Valkyria Chronicles Remastered (2016, PS4) - Kawaii War II

Eight years after its original release on PS3, Sega's cult-classic turn-based strategy game Valkyria Chronicles has been remastered and re-released on PC and PS4. While it spawned two smaller sequels on the PSP, this series has never been a breakout hit, but this new version has the potential to inject new life into it. I was a big fan when I first played this title in 2008, so how well has it held up?

Batman: Arkham City (2011, PS3) - Be Batman #2: Now With Terrible Writing

With 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum proving to be a massive critical and financial success, a sequel was inevitable. Two years after Asylum's release, Rocksteady Studios would release their followup, offering players a much larger world, a bigger narrative, and more of the same combat. Arkham City abandons the claustrophobic, guided experience of Arkham Asylum, replacing it with a fairly large open world that offers much more freedom but at the cost of Asylum's relentless atmosphere. While the game play has improved, Arkham City suffers from a very poorly written storyline and continuous dialogue that drags down the experience.

Dark Souls II (2014, PS3) - Great Game, Weak Sequel, Talking Cat

Dark Souls II is the third game in From Software's Souls series, following 2009's Demon's Souls and 2011's Dark Souls. The series has a reputation for being ridiculously difficult and unforgiving, when in reality it's a challenging but extremely fair series of games that rarely uses cheap tricks (and the ones it does use rarely happen more than once) and rewards slow, careful play. I love these games; I picked up Demon's Souls shortly after release and played through it several times in a row, and did the same with Dark Souls two years later. This is the finest series of games to premier in this console generation, and their meticulous design is unmatched. Dark Souls II had a lot to live up to.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010, PS3) - Chillin with Bros in Ancient Rome

Released one year later, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a direct sequel to 2009's Assassin's Creed 2, opening almost immediately where that game ended. It's only a sequel in the technical sense; in reality, it's actually the second half of AC2's incomplete story, featuring the same characters in the same part of the world with refined but mostly the same gameplay. Taken together, the two games make one decent, complete title that were unfortunately sold separately for full price. This matters a lot less now that you can pick up each of them for $5-10. 

Pac-Man Museum (2014, PS3) - Horrible Presentation Hides Wonderful Games

Anyone who knows what video games are knows Pac-Man; for 34 years, the hungry yellow orb-man has gobbled up billions of Power Pellets, eaten countless ghosts, and starred in a good number of bizarre sequels and bad cartoons. Namco's 2014 Pac-Man Museum is a retrospective containing a great deal of Pac-Man's history, both weird and wonderful, leading up to the recent arcade multiplayer title Pac-Man Battle Royale. It's a collection of some great games, packaged in an unfortunately poor way.

Review - Assassin's Creed II (2009, PS3)

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed has proven to be one of the most successful new franchises of the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, but one that I somehow missed out on playing entirely as it was ascending in popularity. It was actually videos of 2013's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag that got me interested in checking out the series, and since each previous game is easy enough to find for around $10 now, it wasn't much of an investment to just pick up a couple of the old ones. I skipped the original 2007 title at the recommendation of some friends and went right into Assassin's Creed II, the first of a trilogy of games starring Renaissance-era assassin Ezio Auditore. What I found was a flawed but fun game with enough repetitive side content to make any completionist's life miserable.

Review - SoulCalibur II HD Online (2013, PS3)

SoulCalibur II HD Online is an updated version of Namco's classic 2002 weapons-based fighter. I've always loved fighting games, and I must have pumped hundreds of dollars worth of quarters into our local SoulCalibur II machine back when the game was first released. It was the first time I really tried getting into a fighter competitively, spending a good portion of the summer of 2002 with my buddies at a now closed arcade at the Searstown mall in Leominster, MA.

Review - Bloodrayne: Betrayal (2011, PS3)

Wayforward Technologies is probably my favorite indie game team. From A Boy and His Blob to Contra 4 to DuckTales HD to Double Dragon Neon, they've made a name for themselves as the company that takes stagnant franchises and revitalizes them in wonderful ways. Bloodrayne: Betrayal is a title in the same vein. The original Bloodrayne games, developed by Terminal Reality in 2002 and 2004, were mediocre action games that managed to earn a small following and inspire three bad looking movies. I had no interest in the series, so if not for Wayforward's involvement, I would have never considered giving Betrayal a shot. Unfortunately, this one's a bit of a misfire.

Review - Saints Row IV (2013, PS3)

Voliton's followup to their 2011 hit Saints Row the Third further escalates the cartoonish silliness of their open world action series while delivering some massively improved gameplay. With each game in the Saints Row series, Volition moves further and further from their original "funnier Grand Theft Auto" title to "cartoon villain simulator," ending up with the most recent installment of the series actually giving you superpowers to wreck the city of Steelport up with. On top of that, the self-made Boss of the Saints has risen from street-gang leader to the President of the United States.

Review - Saints Row: The Third (2011, PS3)

I've never really been a big fan of open world action games in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. GTA never held my attention and while Sleeping Dogs had a lot of good going for it, I still got tired of it by the end. The only game in this genre that I really loved was Pandemic's The Saboteur, an open world game set in occupied France during World War 2. The Saboteur had fantastic art direction, a well built world, and characters whose actions actually felt compatible between the cutscenes and gameplay. I was ready to write it off as a fluke, the single instance in which I was able to really get into a game like this, so I was very happy when Saints Row: The Third convinced me otherwise.

Review - Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009, PS3)

Rocksteady Studios' Batman: Arkham Asylum is a video game rarity; it's a game based on a popular license that manages to actually be fun, well made, and critically acclaimed. Focused on equal parts brawling, stealth, and light puzzle solving, Arkham Asylum is among the best superhero video games you could pick.

Review - Wizorb (2012, PSP/PS3)

Wizorb, the first title developed by Tribute Games, is a Breakout clone with retro styling. As usual for the genre, players use a paddle to bounce an orb around the screen breaking sets of bricks and knocking down enemies. Wizorb tries to mix things up by introducing a magic system and very, very light RPG elements, but ultimately it's a very simple, bare-bones Breakout type that's perfectly serviceable but unspectacular.

Review - Devil May Cry 4 (2008, PS3)

Devil May Cry 4 is at the same time the best of the original DMC series and among the most frustrating. Combat, graphics, and stage design are at their peak here, yet for everything the game does right, it does something else wrong. DMC4 is my favorite of the series, but I still have a very hard time finishing a playthrough after the halfway point.

Review - SoulCalibur V (2012, PS3)

Namco's fifth installment of the SoulCalibur series, released in early 2012, is without a doubt the most polarizing game in the series. Single player mode has been reduced to a barebones, poorly executed story mode without selectable characters or fun cutscenes. The Guard Impact system, in which fighters deflect incoming attacks, has been massively neutered, and focus has shifted from favoring defense to favoring offense. Popular, long time characters Cassandra, Yun-Seong, Rock, Seong Mi-na, Taki, Talim, Xianghua are gone, some replaced by younger, less interesting new characters based on their style. Series staples Kilik and Sophitia are reduced to Edge Master clones, characters who fight using random move sets. In spite of all the changes for the worse, SC5 is still a fun fighter with a stellar character creator, but it's still not up to par with SoulCalibur 2, released nine years earlier.

Review - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (2010, PS3)

 

Released as a tie-in for Edgar Wright's film adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's popular comic series of the same name, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is an old-school styled beat em up inspired heavily by Technos' 1989 NES brawler River City Ransom. The game features large, colorful sprites animated quite well by Paul Robertson, who puts a little too much bounce into some of the game's cartoon children. With a soundtrack by Anamanaguchi blending rock music and 8-bit sounds and supervision by the comic's author, Scott Pilgrim has a lot going for it. In spite of all that, it's not a very good game.

Review - Binary Domain (2012, PS3)

Binary Domain is a third person shooter created by Toshihiro Nagoshi, best known as the father of the Yakuza series. Released worldwide in February 2012, Binary Domain feels like an expansion and refinement of the gunplay found in 2011's Yakuza: Dead Souls, though Dead Souls wasn't released outside of Japan until after Binary Domain was already out everywhere else. Like the Yakuza games, Binary Domain is character-driven narrative with a lot of time spent in cutscenes or conversing with your partners, but its gameplay is pure third-person shooter with arcade-style stage progression rather than Yakuza's open world dude punching. While it is a massive improvement over the gameplay of Dead Souls, Binary Domain lacks the heart that makes the Yakuza games so endearing, while also feeling downright primitive compared to Japan's best robot-based shooter, Platinum's Vanquish.

Review - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Blade Wolf DLC (2013, PS3)

The latest DLC expansion for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a side story explaining what robo dog sidekick Blade Wolf went through before the events of the main game. Like the Jetsteam Sam DLC, it attempts to add depth to a few of the existing characters of the Revengeance universe, this time focusing on Blade Wolf and PMC Desperado Enforcement's Mistral. This story also introduces Khamsin, a previously unseen member of Desperado. Like the Jetstream Sam DLC, there are a few collectables to find, some VR Missions to play (which must be accessed form within the DLC's story mode), and a lot of recycled content. Blade Wolf does at least play very differently from either Raiden or Sam.

Review - Knytt Underground (2012, PS3)

Knytt Underground is the latest release from indie developer Nicklas "Nifflas" Nygren. It is a nonlinear puzzle-platformer set in a massive, massive labyrinth whose sheer size puts any Metroid map to shame. Underground is far larger than Nifflas' previous Knytt games and also the first to focus on story in a significant way. Unfortunately, for all its ambition, Knytt Underground is a pretty bad game, bogged down by large stretches of uninteresting hallways, horrible character art, and embarrassing writing.

Review - The Pinball Arcade (PS3, 2012)

FarSight Studios' The Pinball Arcade is a pinball simulation using a wide variety of actual, licensed pinball tables from decades past. It replicates the actual physics, art, and sound of over two dozen classic tables, providing the most authentic pinball experience possible outside of playing on an actual machine. The game is available on smartphones, PS3/Vita (buying one version gives you access to both), Mac OS X, and Xbox 360, with Windows and Wii U ports coming eventually. This game looks and feels great, and anyone with an interest in pinball and classic games should give it a look.

Review - Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point (PS3, 2012)

Nightmare in North Point is a DLC side story for Sleeping Dogs released for Halloween 2012. It takes the existing game's world, fills it with blue fog, and unleashes living deads all over the place. Between this DLC, Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare, Infamous 2's Festival of Blood, and Yakuza's Dead Souls, "Let's take an existing game world and add monsters to it" has become a bit of a trend. Unfortunately, Nightmare in North Point is a pretty weak adventure plagued equally by an uninteresting script and repetitive gameplay.