Sometimes you only have one chance to make a good first impression. Shroud of the Avatar makes a lousy one. After spending a few hours with the game, I feel no desire to continue playing it. I didn't even get out of the starting area. Shroud of the Avatar (SotA) is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer on-line role-playing…
It's probably unfair for me to review Shadow of the Tomb Raider so soon after Spider-Man. My viewpoint is skewed because Spider-Man is clearly the better game. It's also unfair because I'm not a professional videogame reviewer, though I feel compelled to write reviews; I feel that one game is better than the other, but I struggle…
I'll start by addressing the big problem with this game: On its easy difficulty setting (dubbed "Friendly"), the game is much too hard for casual players -- at first. The game starts in media res, with Spider-Man fighting the thugs of Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin. Since this videogame is frequently compared with Batman: Arkham Asylum, I'll…
Through a World of Warcraft discussion message board, I heard of a research study being conducted by West Virginia University on the relationships between videogame players and their avatars. In a "what the hell" mood, I responded to the survey with a story about one of my WoW characters. I thought the story was minor, but to…
About a year ago, I joked that from now on, all console games that I played must have a colon in their name, because the ones I played with a colon were more fun. Then I played God of War, which I enjoyed despite its lack of a colon. Now I come to NieR: Automata. I purchased…
I'm a fan of Mystic Vale. It's a deck-crafting game. Unlike a deck-building game, in which you add cards to a starting deck as you play the game, in a deck-crafting game you modify the cards themselves. In Mystic Vale this is done by inserting mostly-transparent cards into the plastic sleeves of the cards of your deck.…
I enjoyed the first game in this series, Batman: The Telltale Series. It had a different take on the standard tale of Bruce Wayne as he transitions into his role of the Batman. It also set the stakes for a different origin of the classic Batman villains, especially the Joker. Batman: The Enemy Within continues the story…
I played EXIT: Abandoned Cabin with a group of friends yesterday. I warned them of my experiences that I described in my last few blog posts, but they were willing to accept the challenge. We finished in one hour five minutes and used no hint cards, which gave us a final score of nine stars. It's the…
Forgotten Island was a different experience than my last EXIT game. I solved it in three minutes. Let me back up a second before I explain that: After my previous blog post, the responses of my friends on Facebook suggested that they too were no longer enthusiastic about playing any more EXIT games. I had spare time…
I'm stuck at home for a while, so I decided to tackle an EXIT game solo: Polar Station. It took me 3 hours and 15 minutes, and I used 6 hint cards, which gave me a score of two stars. This is the lowest score I've seen in any EXIT game I've played so far. Even though…