Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall
Dishonored's melancholy city of Dunwall was not short of stories to tell.
Guacamelee!
metroidvania [meh-troyd-veyn–yuh] – adjective – term thought to describe efficient game design principles pioneered in Super Metroid (1994) and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997). i.e., a series of connected levels unified by an intuitive map and open to progressive exploration as game mechanics develop and players increase in proficiency. Metroidvania in 2013 demands a ca...[Read More]
BioShock Infinite
A head in the clouds is an idiom normally assigned to the whimsical musings of idealistic dreamers. At Irrational Games it appears to be a declaration of faith. The hype surrounding their follow-up to BioShock was bound to go supersonic, but the wild ambition and blissful imagination that visible in BioShock Infinite's announcement and subsequent preview cycle sent expectations through the troposp...[Read More]
Bit.Trip Presents…Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
You just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild.
Sound Shapes: Car Mini-Album & Creator Pack
Sound Shapes was one my top ten games in 2012. The creation stuff wasn’t for me, but the levels Queasy Games built into their game were satisfying and interesting enough to win me over. Mechanically speaking, the platforming wasn’t especially impressive, but the way it worked in tandem with the audio and visual design forged an experience unique in its medium. There hasn’t been a...[Read More]
The innocent sin of Eternal Punishment
The PlayStation classic Persona 2: Eternal Punishment finally made its way to the PlayStation Network last week. Atlus sent over a code, presumably for reviewing purposes, but I felt there was something odd about using our modern(ish) rubric to evaluate a game in the exact form that it arrived in over a decade ago. Eternal Punishment isn’t, however, unworthy of discussion. There’s some...[Read More]
Spitballing Sony’s PlayStation 4 reveal
Like 500,000+ others, most of us at Digital Chumps spent two hours glued to our chairs watching Sony’s PlayStation 4 reveal. What follows doesn’t represent the opinion of Digital Chumps as a whole, but rather my haphazard, rambling speculation based on my relatively informed opinion. This guarantees you, the reader, that after reading my opinion you’ll feel at least 20-25% more i...[Read More]
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Dragonborn
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and I didn’t end our relationship on the greatest terms. After 120 hours of intermittent bliss Skyrim began to reduce its frame rate to single digits, increase its incessant load times to unbearable lengths, and crash my PlayStation 3 with alarming frequency. The game was broken. Sanctioned patches and unofficial fixes couldn’t make things better and in earl...[Read More]
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
For a time, Raiden was the punch line of the most renowned practical joke in gaming. His debut as the surprise protagonist of Sons of Liberty was only forgiven seven years later by his sensational role in Guns of the Patriots. Along similar lines, when Kojima Productions failed to transition Metal Gear Rising's impressive tech demo into a full-fledged game, PlatinumGames stepped in to rebuild and ...[Read More]
Aliens: Colonial Marines
For all of its gifts to gaming, it's a shame James Cameron's Aliens has never birthed a great videogame. There have been a few earnest attempts, most involving Predator(s), but Aliens aches for a defining moment - something akin GoldenEye 007 or Escape from Butcher Bay - to understand its influence and realize its potential. Aliens: Colonial Marines, in some phase of development for over five year...[Read More]
Dead Space 3
The third game in a series is always the toughest planet to crack. If the sequel addressed mistakes and refined ideas of a first entry, and it if was successful, where does that leave the inevitable follow-up? The newly perfected formula won't work twice, and if its elements are altered too drastically it's likely to explode and make a mess. Visceral Games' solution to this volatile problem was to...[Read More]
Dark Souls x Battle Royale
Battle Royale is a kind of insane Japanese novel where a junior high class goes to a remote island, each student receives a random weapon, and then they all have to kill each other. It’s not as sadistic and exploitive as one might expect, instead employing its premise as a means to contextualize survival, isolation, and loyalty amidst absolute chaos. It’s powerful, haunting and only a ...[Read More]