d ever give a 10 out of 10 in life: Batman: Arkham Asylum , Red Dead Redemption , and Mass Effect 2 to name a few. Bioshock is one of them. I’ve played the game through half a dozen times over two console generations and I’m still finding new things in the desolate, leaky city of Rapture.

We play as Jack who is flying over the mid Atlantic in the year 1960. His plane crashes and he finds himself swimming to a lighthouse, finding only a pod that takes him to the underwater metropolis that is Rapture, where the science and art aren’t hindered by government or god. On the outside Rapture is gorgeous and a true sight to behold. Inside is decadent madness. Addicts called Splicers run free, addicted to the freedom to rewrite there genetic codes with Adam and plasmids. Mutated little girls and there hauntingly armored suit protectors, the Little Sisters and Big Daddies, extract Adam out of the corpses that litter the streets. Rapture was founded and run by Andrew Ryan, a visionary and business tycoon who doesn’t want Jack to leave, especially when aided by Atlas. Would ya kindly remember ” a man chooses and a slave obeys”

Bioshock is more than a FPS game. Besides guns, you get to partake in various plasmids and gene tonics, giving you a cool mix of powers and buffs. The detail in your skin when you change plasmids is one of my favorite parts of the game. The world is fascinating and creepy, hearing the rambling of the Splicers and the groans and thunderous footsteps of the Big Daddies. The characters are well done and the the story is a fantastic piece of smart science fiction. The graphics are pretty good on Ps4. There are a few fetch quests that are a pain the ass and there’s a hell of a difficulty spike after easy mode so I recommend going through on easy for collectibles. The DLC, besides a fun horde mode, also has a pretty interesting mode where you have to use your brain to traverse the levels. In the end, Bioshock is a classic that I can’t  recommend more. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Generals & Rulers (Steam)

 Generals & Rulers by Hamsters Gaming and they were kind enough to hook me up with a review copy of the game. The game for me is best described as a grand strategy game for people that don’t have a lot of time. A lot of the finer points that normally take a ton of time to learn and master have been simplified.  Taxes are based off citizens and research you have, which you can then use the money to buy more scientist and troops. Scientist will increase how much research you get per turn and you can use that to research whatever you want, upgrades to troops, diplomacy or whatever else you want in the pretty extensive but simplified tech tree.

War is also quite simple. It is a matter of picking an amount of troops you want to send to a country, and they will simply go instantly that turn. The rest will stay behind to defend your country. There is no need to move troops to certain locations within your borders.

The amount of countries to choose from is quite impressive for the price point of the game, at least 50 depending on which era you play in but it goes as high as about 100, and there are 10 troop types, which does match some Paradox games tho admittedly  how useful each individual troop type is can be debated.

The game itself however is fun, and if you don’t have a ton of time to play and learn this type of game this one is for you. Each round can be played in a few hours and there is plenty of reason to play again since there is a bit of a difference in each era and each play through. The game however isn’t perfect. If you are used to playing games like Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings 2 you will be pretty disappointed as there are no where near as many options for building or marriage and such. For $12 tho, it is worth it if you want to see if you enjoy this type of game. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Resident Evil 5 (PS4)

Originally released on PlayStation 3 with somewhat mixed reviews, my daughter recently got into Resident Evil 2 Remake and wanted to play the rest, so we decided to co-op Resident Evil 5. While graphically it isn’t bad and the controls hold up well, the split screen itself is atrocious. They don’t even use the entire screen, its just more or less 2 small squares of the screen, one for each player.

Aside from that, the AI is still pretty damn horrible as well to be honest. In single player Sheva is still more or less useless and will waste ammo on dead bodies. The story is also kind of convoluted, but that is pretty typical for the series. The game is fun in multiplayer tho, and I am having a blast with my daughter, but the game still leaves much to be desired and did not age very well for a lot of reasons. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Marvel Spider-man: City that Never Sleeps DLC

spidey dlc Marvel’s Spider-man (PS4) was one of my favorite games of the past few years both as a gamer and comic book fan. I finally got my hands on all three chapters of the City That Never Sleeps, which acts like a epilogue to the main story. New York is in the midst of a violent crime family war, seemingly being stirred by Spidey’s old flame Black Cat. If that wasn’t bad enough, Hammerhead is back and his gang has there hands on Silver Sable’s advanced tech

As far as DLC expansions go, there is decent amount of content here. There’s new bases, side missions with Screwball, and new collectibles as well as new suits available too. I’d say between the three chapters there is easily a good 6- 8 hours of story that is pretty well done and stands pretty well on it’s own; it’s not rushed or half -assed like many tend to do. My only issue is the full price tag : either $10 a chapter or $25 for the complete package is rather steep. I paid $20 for it all and that’s a fair price; I don’t recommend paying chapter by chapter unless hugely on sale like I did. Either way, it’s a good buy. May the gaming gods bring you glory.