Gaming off the Beaten Path

It’s been a while, but its time to circle back to the Sega Genesis. I have discussed before how I was a Nintendo kid, only had an SNES, yada yada yada, etc.  etc.  A lot of games I will eventually talk about here will be new to me, but old hat to anyone that grew up on Sega.  Games like Vectorman, Comix Zone and Phantasy Star are “off the beaten path” for me, but many Genesis kids wouldn’t consider them so.  I had certainly heard of them, even if I hadn’t played them. But this week, I am going to discuss a Sega Genesis game I had never heard of in my life.  Released early in the system’s life cycle in 1990, E-Swat is a 2D side scroller that is somewhere between a run and gun game and a puzzle platformer.  You play as a futuristic police officer named Duke Oda, who is a member of the City of Liberty (not Liberty City, that’s a different place) swat team facing off against a mysterious organization called E.Y.E.  This organizatio...

It seems like just about every game gets at least one sequel, no matter how lousy it is or how poorly it sells. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a direct sequel, hell sometimes it can even be a prequel, just a second game in the series. I am wracking my brain for a single one.  Well, other than this week’s entry, of course. Nano Breaker is an action game released for the PS2 in the early aughts.  It’s a Konami game, so its not like it came out of a small studio that closed down or anything like that.  It didn’t get the best reviews or anything but again, gaming is such a sequel happy medium that it is a tad surprising the IP was just abandoned.  There were certainly a lot of interesting elements presented here, so why not give it another shot?   Before we get into that, let’s discuss the gameplay a bit.  One of the first games I reviewed on GOTBP was “Castlevania: Lament of Innocnence,” another Konami title.  It took...

I just realized I missed out on the opportunity to do an on-theme post for the whole “May the 4th be with you” thing.  Oh well, better late than never I guess. It probably won’t come as a surprise that there are eleventy billion Star Wars video games out there, ranging from completely mainstream to totally obscure.  I bet most of you out there have so familiarity with “Battlefront” or “Force Unleashed,” but how many of you have played “Yoda’s Stories?”  I figured I would split the difference with a game that was a huge deal back in the 90s, but has since fallen out of the gaming consciousness: “Shadows of the Empire,” a third person shooter for the Nintendo 64. Before I get into the game, I should say that I am the rare “casual” Star Wars fan.  It seems like this is a franchise that everyone either loves to death or straight up doesn’t care about.  I have seen, and thoroughly enjoy, all the classic trilogy films.  I have seen all ...

It’s been a fun month, but I’m all Final Fantasy’d out. And how do I follow up and entire month of borderline obsessive coverage of a super nerdy RPG?  By covering something even nerdier!  After all, what’s nerdier than Magic: The Gathering? I have played MTG for a very, very long time.  There was a time in my life that I was ashamed of that, but that time has come and gone.  I may not have the time or resources to dedicate to the game that I used to, but I still like to play any way I can.  That usually means playing digitally and unfortunately, I have always found Magic video games to be lacking.  They usually fall into one of two situations, either they require too much of a financial commitment or they deviate too far from the actual game to be any fun.  But now, Thanks to the (pun intended) “magic” of the internet, I have finally found the game I was looking for.  And the best part?  It’s abandonware, so it can be ...

After last week’s appetizer, it’s time for the main course. I’m not going to lie, this is probably going to be a long one.  I know all about the whole “recommended word count” for online articles and this post is going to blow it out of the water.  I can also say for certain there will be spoilers, probably some big ones, for both the original Final Fantasy VII and the Remake.  So, strap in, grab yourself a beverage and read on because its pretty much illegal to go anywhere anyway.   In the first article I posted when I re-started my blog last year, I ranked my top 10 titles from the previous generation, a list that saw “The Last of Us” finish in the number 3 spot.  I talked about how that game set a new standard for how a video game could look, sound and be presented.  It raised the bar higher than I had ever seen on a console before, pushing the PlayStation 3’s hardware to its limits in every way.  Well, the bar has been rais...