Category Archives: Video Game Reviews

Gubbins – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A genuinely delightful word game that charms while presenting you with a fascinating challenge that I am driven to master.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

opening titles.

Gubbins Review –

We live in the post-Wordle era, where we ditched the crossword goodbye and devilled into six letters that gave us grief for months. Once it and its many different variations concurred on the internet, I wondered who would be the first video game company to capture that vibe of loving words and bring it into an interactive experience. Today, we look at a small Australian company who have not only done this but also charmed me entirely in the process.

So to set the scene, Gubbins in a puzzle game where you are given a bunch of discordant letters at the bottom of the screen and a grid above, and you get points for how many words you can create before the black FIN appears. You get bonuses for chains of words, and some power-ups and traps can make placing the words difficult.

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The Expanse: A Telltale Series – ARCHANGEL – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – We take a look at the bonus episode from The Expanse: A Telltale Series featuring Chrisjen Avasarala  

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

New York skyline.

The Expanse Review –

Earlier this year, we looked at a new Telltale-style game from Deck Nine that brought us back into the world of The Expanse. The Expanse: A Telltale Series explored the world of Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) before she joined the story that we know. It was a fun blast, bar that time, I accidentally got a crew member killed. You can read our full review of the game HERE. I knew there would be a bonus episode dropping at some point, but I didn’t know who it was going to focus on, and now it is here. I could not wait to give it a whirl.

So to set the scene, Undersecretary of Peace Operations Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) has been sequestered away from the United Nations to the Secretary General’s bunker. The rest of the politicians are up on Luna, and this is a sort of safety net, or prison, depending on who you ask. But if you are alive, you can work to find a way forward, even if there are phone calls from Calisto to distract you. Because Mendez (Rogelio Ramos) is out there trying to take your job, and you will not let that snivelling excuse of pustule get his way.

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Payday 3 – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A sequel that looks stunning and full of quality-of-life improvements that unfortunately ends up feeling like a hollow shell of what came before.  

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

The gang.

Payday 3 Review –

If you check my most played games on Steam, you will discover that Payday 2 is in my top 5. Me and my friends played every aspect of the game, being able to stealth that first bank on the hardest difficulty as a warmup for the session. There were these moments of joy when we summited Everest in that damned politician’s office overlooking Capitol Hill. There were attempts to make Payday 3 multiple times over the years, but when it finally dropped, I got the gang back together for a heist or two.         

So to set the scene, your long, enjoyable retirement has been ripped out from underneath you as a mysterious force simultaneously targets you and all your old heisters in a targeted hit. Thankfully, Slade (Kosha Engler) saw it coming and was able to reach out and save Dallas (Simon Kerr), Chains (Damion Poitier), Hoxton (Pete Gold), Joy (Siu-see Hung), Pearl (Rebecca LaChance), and Wolf (Nicklas Berglund). All of their supplies have been lost, and their bank accounts have been frozen. But to survive, they need to start getting money and supplies, so it is time to start looting a new city and saying hello to New York.

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Halo Infinite – Or How I Found the Love of a Game Without Playing the Main Game

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TL;DR – I discovered why so many people love the Halo series by exploring the custom content with friends.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Game Pass that obtained this game.

Halo Infinite title card.

Halo Infinite Review –

When I was growing up, my family had a PC, so I did not grow up with the console classics that so many of my friends had. I had heard of Halo. You can’t live in the video game space without knowing who Master Chief is. I listened to the musical score at performances and understood why people worldwide break into that hum on command. I had watched the previous games streamed on Twitch, and I even watched the Halo TV series. However, no matter what I  did, I only felt like an observer, like an academic who never does fieldwork. But all of that changed one day.

I had dipped in when Halo Infinite first came out of PC. It was on Game Pass, so there was not a significant financial barrier for me to drop into. A lot of it did feel like the shooters that I was familiar with. Come capture that flag, kill as many enemies as possible, find that sniper, or keep on the point. I was running around mantling up ledges, jumping over crevices that could lead to your death, and finding the gun set-up that works for you. While there were some of these more familiar elements to grab onto. However, my head or the keyboard/mouse controller did not click with the grenade, gun, and melee combo. Add some jump crouches and odd slides, and I fell away until earlier this year.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A stunningly beautiful game full of wonder and bugs

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Review –

Well, 2023 is the year that Dungeons and Dragons [or D&D] continues to build on its growing success brought on by the Critical Role/Stranger Things pandemic boost. After seeing the genuinely remarkable Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves that gets better on each re-watch, I was musing that there is one pop-culture realm it seems to be absent in: video games. Back in my day, before my beard went grey, there were classics like Neverwinter and Baldur’s Gate, but it has been 23 years since the last game. Has it been worth the wait?

So to set the scene, [insert your character here] was going about their day in the grand city of Baldur’s Gate along the Sword Coast of Faerun when an enormous nautiloid ship appears overhead. It dives across the city, snapping up citizens as they run, teleporting them and you inside into the lair of the Illithids. These tentacle-bearded creatures reproduce by putting one of their parasites behind a victim’s eye and waiting a week or so for them to transform the victim into another Illithid. This is your fate, or at least this is what should have happened. But destiny had different plans as your ship gets attacked by Githyanki flying on the back of dragons. Your ship crashes, and you survive, escaping a painful death. However, your fate may now be linked to the survival of the entire Sword Coast.

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The Expanse: A Telltale Series – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A little slow and sluggish in places, but it immediately brings you into this world and makes you want to explore every part of this story.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Looking over Jupiter.

The Expanse Review –

Now it should be no surprise to anyone who knows me, that I adore The Expanse. I have absorbed all the novels, short stories, and the TV Show that might be one of the better adaptations out there. Now while it looks like we might have reached the end of the novels, and the TV Show for the moment, when I heard that there would be a video game adaptation, well, I had to check it out.

So to set the scene, before Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) ended up at Tycho Station and after she escaped Dawes (Stephan Frost) on Ceres, she was an XO on the Belter salvaging vessel Artemis under Captain Cox (Jeffrey Roark). They are coming up on the last score they ever need to take, with the ruins of the UNN Urshanabi before them. However, it may not be the simple heist it first appears to be.        

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Planet of Lana – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A stunningly beautiful game that pulls at the heartstrings as it reveals the world one puzzle at a time.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Game Pass service that viewed this game.

Alien mothership in the distance

Planet of Lana Review –

One of the things that you are always looking for when you boot up a new game is to experience something that pulls on your emotions. Does it build upon strong mechanics and art design to bring a world alive? Today we are looking at a game that does just that as it charms and uplifts you.

So to set the scene, on a planet off somewhere in the galaxy, we meet Lana (Bianca Zoe Mantelli), who lives in a small but friendly fishing village on the coast of a giant sea. Running through the town with her big sister Elo (Rossmary Petruzzelli), they climb up the nearby hillside to visit a place of sadness and to reflect on their bond. But when they get there, they see objects falling from the sky, and soon grand machines capture Elo and take her up into the sky. The village is in ruins by the time Lana can get back, everyone has been taken, but nothing will stop Lana from trying to save her family, where she meets a little animal friend who may be the hope of her salvation.

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Tron: Identity – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A very old-school kind of game with not much complexity mechanically, but with a story that gets its hooks into you wanting to explore this world

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game

Tron: Identity Review –

If anyone has met me before, you probably know of my love for the Tron universe. Everything from the visual aesthetic to the story and worldbuilding brings me in and excites me. Things have been light on the ground for the world since the third film went in and out of production. So when I heard there was a new game set in the universe, I was interested. When I discovered that it would be a narrative novel type of game leaning into the old Point & Click genre, well, now you have me intrigued.

So to set the scene, it has been many years since the failed Clu revolution in Tron: Legacy, and even longer since the origin grid in Tron. Long enough, the ‘Users’ have been almost relegated to myth or, for some, a religion to venerate. There have been wars for control. Some programs have even broken off to form their own societies, while Core has taken control of many things in the city. You play a Disciple of Tron, an investigator, an outsider within and without the system. You have been summoned to The Repository, where dangerous items and knowledge are stored. There has been an explosion, and something has been looted from their secure vaults.

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The Wandering Village – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – We have a remarkable base with an adorable presentation. It is just missing a hook to make it excel. 

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game; the game was in Early Access when reviewed  

The Onbu

The Wandering Village Review –

There is a growing joke in my friend circle that if you want to get me involved in a game, then it better have some kind of farming mode. This stems from my early years growing up on city builders, and to this day, I am always ready to dive into a video game that presents a new twist on the city-building formula. The last one to do so was Surviving Mars, where you built a colony in space, and today we look at a game where you build a city on, checks notes, the back of a giant tortoise.

So to set the scene, you were part of a people that had lived their lives in peace in a small fertile valley full of wonder, but eventually, the same toxic spore that had collapsed the rest of the society found you and you were forced to flee. It was a perilous journey, and just when all seemed lost, you stumbled across a miracle, the last of its kind, a giant Onbu, woken by those same spores. Now you have to build a village on its back, and hopefully, together, you can survive the calamity.

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Fortnite: Or How I Learned to Stop Building and Love the Shenanigans – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – After years of frustration with this game, the no-build mode finally coalesces the game for me.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – This is a Free-to-Play with microtransactions, and I paid for the Battle Pass.

A crew shot as things explode in the background.

Fortnite Review –

Back in 2017, there was this odd game that exploded onto the video game scene, it was not the first Battle Royale style game on the market, but its free-to-play model and big marketing push made it the example all others wanted to copy. I tried the game when it first came out, and my biggest feeling at the time was that ‘this was not for me’. I just did not have the time in my life to learn how to work the building side of things. However, with the announcement that there would be a build-free mode, I decided to give the game another look and discovered just what people have been talking about for all these years.

So to set the scene, Fortnite is a Third-Person Shooter Battle Royale game. This means that it is a shooter where the perspective is positioned from behind the character, over the shoulder, rather than as if you were peering out of their eyes. As well as this, there is a barrier slowly shrinking the map to a central point forcing all the players together. What this means is at the start of the game, all 100 players jump out of a flying bus landing across the map and have to scavenge weapons and ammo, all trying to be the last one standing while some dude in a banana costume snipes you … banana costumes … raises a fist to the clouds.    

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