Sometimes when I sit down to write these blog posts, I wonder to myself what kind of point I might want to make about the game in question. Often I have something I want to say, so I just ramble on until I think I've said it, but then there are those special cases where I don't really feel like I have a lot to say, but I still want to ramble on a bit because I had such a good time after all.
Viewing entries tagged
square enix
There's something about the latest Tomb Raider trilogy that always leaves me with unanswered questions. After finishing each game, I think back on the story and the gameplay, and find a large hole where something important seems to be missing. Even though I've enjoyed these games and have been wonderfully entertained by the updated adventures of Lara Croft, I feel like I'm still left wanting. Now that I've finished the third in the recent series, I feel like I might be able to put my finger on precisely what could be missing.
Whenever a particular series of games has a monopoly on a genre, I'm always eager to check out any competition that crops up. This is often the case with sports games as real life teams and branding get licensed to a single developer and nobody really wants to play as fictional teams instead of the ones they actually support IRL. Thankfully though, there's a bit more variety to be found in the racing genre.
Across all forms of media, a reboot can be a risky undertaking. The good ones revitalise an idea and bring it up to date with modern techniques and technologies. While the bad ones leave fans of the original betrayed and wronged for having their beloved art bastardised into something else. Unfortunately it seems like a lot of reboots fall into the bad category, but I actually enjoy rebooted video games for a number of key reasons.
Seems I've been playing a few mobile ports lately, which could reveal an improvement of mobile games, or perhaps a better understanding of how to port mobile games to PC. A while ago it seemed like every mobile port was guaranteed to be garbage, but it's hard to deny that developers have learned from past mistakes and there are some cool titles available if you look hard enough.
I think it's fair to say that narrative focused games got a real boost when TellTale came out with their version of The Walking Dead. It was arguably when the mix between visual novels and point and click adventures became popular. So why haven't we seen more clones of the formula? Why is it that Life Is Strange feels like the only direct competitor around?
The first time I saw the computer game version of Monopoly, it blew my tiny little mind. As with Battle Chess before it, here was a game I'd played in the real world enhanced by animations and sounds that seemed impossibly immersive. However, when the novelty wore off, the lack of physical interaction with a game like Monopoly only served to expose its weaknesses. The more you play the video game version, the more you realise it's one hundred percent dice rolls, with little else happening along the way.