Merry Christmas from Pikachu Girl!

REVIEW - Pokémon Snap (N64)

 

Merry Christmas from Snivy Fan!

REVIEW - Spyro Enter The Dragonfly (PS2)

 

Chasing the First High; or, How One Game Ruined Everything

It was 2012.

I made my way slowly through the mine, slow enough to avoid making any of a myriad dumb mistakes I've made before. Watching ahead for traps, behind for spiders, above for bats, and below for spikes. Every step had to be sure, calculated. But time was not a luxury I could afford for long. A ghostly specter of death waited just off screen for any careless or arrogant enough to dilly-dally. With a limited number of bombs, was it worth it to use one to obtain the items within that wooden crate? Why, it could be a horribly non useful catcher's mitt item, or it could be twelve more bombs. A net profit! Is it better to spend all the money at the shopkeeper on more ropes? Or should I save it and hopefully find an incomparably useful jetpack down the line? Was that a damsel I heard? If I went out of my way and found her I could regain some lost health. But I'm also running out of time. These thoughts and more shuffled in and out of my thoughts as I creeped my way through the deadly catacombs. Finally, amazingly, the exit comes into view. I only had to not get hit by the damn bat tenaciously flying in my direction. It's a position I've been in before. Close to safety, with one wrong move meaning everything I had done was lost.

Still Alive: An Update

For the one fan of Beware the Robot Squad out there, I thought maybe I should take some time to say hey.



Hey.



I'm sure I could give some big explanation for why updates have been so slow. Real life has gotten in the way or some such blithery nonsense, but really I'm just lazy. Anyway, here's what's going on with me right now.

Lalaloopsy Review. [DS]

I haven't played a DS game in a helluva long time. I have noticed Lalaloopsy dolls and since I think they're cute (I know, I know, way to "girl up" Robot Squad), I thought I'd get the game. I'm lucky it wasn't packed to the rafters with DLC, because it's published by Activision.

Luchalma Library - Parasite Eve

Games are fun. You know what the best part of games are? Not playing them. The second best part? Words. With those truths in mind, companies have gone forth creating all sorts of fiction to describe in thousands of words just what Master Chief does on his days off. Video game books have an opportunity to enrich a video game's universe in ways the games themselves can't. It gives gamers an opportunity to connect with their favorite characters on a deeper level. It also mostly sucks.

I've read a fair bit of video game literature, and I'll be telling you the good from the bad and fugly.


First up is Parasite Eve, an appropriate enough book considering it immediately contradicts the premise. Rather than being based on a video game, it was itself adapted into a video game. How or why this was allowed to happen I could not say.

My god, where do I even begin with this book.

The Games of Decade Past

10 years ago, Microsoft released the Xbox 360, the absurdly-named successor to its short lived Xbox machine. With it, Microsoft ushered in a new age of gaming. And I don't mean that in the grandiose way that overexcited middle age men in suits promise every year.

"But not me fellow youths. I just want to talk to you about the revolutionary new GameBox 10. With the power of the digi-cloud, it's going to solve world hunger and feature tight cutting-edge graphics."

For better or worse, Microsoft set the stage for the last generation of consoles. But they were not alone. In the last decade, countless hardware manufactures, developers, publishers, and even everyday normal cool gamers like us have changed gaming as we know it immensely.

Here are just some of the things that have defined video gaming since then.

December Update.

I've never been the type of person to believe in New Year's Resolutions. If people want to change, they should do so any time of year rather than letting the calendar dictate their actions.

Lately my outrageous Steam backlog has been bothering me. I've been craving certain genres and I look at this list that's longer than Ruby Oliver's treasure map of boys (and believe me, that's a long list). So, today I decided, yep, I'm doing it.

That's right, I'm organizing my Steam games, baby! I have done a lot more today than I thought I would, especially considering that I attended 2 Christmas parties today and went grocery shopping (which always takes way too long). I couldn't have done it without my husband, the amazing Lucha Llama.

He's been pretty busy playing Fallout 4 and Alien Isolation when he gets a chance. Together we play Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, but we only do so when we have Banana Tim Tams. We also started Little Big Planet 3, Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes and Tales of Graces f until it became not fun and Emeraude didn't become my party member, stupid bitch. Solo Bekness has been rockin' Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Persona 4 and tonight I'm going to begin Sudokuball Detective and hopefully poundin' coffee so hard.

I'd like to say I'll be bringing you, our loyal readers more reviews over the next few months, but that'd probably be a lie. We will, however, be working on our end of year awards, and they're going to knock your socks off.*

Thanks to all our readers (hah!), and I hope you enjoy the silly season.

*socks may actually stay on