How SONY & Playstation Ruined Gaming
The Playstation was great for gaming...for a time, but nowadays, I believe SONY is complicit in a declining games industry and whilst not quite as damaging as Microsoft over the years, has still pretty much ruined gaming.
Pyramid Head and Death Of The Author | Is Silent Hill Lore Broken?
The Silent Hill lore surrounding Pyramid Head and his inclusion in Homecoming is a contentious point for fans of the series. Can the concept of death of the author help us discern whether the lore is broken, or are the words of creature designer Masahiro Ito, that James is the only character that could see him, absolute? Here I try to objectively look at the mythology of both Homecoming and Silent Hill 2.
Time and Eternity | Review | PS3
Have you fallen out of love with Japanese RPGs lately as I have? Often we have to return to the golden age of JRPG’s to remind ourselves how good the genre can be but a surprising amount of these games flew under the radar during the Playstation 3’s lifetime. I will definitely be talking about Folklore some other time, but for now, it’s Time And Eternity, a game which puts you in the shoes of a newlywed princess Toki whose perverted husband gets assassinated immediately after saying I do. Luckily the princess has the ability to reverse time to the months leading up to the wedding and with the help of her pet dragon and the soul of another woman, Towa, who also inhabits her body, tries to uncover the mystery behind the attack on her wedding in the hopes they can prevent it….did I mention this game is Japanese?
Great Games With Bad Endings | The Retro Perspective
Here's a list of 5 great games that kept us on the edge of our seats right up until their bad endings. Some of them not just bad, but utterly terrible.
Resident Evil's Fall From Grace Part 3: Resident Evil 6
Previously in the series we took a look at Resident Evil 4 & Resident Evil 5 but nothing could have prepared us for Capcom's descent in to the pure madness that is Resident Evil 6. For the very first time we play the game and give our thoughts on one of the worst games ever created. Everything from the animations & textures to the characters & inventory, we lay it all bare in this in depth review. Resident Evil 6 truly is one of the markers of the decline in quality of Japanese games and things only seem to be getting worse. Whether by creative bankruptcy, laziness or pure greed, this game series has fallen from a true icon of the gaming industry to a broken, zombie corpse, shell of its former self. At the very least Resident Evil 6 is in fact the scariest game of all time...scary how horrifyingly bad it is.
Final Fantasy X/X-2 & the Awful "Will" Audio Drama
We have two videos for you today! An in-depth discussion and review of Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster and a much shorter video summarising the 'Final Fantasy X -Will-' audio drama. My co-hosts Tom & Luke had never played an RPG before Final Fantasy X and 15 years later, the game remains one of their favourite games of all time.
Resident Evil’s Fall From Grace | Part 2
Following on from our in depth Resident Evil 4 review, we play Resident Evil 5 to shed some light on the most divisive title in the series. It's a game that at first glance is incredibly similar to the 4th, but with some crucial differences which quickly become the focal point of our discussion. Look out for part 3 too, because we'll be playing Resident Evil 6 for the first time ever...I'm sure it will be amazing.
Yakuza 5 | Review
Yakuza 5 is a fighting/driving/hunting/dancing/karaoke simulation/action-RPG game by SEGA. The Yakuza series, (known as Ryu Ga Gotoku in Japan) which has won excellence awards in its home country with practically every new release, is basically the Grand Theft Auto of Japanese gaming. Yakuza 5 was originally released in December 2012 but Western audiences have had to wait 3 years for a version which didn't require them to learn Japanese. Was it worth the wait? Oh god yes!
Shuffle or Boogie? | Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
Seen by many as a massive return to form for the series, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag puts you in the shoes of pirate Edward Kenway, sailing the West Indies in pursuit of his fortune. Black Flag manages to portray the sights of the Caribbean beautifully, the ocean in particular is probably the best looking thing I've seen in a game to date. The sounds however, fall so badly short of what we should expect of a so-called "AAA" game and consistently took me out of the experience of what should have been the most immersive pirate themed video game in history.
Metal Gear Solid 4's Terrible Boss Fights
"If we're really gonna discuss how good Metal Gear Solid is, we have to discuss the boss fights, in serious depth because Metal Gear Solid 1, 2 & 3...all have exceptional boss fights..."
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain | Review
When I was 14, for a high school show and tell style project, I decided to do a review of Metal Gear Solid 3. I recorded gameplay on to a VHS tape and used this to deliver a presentation to the class. The opening line of the presentation went something like: "This video game, created by the genius mind of Hideo Kojima..." Do I still think Hideo Kojima is a genius? Absolutely, he is still one of the few game directors out there who really knows how to put the player directly in to a video game character's shoes. Is everything he's ever done perfect? Definitely not. Is Metal Gear Solid V a 10/10 game? You'd have to be riding its gargantuan hype train to believe that to be the case but...on the other hand...is it not the greatest, purest stealth game ever created? It probably is. Apologies if you're getting mixed messages so far but, from beginning to end, that's exactly what Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has given me.
Metal Gear Solid V & The Bizarre Practice of Early Reviews
Gone are the days when we could play a game without knowing everything about it beforehand. When my 14-year-old self popped Metal Gear Solid 3 into the Playstation 2, do you know what I thought? “Damn, I can’t wait to see what Solid Snake and Otacon are gonna' get up to in this game." I was in for a big shock! I hadn’t tried to avoid any information about the game, nor did I actively seek it out...yet here we are years later and some people literally cannot avoid Metal Gear Solid V spoilers when the game is not even out yet.
Metal Gear Solid 4's Terrible Gameplay
It's fair to say that the hype surrounding Metal Gear Solid V has reached historic levels but I have a confession to make, I promised myself I would not get excited for Metal Gear Solid V because In 2008, Metal Gear Solid 4 was released with a legacy so gargantuan people tricked themselves into believing it was the greatest game of all time. It's time to stop kidding ourselves about Metal Gear Solid 4...