Category: Archived

What Pokemon On The Switch Will Look Like

Written by Ben Vollmer   When Nintendo announced that Pokemon would eventually be making its way over to the Nintendo Switch, the mind’s of many went wild. Why wouldn’t they? After the recent successes of The Legend...

Review: Crash Bandicoot (N. Sane Trilogy)

Written by Ben Vollmer This is a review of the first game in the “N. Sane Trilogy” and is not indicative of the package as a whole.  On a mechanical level, Crash Bandicoot is broken. This...

Review: Super Meat Boy

Written by Ben Vollmer   Super Meat Boy is hard. The kind of difficult that will shake your faith, more than once, in what kind of gamer you really are. Difficulty is Super Meat Boy’s most...

Review: Yooka-Laylee

Written by Ben Vollmer   Yooka-Laylee is a return to form for the “3D Collectathon” genre. The tight movement, compelling worlds and off-kilter writing all serve an homage to a genre that has long lost...

Review: Little Nightmares

Written by Ben Vollmer   Atmospheric horror has an obligation to walk a thin line. Simultaneously, a game must ensnare a player’s interest enough for them to enjoy their stay, but frighten them enough...

Review: Outlast 2

Written by Ben Vollmer About halfway through my play through of Outlast 2, I realized that a video game had never terrified me so much. Not because Outlast 2 is in the master class of the genre,...

Review: Ori and the Blind Forest

Written by Ben Vollmer   Ori and the Blind Forest is beautiful. It’s pretty rare that a game is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous that it’s the appearance, rather than the mechanics that lay beneath, that takes...

Review: Kingdom Hearts 1.5

Written by Ben Vollmer Kingdom Hearts is a lot like picking through a bowl of fruit. For every bit that you enjoy, there’s something else that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Only, in...

Review: Resident Evil 7

Written by Ben Vollmer   It takes about ten minutes. That’s how long you have in Resident Evil 7 until it flips humanity on its back and shows off its grotesque underside. Perhaps that’s what makes the...

Review: Life is Strange

Warning: This review contains spoilers of the entire game. Due to the episodic nature of the title, it would be impossible to review the game without speaking to its content.  Written by Ben Vollmer...

Review: Doom

Written by Ben Vollmer   There’s something about the incredibly rampant pace of the Doom reboot that lights your hair on fire. It’s hard to say whether it’s the music, the brutal melee system that has...

Retro Review: Super Metroid (1994)

Written by Ben Vollmer   Where did the term “open world” come from? I recently played through Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda and thought I knew. Being able to move backward and forward felt...

Review: The Last Guardian

Written by Ben Vollmer   Everything about The Last Guardian feels memorable. From our seemingly normal protagonist to our majestic sidekick, everything about the game is just different. It isn’t always good, and it defies a lot...

Retro Review: Super Mario Sunshine

Written by Ben Vollmer   By almost every measure, Super Mario Sunshine is the single biggest step outside the box for Nintendo’s lucrative plumber franchise. For the first time in the series, there’s voice acting (and...

Review: Dark Souls III

Warning, the following review contains story spoilers.   Written by Ben Vollmer   When Hidetaka Miyazaki first designed the world of Dark Souls, there was no intent on developing a sequel, or even two. That...

Retro Review: Super Mario World (1990)

Welcome to the Retro Review section, where Ben reviews older games and looks at how they’ve held up. As Mario races from the beginning of a level to the end, the player is met...

Retro Review: Luigi’s Mansion (2001)

Welcome to the Retro Review section, where Ben reviews older games and looks at how they’ve held up. The first thing you’ll notice about Luigi’s Mansion is that it’s missing Mario. That seems obvious when you...

Review: Mega Man

Written by Ben Vollmer   Released for the NES in 1987, Mega Man is infamous for its long run of success in the late 20th century. Most importantly, the franchise has titles that hold up...