“Pac is back,” touts the back of the box, despite Pac-Man not actually having gone anywhere. It’s cool, though; I get the sentiment. Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures is a new cartoon for a new generation of Pac-Man fans, and this is the logical video game tie-in. It’s pretty inoffensive as far as platformers aimed squarely at children go, and has a bit of charm that ensures the game a full-page ad in this year’s GameStop Holiday Guide. As cynical a cash grab this may be, it isn’t without merit. READ MORE
It’s not often that I am embarrassed to play a game in public. As a man in his mid-30s, I can train pocket monsters and manage my animal-inhabited town without caring who knows about it. But Senran Kagura Burst will never get played outside of my own private home, despite its legitimately-earned (if barely) T rating. Which on one level is something of a shame, and yet on another level completely justified. READ MORE
It’s crazy to think about how far the Killzone franchise has come. The original game, released on PS2 back in 2004, was touted as a “Halo killer,” meaning it was essentially Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s monolithic series. There was very little in common between the two, yet Sony pushed it that way and, for the most part, it succeeded. The original game was far from perfect, yet it led to two brilliant sequels. The launch of Sony’s next big console brings the release of the fourth Killzone, subtitled Shadow Fall. It may not impress as much as Killzone 2 did on the PS3, but it demonstrates a lot of potential.
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Last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown was amazing. It kept me enthralled for over 60 hours. I even managed to save humanity a few times, and while I was having fun each time, my campaigns always followed the same arc: tech up to laser weapons, tech up to carapace armor, capture and research plasma, research ghost armor, discover psionics and save the planet. Things didn’t always go according to plan, but when they did, that was the order of operations. XCOM: Enemy Within shakes things up quite a bit, and it makes every aspect of the game feel fresh again. READ MORE
I’m a bit confused by Into the Nexus. It’s meant to cap off the Future series, but new things are teased at the end. It’s nice that the PS3 got it as a swan song, but looking at the cloud save options and the PS4 launch lineup, I can’t help but feel like Sony had bigger plans for Into the Nexus than it was able to pull off. And it’s a shame, too, because Ratchet & Clank is in top form here. I only hope that a good portion of its audience didn’t skip the title because of new hardware coming down the pipe so soon after the game’s release. READ MORE
