Shivers (PC) Review

 

A few old memories lead me to this game. Back then my little brother had bought it, thinking it would be a good horror game to play chasing around ghosts like a bug-catcher. I don't think we played much of it, though, as we just wound up walking away confused. Looking back, I chalked it up to us being idiot kids who were much more into twitch-bang-shootie games then it actally not being very good, so I wanted to give it a fair shake. And since it was re released cheap on GOG.com, I decided to give it a shot again. It was absolutely awesome as it started up, filled with 90s cheese and actually intelligent puzzles to progress... but lets just call this a bubblegum game. It lost it's taste well before I was done chewing.

Psychonauts (PC) review

 

This is one of those games a lot of people look back on fondly. If you need any real proof of that, you just need to look at the crowdfunding campaign for the development of a sequel. However it was not a game on my radar at the time. Rather, this is one of those games that wound up in my backlog via my time subscribed to the Humble Bundle and was forced to wait in my backlog till the dice decided it was time to play. And when it came up, I shrugged and said "why not?" Well, the game certainly proved to be a good choice, but maybe not the best one. Come on in and see.

Extra Life 2021 begins anew!

It's that time of year again! As the new year starts to move forward we are throwing forward again to take part in Extra Life. For those not in the know, Extra Life is a charity event that happens every year where gamers from around the world come together to help sick children in our local hospitals. Starting in 2008 with a single website and a single hospital, the event has grown to the point of breaking $16,000,000 last year alone to help these. And that is despite the current pandemic we still find ourselves in! And with the new year, the even has begun again. I have been honored to be a part of this since year zero personally and as of today setup the site so my team can begin again!

So how does it work? Very simply. Gamers sign up to the website and begin raising money for the hospital of their choice (all handled by the Children's Miracle Network) and in November we celebrate with endurance for our hobby... a 24 hour gaming marathon. Generally you will find most gamers will hold their event on the 6th this year, but of course, gamers are nothing if not adaptive, so expect some to pick different days, or even more then one!

Does this sound fun to you? Great! Then now's the time to go to the Extra Life website for more information and I can only hope to see you out there! However, if you are not a gamer or just want to help us help the hospitals we are playing for, first and foremost, thank you so much. Second, you can find our team's link right here: https://www.extra-life.org/team/RedSectorShutdown

Thank you again and hope to see you out there!

Duck Tales Remastered (WiiU) Review

 

"Life is like a hurricane... here in... Duck Burg. Race cars, lasers, air-o-planes: It's a... duck... blur! Might solve a mystery... or rewrite history" If you sang this in your head, you already know you need to come on inside. You're childhood awaits.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (PC) Review

Another game that has been a long time coming. In this case, however, the control of that time was not exactly in my hands. About eight and a half years ago, Phantasy Star Online 2 launched in Japan. Originally for PC, Sega promised it's Western audience the game was coming our way as well. We waited as it made its way to the Sony Playstation systems and even the Nintendo Switch, but only in Japan.

Some grew impatient and hacked their way in. In fact there is a fan-made launcher which will download, patch the translations in, and let English players play the Eastern version of the game that was made out of this need to play. But I held off. After all, I had plenty of other games to play that didn't require such measures. Still, that did not mean I had given up all hope, at least at first. But I couldn't have been happier when the game finally showed up at E3 in 2019. Now what was once just a pipe dream was finally making it's way over, and when it became available in May of 2020 on PC, I was playing literally day 1.

Now almost a year later and with just shy of 200 hours under my belt, Im hanging up my mouse on this game. And while I am annoyed with Microsoft for milking the end of the game's story (it's been done for a few years already in Japan, so releasing maybe an hour of content a month is kinda dumb), I also walked away happy with the game in total. I had a great time in general, playing tons of general content, all the story available at the time I started writing, and having seen the absolute end of the game. It's just a good time to move on.

Black Mesa (PC) Review

 

 

In 2004, Valve would release one of the biggest hits they every made: Half-Life 2. Not only was it the sequel to their first breakthrough title, but the engine behind it named "Source" was already doing things most modern games of the time could only dream of with muscle skeletons and light sources. But they also listened to a request of their fans to port the then 6 year old original game to this amazing new tech.... maybe just a bit too literally.

Valve's way to grant this wish was to take the maps, models, and graphics from the original game and just push them through the new engine with little effort to take advantage of what could be done, and the results were about as underwhelming as you would expect. But if you can count on the PC gaming community for one thing, it's to take what is and create what they wish out of it and to force a merge between Half-Life and Source to live up to the potential they saw would be no exception. Over the years, this game would be developed, releasing initially as an ever-developing mod for Half-Life 2. But eventually it would evolve into it's own complete remake. And now, after a decade and a half of the kind of love and passion only a fandom can produce, Black Mesa has been finished. And while some complain the game isn't true enough to the original level designs, it definitely hit the nostalgia mark as I played, nailing a lot of the set pieces I remembered playing through myself... maybe even some that would have been better left behind in the past. Step on inside.

DEX (PC) Review

I do not remember when I picked this game up. It was always a game that could easily grab my curiosity, but I honestly do not remember when I got my hands on it. Still when the dice called it up, I figured "why not?" and installed it to my media center machine. About a week later, I think I can see why. A real shame, too. There is a lot of love put into making this one making me wish I could be kinder to it. But a dud is still a dud. Enough of one that I did not finish the game, but merely gave it the 8 hours I warrant before calling it quits.