Guncraft: Blocked and Loaded - Xbox 360 Review

What happens when you marry two very different but popular genres? Well, I suppose it depends on the game types you are talking about, but Guncraft: Blocked and Loaded takes FPS popularity and applies it to the block building goodness that games like Minecraft helped to popularize. The end result? A surprisingly fun experience.

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Game of Thrones: Episode Three - The Sword in the Darkness - Xbox 360 Review

Choice.  Or at least the illusion of choice.  That’s the core gameplay element of the episodic adventure games by Telltale Games.  Great storytelling and strong characters make up the rest of the experience.  Both seasons of their Walking Dead series featured dozens of great characters and tons of choices along the way.  The story pretty much got to the same point by the end, but what was really interesting were those “important” moments, the ones that you worried about making the wrong decision.  One of the coolest features of the series is the recap at the end of the episode that showed what you chose for a handful of key decisions and compared it to others who also played the episode.

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Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series - Episodes 1 & 2 - Xbox 360 Review

Back in the early 2000s (2002 or so?), my brother handed me a book he thought I would like.  It was A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.  At first, I was a caught a little off guard by the fact that the perspective shifted between characters every chapter, but once it got going, I was hooked.  I immediately went out and got the next two in the series and joined the fans waiting for book 4…and 5…and now 6.

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Game of Thrones: Episode One - Iron From Ice - Xbox 360 Review

Game of Thrones (or, as the series is called, A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin has become something of a media juggernaut in recent years, going from a massively popular book series to an ever more popular HBO series. In this day an age, as popularity increases, it is a near guarantee that a video game will be released to capitalize on the success of the other media types; Game of Thrones has not escaped this fate. To fans of the series' dismay, a number of fairly abysmal games have been released under the property, to the point where the best game is not actually a game, but rather a total conversion mod for Crusader Kings II.

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Chivalry: Medieval Warfare - Xbox 360 Review

I first picked up Chivalry a couple of years ago when it released on the PC. I enjoyed it well enough despite some flaws and always felt like this was a title that would perform well on a console. Certainly using a controller felt more natural than a mouse and keyboard and the title was never such a visual powerhouse that it needed state-of-the-art technology to succeed. The good news is, the game I enjoyed on the PC has been faithfully ported over to the Xbox 360. I just wish a bit more time had gone into improving upon the formula from over two years ago, because not doing so feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

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Tales from the Borderlands: Episode One - Zero Sum - Xbox 360 Review

You got a cel shaded action game into my adventure game engine! You got your episodic story game into my gear driven shooter! Delicious. Tales from the Borderlands takes the two great tastes of Telltale’s renowned adventure game style and Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise and crafts a completely new experience. With Telltale really hitting their groove and releasing a number of 5-part games over various properties and Borderlands coming off of the latest Pre-Sequel release in the franchise, both parts of the equation are big right now. But is Episode One of Tales from the Borderlands an odd arranged marriage to capitalize on the hot trends, or a worthy evolution of the adventure game genre and a success in its own right?

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Persona 4 Arena Ultimax - Xbox 360 Review

I enjoyed Persona 4 Golden when I had a chance to play it on the Vita, and that was my entry point into the world of Persona. I know Nick has played several other games in the series, dating back to the PlayStation original years ago, but for me this was the entry point. I have to admit that when Persona 4 Arena came out, I was highly skeptical of taking a popular RPG franchise and trying to make it into a fighting game. Needless to say, I was convinced in short order that the strange combination would be a hit. Apparently it was popular enough, because Persona 4 Arena Ultimax has since come out, and it is even better than the last offering.

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The Walking Dead: Season 2 - Episode 5: No Going Back - Xbox 360 Review

And there we have it.  Clementine rides off into the sunset of Season 2 with somebody.  Who?  Well, that really depends on how you spend the last 10 mins or so.  But we’ll get to that in a minute.

“No Going Back” is the finale to the very strong Season 2 of The Walking Dead.  This season has very much been about Clementine’s maturation into an independent survivor who can take care of not only herself, but others as well.  During Season 1, she spent the majority of the time as the MacGuffin.  Her purpose in the game was to give Lee purpose.  Without Clementine, Lee didn’t really have any reason to head to Savannah and get hooked up in all these crazy adventures.

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Dark Souls II: Crown of the Old Iron King - Xbox 360 DLC Review

Dark Souls II has been holding its own as a Game of the Year contender for me since it released, and the Crown of the Sunken King DLC did a great job of reminding me why I love the game so much, beckoning me back to it yet again. I was curious to see what direction the team would take the remaining two pieces of DLC, and having had a chance to finally play Crown of the Old Iron King, I am happy to say that the experience is still worthwhile.

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The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 4 - Amid the Ruins - Xbox 360 Review

Oh Telltale Games, you masters of the cliffhanger.  You got me again.  When is episode 5 coming out?  Not soon enough. 

After playing ten episodes of The Walking Dead games (five from season 1, 400 Days, and now four episodes of season 2), it is clear that Telltale Games really knows how to work episodic content.  Each episode so far has had its own little arc, while tying neatly to the overall story.  They each leave you wanting more, but also feeling satisfied.  I feel that they really have the game length about right.  I was able to plow through episode 4 in a single night and yet, I don’t feel like it was too short.  In fact, towards the end, I could feel the ending coming and was already starting to think of the long wait to see how this season finishes up.

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Medal of Honor: Warfighter - Xbox 360 Review

Medal of Honor: Warfighter puts you in the role as a member of Task Force Mako; a team primarily made up of U.S. Navy Seals and, you guessed it, you're on a mission to stop some bad people from doing bad things to assets of the U.S.A. (pretty typical fare, for a modern-day military FPS game).

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Xbox 360 Review

Following the same suit that most other first person shooters do, there's an emerging bad guy group that's out to cripple the USA and it's up "Bad Company" to go through and stop them.

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Homefront - Xbox 360 Review

Homefront takes place in the near future in rural USA where North Koreans have successfully invaded (and occupied) parts of the western coast of the United States. 

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Crysis 3 - Xbox 360 Review

Crysis 3 takes place 24 years after the events of Crysis 2 in an even more dilapidated New York City where the entire city has changed drastically (due to the events of Crysis 2) over the last two-and-a-half decades.

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Crysis 2 - Xbox 360 Review

The sequel to Crytek's Crysis from 2007. Crysis 2 starts off shortly after the end of the original Crysis (you can read my review of Crysis here) and start in the instantly recognizable New York Harbor; naturally  there are explosions and bullets and water ( the theme for first person shooters at the time was water ... everything seemed to be revolving around water and yes, I'm looking at you Call of Duty and Battlefield games ...).

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Street Fighter X Tekken - Xbox 360 Review

This one has been out for a while, and it has been of interest to me ever since it was first announced. Street Fighter and Tekken are among my favorite franchises - I have been playing both series for a very long time. I immediately had concerns about trying to blend those two distinctly different games together. On the whole, I prefer Tekken over Street Fighter, but both have their merits. That being said, Street Fighter is a 2D series that relies on projectiles and very price command inputs. Tekken is a bit looser with the combat, giving you some characters who can button mash to success (while still offering plenty of depth to those who want to learn specific character combos and techniques). Tekken plays out in a 3D plane however, with only a handful of ranged attacks.

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The Walking Dead: Season 2 - Episode 3: In Harm's Way - Xbox 360 Review

The first two episodes of The Walking Dead Season 2 escalated the tension by building up threat of Carver and the mystery of what happened between him and Clementine’s new survivor pals.  As she meets the group and tries to earn their trust, she keeps hearing about Carver and how awful it will be when he finds them and then if he catches up to them.  I felt that one of the biggest highlights in Episode 2 is a tense showdown when Clementine first meets with Carver.

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The Walking Dead: Season 2 - Episode 2: A House Divided - Xbox 360 Review

By the end of the second episode of the latest season of Telltale Games’s The Walking Dead, the tension is high and depending on your choices, this season’s body count starts to mount.  The game picks up right where Episode 1 left off and you are immediately faced with the consequences of the decision you made concerning who to help.

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The Walking Dead: Season 2 - Episode 1: All That Remains - Xbox 360 Review

Winner of over 90 different Game of the Year awards, the first season of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead was almost universally acclaimed for its rich characters, engaging plot, and an art style that immediately connected it to the original comic series.  Not only that, the general public seemed to respond to it as well, making it a bona fide success for the episodic delivery model.  Critically acclaimed AND popular with the masses?  No surprise then that Season 2 is upon us.  Can it live up to the expectations set by the first game?  Based on the first episode, it is off to a good start.

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Bound by Flame - Xbox 360 Review

When I first heard about Bound By Flame some months ago I was a bit taken aback be the relative lack of readily available information on the game. From the first screenshots I was hooked and wanted more and Bound By Flame was easily one of my most anticipated titles of 2014. As more information was released, from gameplay videos to featurettes on the composition of the music I couldn't wait and was so eagerly looking forward to Bound By Flame that when it came across my desk I was literally jumping for joy as the wait was finally over...

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