Gaming off the Beaten Path

Of all Nintendo's first party franchises, F-Zero probably gets the least love. I think I made it pretty clear when I reviewed F-Zero GX last year that I think it's BS that Nintendo hasn't released a new title in the franchise in going on 20 years. But while it has gotten a handful of sequels and its certainly seen more releases than its futuristic racing brethren, I've always felt Star Fox is a close second on the big N's "let's not make any more games in this franchise" list. It seems like no matter how hard they try, Nintendo just can't capture what made the old Star Fox games so great. The series' most recent entry, 2016's Star Fox Zero, was met with mixed reviews and is generally regarded as okay at best. Star Fox Assault on the GameCube had its moments, but was an overall disappointing experience that I found to be incredibly lacking. I've already offered my thoughts on Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet and its complete deviat...

  I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. I've skirted around it before, I talked about it extensively in my Warhawk review, I referenced it on my 10's list, but this is the first time I've ever done a full review of a Twisted Metal game. I touched on this in the Warhawk review, but I think you can safely classify Twisted Metal in the "off the beaten path" category. No new games since 2009, 12 years. The most recent release in the franchise came six years ago, with the re-release of Twisted Metal: Black on the Playstation network. It's kind of sad really. There was a time when Twisted Metal was a really, really big deal. Whenever one of these games came out, it was a big deal. Some were classic (I will eventually cover Twisted Metal 2 as part of my 10's) others were disappointing (TM3 is really, really bad) but there was always a lot of hype surrounding them. Then, it just wasn't. I have always chalked it up to the decline in popula...

  "This game was soooooo ahead of its time." How many times have we heard that before? Hell, how many times have I said it on here myself? Probably a million or so, give or take. While it's always had its reliance on certain genres, from 2D fighters to mascot platformers to open world adventures, the video game industry has never been afraid of a little innovation. It may not seem like it now, but it's true. And it was especially true during the 3rd console generation: make no mistake about it, the late 80's and early 90's were still very much the wild, wild west. It's not that developers didn't try their best to innovate in the first two generations, but their hands were often tied by extremely limited technology. It's not that they didn't try (and succeed) on the 4th, 5th or even 6th generation consoles, but by that point people were starting to figure out what worked and what didn't in a video game. The NES (and Master System, etc.) were...

  Sorry, I know it's been two non-review posts relatively close to each other. But life has been chaotic and I haven't had a ton of time to game in recent weeks. So, instead of a review you get my opinion on random video game topics once again. I promise, I won't ever go full on into something like this, but for now I want to discuss a topic that has been bought up to me a lot in recent weeks. As I have discussed at length, I've become far more of a retro gamer, some might call me an old-school gamer, in recent years. There are certainly things I prefer about modern games, maybe I will dive deeper in to what at a later date, but I find myself playing older stuff almost exclusively. But what exactly constitutes "older?" What exactly is old-school gaming, or retro gaming, anyway? At the end of the day, the hobby is relatively new, gaming as we know it probably traces its roots to the early 70's, with it gaining popularity in the 80's before exploding in ...

Last week, we looked at a game that had tons of prerelease hype, which managed to meet or even surpass its high expectation. This week, we will turn our focus to a game that...didn't. It's hard to convey what a big deal The Bouncer was when it was announced for the then-new PS2. The developers had big ideas in mind, promising a gritty, movie-like story with revolutionary game physics, interactable environments and customizable characters. A lot of small developers get themselves in trouble making promises like this. But this was no pet project of a small up and coming developer. This was coming from Squaresoft (along with DreamFactory), the company behind Final Fantasy, a series you might have heard of. It's not that Square never made bad games, but they were few and far between. So when they made the promises they did, we all expected them to pay them off. They had Final Fantasy stalwarts Shinji Hashimoto and Tetsuya Nomura working on the game, how could they not. The fi...

  It might sound hard to believe, but a lot of us weren't sure what to expect when Super Mario 64 was first announced. At the time, none of us really knew what was going to happen when games made the jump into 3D, especially not us console gamers. What would Mario look like? How would it play? How would it stay true to the structure of the old games? Seriously, there were a lot of questions, even from hardcore Nintendo fanboys. It didn't take long for us to get our answers though. When the Nintendo 64 finally arrived in late 1996, there were only two games available at launch, Super Mario 64 being one of them. And it's the one just about all of us got as soon as we could. Fun fact, my Nintendo 64 is the first thing I ever bought with my own money. I had been doing odd jobs around the house since it was announced and when I fired it up for the first time, my mind was blown. I remember the first time I saw Mario's face in full 3D, I probably spent like 20 minutes just pla...

  For some of us, video games are like comfort food. You know it's bad for you, but something about it just makes you happy. For a lot of people that grew up with a Genesis, Altered Beast seems to be one of those games. Originally released as an arcade game in 1988, Altered Beast eventually became a pack in game with Sega's new 16-bit console. It was ported to dozens of other consoles and computers as well, but for today, we are discussing the Genesis version. It's the one I played and the one I am most familiar with. I wasn't really a Sega kid growing up, but most people that were would always bring up this game as one they felt some affinity for. Today, it's looked at with a lot of fondness and nostalgia by those that played it when it first came out. At the same time, even those that are nostalgic for the title recognize that it isn't actually that great. Even with all the nostalgia surrounding it, most Genesis fans recognize its not in the same category as S...