Gaming off the Beaten Path

Last week, we started our look at Chained Echoes, an Indie RPG for the current gen consoles. While its story had some ups and downs, the game provided an overall strong experience, with excellent atmosphere, likable characters and fantastic music. But how was the actual gameplay? Well, pretty good. It's not without its flaws, but Chained Echoes does a very good job of blending classic JRPG gameplay notes with more modern amenities in a way that largely works. Let's start with the combat, which offers a turn-based system that will feel very familiar to most old-school RPG fans. Up to four characters can actively participate in battle with four more backing them up, for a total of eight. You can switch at any time, so basically you have eight characters fighting. Like Final Fantasy X, you can see the order in which characters and enemies will attack. Characters can attack, defend, use items or use skills, which require the use of TP. This leads to one of the biggest gameplay di...

Earlier this year, I did a preview of indie RPG Chained Echoes , a title that has garnered tons of attention in the gaming community. Now it's finally time for a proper review. I don't usually do "initial thoughts" or anything like that, but there was so much buzz surrounding Chained Echoes I had to strike when the iron was hot. It takes me a while to complete games nowadays, especially long RPGs, but I'm finally done and ready for a proper review. I like to make sure I beat games, at least the main stories, before I write anything up because you never know what could happen.  I feel like a lot of reviews are just based on an hour or two of gameplay and while that is okay for some genres, I don't think that's the case for RPGs. By now I think the story around Chained Echoes is pretty common knowledge. It was created by a single developer, Matthias Linda, over the course of seven years. Linda, a German national, grew up creating fan games in RPG Maker. He w...

  Sorry for another non-review, but it's been yet another busy week. Since this will be the first time I look back at a previously reviewed game on my podcast, I figured I would talk a little bit about revisiting games here. I've been doing this a long time and it's getting to the point where I want to give certain games a second look. Maybe it's because I felt I didn't do a game justice the first time. Maybe it's because there were a few games that were close to 10's that I think are in contention for a full score. Maybe it's because I just feel like it. Honestly, I've found it a little weird the last few years that I pretty much haven't been able to re-play anything because I just have to keep moving forward with new content. Oh well, enough complaining. My top five games that are candidates for revisiting include: 1. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Honestly, the only thing holding me back from having replayed this already is time. I really, reall...

  I complain about modern games a lot, but I can't say I don't love all the pseudo-classic games that are seemingly everywhere nowadays. Most of these seem to be indie games, titles made by a hand-full of developers, or maybe even just one. It could just be me, but I feel like a lot of these are Metroidvania games, I've already covered Hollow Knight which would certainly fit into this category. Anodyne and Cosmic Star Heroine definitely fit too. In addition to being made in the old-school style, these games also have something very important in common: they are all indie games. This week's game is no different, even if it does carry the one of the biggest licenses of all time. They may not be as popular as they were in the 80's and 90's, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are still hugely relevant. And yet, it had been a long time since they've received a new game. That changed in 2022 with the release of 2022's Shredder's Revenge. Shredder'...

  Mascot platformers were really popular in the 90's and 00's. I'm not sure any other genre or sub-genre stayed so popular for so long. Tournament fighters were huge in the early to mid 90's, RPGs were all the rage in the mid to late 90's, there were like 50 different MMOs in the mid 00's and it seems like there are millions of Soulslike games out there now. But when Mario hit it big in 1985, everyone started trying to replicate his success. Sometimes, they were successful (Sonic). Other times, they weren't (Bubsy). But it seemed like from the mid 80's to the mid 00's, developers were pumping out mascot platformers left and right. I guess the modern FPS craze is getting close, I would say that started in the late 00's and it is still going strong. But they still have a ways to go to catch up to mascot platformers. I think part of the reason mascot platformers were so prevalent for so long was their ability to transition between genres. These game...

  Going to take a little break from reviews to talk a little bit about something I've been thinking about a lot. It seems like streaming services are taking over the gaming industry and it kind of feels like it happened over night. I don't like it, but I always kind of knew that digital games would overtake physical media sooner rather than later. But I'm not sure I ever saw XBox GamePass or PlayStation Plus Premium coming. Hell, I remember seeing Gamefly for the first time and being blown away, but also unsure it would ever work. I was also unsure I would ever get into any of these services, largely because I prefer retro games and physical media, but now that I've experienced them firsthand, I wanted to give some thoughts as to the positives, negatives and whether these things are worth it at the end of the day.   To me, one of the biggest positives here are the sheer selection of games. There are hundreds and hundreds of games on these from newer AAA releases to old ...

  I knew I was going to get here eventually. For what feels like a decade now, I've heard about Sweet Home, the NES game that served as the basis for Resident Evil. It's one of those games I knew I was eventually going to review, and it looks like now is the time. I think a lot of gamers know the story by now. Resident Evil started as a remake of Sweet Home, with the latter's director Tokuro Fujiwara working with the former's originator Shinji Mikami. After realizing the technical limitations of the relatively new PlayStation hardware, as well as a variety of other snags, the project evolved into the zombie-filled survival-horror icon we know and love. It's a title that most people know is influential, even if all they know about it is its name.   You know, for all of the talk about how influential it is, I barely knew anything about Sweet Home's gameplay. I was totally expecting some level of action game, maybe akin to the original Metal Gear. I was shocked, p...