Gaming off the Beaten Path

It’s been about a year since I started blogging about games again.  The combination of goings on at work and a new year’s resolution led to this whole thing and frankly, I can’t believe I saw it through.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stopping anytime soon, I’m just shocked I didn’t stop half way through.  I am excited for yet another year of gaming and I have tons of changes planned for next year. With that said, its time for my inaugural end of year awards.  I have played and reviewed a lot of games this year and its time to go back and reflect.  For these completely fictional awards that I just made up in my head, I will be naming best game, worst game, biggest surprise, most disappointing, most potential for a series revival/sequel and most unique.  First, a reminder of my scores, from highest to lowest. Sonic Mania 9.25/10 The Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon 9.25/10 Vigilante 8 9/10 All star Baseball 99 8.5/10 Guilt Gea...

Yet again, we have a first.  Looking back, I realized I have yet to review a Sega Genesis game.  And no, Sonic Mania doesn’t count. That’s probably because I was a Nintendo/Sony person growing up.  Nowadays, the PlayStation and XBox are almost interchangeable.  Sure, there are a few exclusives, but for the most part developers are going to release the same game on both systems.  Hell, some games even have cross play between consoles.  That wasn’t the case in the 90s, when your choice of gaming console drastically altered which games you could play. This also meant the big first party developers spent a lot of time trying to ape each others’ big name series’.  Nintendo was always looking for their own Sonic, while Sega was on a never ending quest for their own Mario and Zelda.  The generally did a pretty good job making games comparable to the former, but often struggled with the latter.  There were quite a few second...

Well, I’m sure surprised it took us this long to get here. During my Mega Man reviews, I talked at length about how that was the series that got me into gaming.  I have so many memories of seeing and playing it for the first time as a child and being blown away.  But over time, I started to gravitate away from the blue bomber as I got older and my tastes changed.  Enter Final Fantasy .  If Mega Man was the reason I started playing video games, FF is the reason I kept playing them and continue to play them. Like Mega Man, Final Fantasy certainly has its offshoot games.  Of all of them in my collection, Crystal Chronicles is probably the biggest deviation from the rest of the series.  Released on the GameCube in the early 00’s, FFCC was the first game in the series on a Nintendo console in more than 10 years.   The story goes that SquareSoft, the publisher behind Final Fantasy , felt their games had essentially outgrown Nin...

After a brief break for Thanksgiving, it’s time to get back to work.  Next week I will get back to game reviews, but I wanted to take some time to discuss a major gaming milestone: the 25 year anniversary of the PlayStation. The PlayStation marked a shift in strategy for Japanese tech maker Sony, who previously had been known more for making Walkmans, TVs, stereos and essentially every electronic gadget except video game consoles.  By now, most gamers know the story of how Sony was working with Nintendo to create a CD add on to the Super Nintendo.  After deciding they were unhappy with the terms of the contract, Nintendo officials secretly met with Phillips and created a similar partnership.  On the day the new peripheral was to be announced, the big N instead announced their new deal with Phillips and that they would abandon all previous work with Sony.   Sony considered reaching out to Sega for help before deciding to release th...

“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”   How many times have you heard that in your life?  What I’m sure was once sage advice has become a hackneyed platitude repeated ad naueseum by those looking to appear more open minded than they turn out to be.  That being said, throughout my life I have found that statement to be demonstrably true for the most part. Sometimes though, what you see is what you get.  Take one look at a PS2/XBox game from 2003 based on MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch and the first thing that will most likely pop into your mind is “wow, that game is going to suck.”  I wish I could say I found a hidden gem, or that this was shockingly good or something of that nature.  Hell, I would have been okay with “passable.”  But that most certainly wasn’t the case here. For those of you unfamiliar with Celebrity Deathmatch, it was an MTV show from the late 90’s/early 00’s where claymation versions of famous people ba...