Flashback XBLA Review

While a large amount of the words below this sentence will admittedly be hasty judgements, I ask every reader to take them with a pinch of salt. I was only sent the review build at the last minute and certainly didn’t have a chance to take my time with the finished product to have this review land at a reasonable and relevant time. I ask for forgiveness in advance and hope that you’ll direct all relevant hate-mail to the forum!

Conrad himself doesn’t seem to know what he’s gotten himself into

When you’re dealing with a remake of a classic platforming title of the 90’s you’d usually find yourself in a tricky situation. Being a remake of a game from before you were even born makes it even more of a bad spot – and I’m living it right now.

Whether you’re reviewing, previewing or even just talking about it in a message board, you’re likely to upset someone who played the original way back when and you risk having thier full-blown fury explode through your monitor as you attempt to convey what it does wrong while they interject and throw their counter-argument into the fray detailing why you couldn’t possibly understand what made it so great all that time ago. But that’s not really the point right now. Whether or not a game is a remake or not, that judgement shouldn’t come into the equation – and it certainly won’t be the case with this week’s Summer of Arcade release – Flashback.

£5 of your cash money gets you this 1.9GB Xbox Live Arcade game that has, somehow, been chosen over the rest to represent the top-tier of mini-releases you’re encouraged to blow your summer money – and time – on before you traipse your heels back to school, work, or to the kitchen.

While the attention to detail makes the cut — the polish does not.

Flashback pulls out all the big-guns from the get-go to have you on the edge of your seat with excitement. Admittedly, I had absolutely zero idea of what this game was before I booted it up through my tiny 4GB USB stick on chunky, ageing, Xbox 360, and that only invigorated the feeling of gleeful surprise when I saw the Unreal Engine logo appear on screen and a cinematic menu depicting Conrad peering around a corner, gun in hand, carefully watching a mysterious Jetpack-clad alien humanoid creature patrolling the area ahead. The staple sharp textures of the popular engine coincided with the liquid effects of the water cascading down to give off an instantly engrossing depiction of stealth and grit — it’s too bad the actual game contains very little of either.

Instead of what looks like a post-apocalyptic dirty stealth shooter, we get a mediocre platformer with a whole host of problems. The opening cinematic, again, plays out like the sneaky sleuth shooter you immediately imagine from the get go, yet once the man in question gets shot down during his great escape, you find yourself in a bright green environment cultivated with sloppy animations, zero design flair and a difficulty curve that can only be described as lazy.

Upon your great descent from whichever preferred scenario you found himself watching moments before, you’re immediately placed on the platforms you’ll likely spend the next hour or so traipsing around before you flip back — and you will — to the dashboard without a moments notice.

Even for a platformer Flashback has its fair share of puzzles both good and bad.

The only thing pushing you ahead at this moment in time in the message you inadvertently find yourself landing on as your spine makes contact with the branch; a cube with a message from your future self — who has “No time to explain” what’s going on — instructs you to make haste to Washington D.C.

With the single instruction you go on your way awkwardly hopping and jumping from branch to branch without the sound of footsteps, the foliage under your feet, or even the impact of your toes meeting the ground when you fall from 6ft drop keeping you company. Before long you’re finding your scattered belongings strewn across the neighbouring platforms and you become readily armed to fight off the drone robots that like to dart at so quickly that you’ll barely have a moments notice to aim and shoot them down before they zap your skull multiple times and have you hurtling to the ground with only a single “Ow” coming from Conrad’s mouth as he rag-dolls to his demise.

And don’t expect this to become anymore forgiving when there’s 3 of the things closing in on you within a split second. It feels very much as if the developer’s either assumed you’d have a sixth sense in detecting code off-screen or they just like to think you’ll pour countless deaths into this thing from the get-go without any real reason to carry on.

Later levels include the stealth that should have made up the game’s core — although I’m certainly actual sound-based detection doesn’t come into the mix.

The game could be holding the cleanest piece of story ever penned, but its multiple design flaws speak out immediately before you even have the time to contemplate whether the end result would be worth the time-sink. Jerky model animations, unforgiving AI, crude combat and uninspired level design all make themselves known long before the 10 minute mark – and that’s certainly enough to warrant you question where both your £5 went and where the quality assurance team was when this shipped.

Finding out that the original creator of the Flashback 1992 hit rallied together the men to make his classic platformer immediately makes me think the game was rushed to meet the Summer of Arcade deadline – and it’d be a damn shame if that’s in fact the case. Fans of the original would surely see this as betrayal, and maybe so to the team who crafted the end product.

The fact that you’re forced to shoot down a trapped worker with an exploding bullet before conversing with the man and saying “Awesome-sauce” so awkwardly after the chat is, again, enough to raise questions of the game’s quality assurance work.

One of those fancy hover bikes will eventually show up for a scene similar to the opening movie.

If you haven’t grasped the message of this review by now – Flashforward is a rushed, uninspired, and downright lazy remake of cult favourite that was embarrassingly controlled by the game’s original designer. A lack of attention to detail screams for all angles to the point where even the main voice actor sounds as if he either understood himself how cheesy the dialogue was, or just wasn’t very good at the job himself. It’s a shame to see a promising remake designed for by and for former fans of the game turn into such a mediocre release. What’s worse is how this managed to score a spot in the heavily promoted Summer of Arcade feature window ahead of the more inspired creations of indie developers that are, most likely still stuck in the pipes of the Xbox Live Arcade publishing program. It’s a damn shame, and a damn waste.

Audio/Visual – 2/5: A lack of key sound effects and shallow script/voice-acting deters away from the robust environments and decent soundtrack.

Gameplay – 2/5: Jerky animations, repetitive motions, tacked-on combat, and unforgiving AI stops this one dead in its tracks.

Innovation – 3/5: A few cleverly constructed puzzles and environmental-based collectibles earns Flashback the benefit of the doubt in this category

Value – 3/5: Just by including the original 1992 edition you’ve already justified a small portion of the £5 remake fee.

– Josh reviewed Flashback on Xbox 360 –

Pokémon X & Y – Our Return to Hoenn?

Throughout the course of Pokémon history many features have come to make the world a better place only to abruptly disappeared in subsequent releases. It’s as if to say either the Pokémon Professors or lord Arceus himself sat atop the Hall of Origin and proclaimed “Pokémon should not become Tamagotchi” and lay waste to every Pokéwalker he could get his hands on. While the ability to keep you favourite monster by your side or rip open a tree to call your home may have evaporated into the air Gamefreak breath, there’s always been a more pressing issue at hand – when will we be able to visit a second region again?

The Pokémon World shown in the anime sequences is generally seperate canon to the games. This ‘World’ has never been shown in the main series.

One of the biggest features to ever grace the franchise came in the form of a second landscape – a surprise to those who thought the sequels to Pokémon Red & Blue would be the same old ‘Collect 8 badges, become the champion and go home’ ordeal. 8 badges turned into 16 and suddenly, after the thought that 40 hours meant you going from start to finish, the game turned into a good 70 hour mission as you got to embrace the region you called home years before as if it were the present day.

 The ability to travel back over to the Kanto region made players think that would become the normal formula for each generation of Pokémon games. If Pokémon Gold & Silver included their older brother’s world, why wouldn’t Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire send us back to Johto? Safe to say it didn’t happen despite the valiant efforts of every player search high and low for the hidden secret lying in wait ready and willing to answer our prayers.

It never happened again; Generation III didn’t send us back – Nor did Gen IV with Pokémon Pearl & Diamond. Black & White we didn’t even question until a couple of text strings inside the game’s dialogue began to raise eyebrows pertaining to the possibility – and the release of Black 2 and White 2 was just about enough to reignite our trust in Nintendo in the hopes that they were about to give us what we’d yearned for.

They didn’t.

A screenshot taken during the ending sequence of Pokémon Black & White shows N flying away to a ‘distant land’.

The ending of Pokémon Black & White saw the game’s anti-hero take a legendary Pokémon and fly off to a distant region – with ‘region’ being the term used when referring to the worlds we travel around in each Pokémon game.

 Geographically, we don’t have a clear picture of the planet the Pokémon world is quickly becoming. While it’s a viable assumption that each ‘region’ is exactly that – a region – all linked up to form a single country is completely reasonable when we understand how each has been based around areas of Japan like Kanto, Kyushu and Hokkaido – but recently, those ideas have had their theories thrown off course slightly. The Generation V region of Unova took inspiration from the state of New York in North America. Second to that is how the region of Kalos in the upcoming games is pulling most of its geographic designs from Paris, France. It’s as if to say the reasons we haven’t been taking quick boat trips or brisk walks across the borders of Johto or Hoenn is primarily due to the fact that we’re not in the same country any more.

We’ve never been given a map depicting where exactly each region has been situated. And there’s a lot of them. Despite the fact each major generation leap in the handheld series takes us to a new land, so did the Pokémon Ranger and Colosseum spin-off series. Orre and Fiore were so drastically different in terms of regional layout and focus that it’s enough to say these most certainly took place on continents with far different ideals of Pokémon culture.

This map of Japan has been annotated to show the regions of the Pokémon games in relation to their real-world influences

Judging from how we’ve already crossed over between Johto and Kanto, it suffices to say those two are geographically connected. Our time with Pokémon Emerald saw Scott create the ‘Battle Frontier’ just off the shores of Kanto and provided a ferry that frequently took trainers from Hoenn to the specialist theme park – enough reason to cement the first 4 regions as at least separate landmass much like Japan itself. Sinnoh was confirmed as the Pokémon universe’s answer to the Hokkaido region of the game’s motherland.

 But Sinnoh and Unova are where things start to get a little different. It’s a known fact the land of Unova takes its shape, bustling city landscapes and long-spanning bridges from New York City and its surround areas, but Sinnoh’s vastly dissimilar design of mountain ranges, forests and snowy segments and reaffirm the area as another of the connected regions of the land featured in the past games – not to mention the in-game event atop Spear Pillar shooting us back to ruins just above Johto’s civilisation.

There’s enough evidence to suggest Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh are all connected as a single country – but Unova has continually contracts its ability to be a part of the group while also hinting that it really is after all.

The Sinnoh region was seen as a game-changer for introducing extended geographical features. Mountains, temples, snow and other areas came into play

The original release of Black and White contained minimal references to the franchise’s other areas of focus, but the slightly expanded section sprouting from the south western portion of Unova during the transition to Black 2 & White 2 saw a cave appear on the map with the tagline “It’s said the deepest part of the cave leads to the Sinnoh region.”  – A tease that more than likely caused a number of avid theorists to poke at every wall, tile and rock in the place. Naturally, with the notion of the game’s anti-hero leaving for another region, fans all over were relishing at the thought that perhaps the game’s sequel would continue the story and send us in pursuit of the orphaned ‘King’. The notion of a cave connecting the two regions we thought couldn’t be further apart only set us adrift even more. The rumor spreading map info wasn’t about to have 10 year olds confirming the geographic discovery of a lifetime. We couldn’t travel between the two after-all.

 It seems that with each major release, we have our hopes of visiting a second region — a-la Pokémon Gold, Silver & Crystal — dashed yet again. Each region had their own cruise lines more than capable to fulfilling our wishes while Unova itself had a runway and airplane easily up to the job. The sheer fact we watched a guy ride a Pokémon from Unova to a ‘distant land’ confirms a somewhat close tie between the theorised separate country and our old home.

Pokémon X & Y are ambitious titles. As the Pokémon games have grown in scope, they’ve literally grown in size. They began to move away from full sprite titles to 3D spaces with sprites overlaying on top – a graphical leap that runs a fairly big file size increase to write to a small cartridge – and Pokémon X & Y are pushing that to a much greater degree.

The large graphical upgrade between past Pokémon regions and the upcoming Kalos would suggest that squeezing another region of its kind into the game would prove impossible.

We’ve gone from 151 Pokémon sprites with little to no animation  to over 700 3D rendered monsters with full animation and a 3D world. The feasibility of building a second set of towns, mountains and oceans around that enormous feat is already becoming a fleeting dream.

What’s left to be said other than don’t get your hopes up of finally seeing Hoenn rendered in more than just pixel graphics. It’s the only one not to see the update, but it doesn’t seem at all likely that Pokémon X & Y will be the sequel sets to give the us, the fans, what we’ve yearned for years. And if it were, we’d know by now. It would be silly for Nintendo to keep such a major selling point a secret from the world. You have my permission to knock on Nintendo’s door if the Kanto Battle Frontier doesn’t make a full return, though. I’ll join you.

Brydge iPad Keyboard Review

Those who have become the victim of intelligent advertising may have seen the numerous Facebook advertisements liking their tracked use of an iOS device with a certain product called the ‘Brydge’. The ads themselves look stylish, suitable and not at all badly worded like most of the marketing efforts you see on the addictive website – admittedly, the ad caught my attention, and I got in touch with the Brydge team to see what the idea was all about.

The Brydge comes as either a machined silver aluminium or black polycarbonate chassic

Whether you’ve heard of it or not, the Brydge keyboard isn’t your run of the mill cheap peripheral attachment to your expensive Apple tablet, but in fact a product of triple digit expense that compliments your gadget better than most.

Utilizing a simple twin hinge mechanism to lock your iPad in place with pure rubberized friction, the Brydge keyboard latches onto any generation iPad as if it were about to roll down a steep cliff edge. Lifting your iPad by its frame as you normally would is still just as simple as before. The Brydge’s made to measure grips allow the attached keyboard to stay attached while the surprisingly tough hinges keep it at near enough the same level angle and positioning as it were lying on the desk.

The keyboard itself comes in multiple flavors; A black polycarbonate keyboard with Bluetooth speakers, the aluminium keyboard and the same stylish set-up paired with the speakers of its cheaper, plastic brother. Categorically starting at a $99 and ending at $199 – any of the three Brydge setups is unlikely to be on the shopping lists of anyone on a tight budget – but for those serious about turning their iPad into a versatile computer hybrid for work will appreciate the sturdy angles and familiar touch of the keys.

The molded rubber hinge grips crave a firm pull to release their hold on your tablet

The bluetooth speaker built into the top section of two Brydge variants is nothing to write home about. The quality sounds tinny and lacks any of the discernible bass you’d really look for in this kind of micro entertainment setup. It’s not going to have your peers getting up to dance during a picnic or have Michael Bay’s many explosions rumbling through your rib cage – but that’s not all to say it lacks in power.

Though the iPad speaker itself arguably provides a richer sound experience, the Brydge speaker does pack considerably louder volume – not a bad option when you’re just hoping to listen to podcasts and seminars without the risk of straying too far to hear. Thankfully you can desert the speaker in place of the aluminum keyboard for a little more, or have both if the full works is more up your road.

Overall, the Brydge keyboard attempts to nudge your iPad ever closer to becoming a budge Macbook. They keys feel similar – but not 100% – like Apple’s own range, but does everything in its power to bridge the gap between the discernible difference of tablet and laptop.

 

While it doesn’t completely eliminate the need to take your fingers away from the keyboard to prod at the screen, it does everything within its power to eliminate some of the steps through multitasking, brightness/volume keys, lock toggle and search keys situated where you’d usually find the function array. It certainly makes typing long documents (like this) much easier to achieve on the go, even if the keyboard needs a quick moment to reconnect after a few minutes of silence.

The Brydge is certainly not for everyone, but those serious about using their iPad as a serious piece of office equipment will appreciate its simple design, functional use and familiar setup.

A Day Spent in Dozens of Towns: Streetpass Manchester’s Animal Crossing Get-together

Hot off the heels of its ground-breaking attendance event last weekend, the UK’s biggest streetpass Community – Streetpass Manchester – have already set a date for their 1-year anniversary meetup in the bustling city’s market heaven, Piccadilly Gardens.

Closing the gap ever more between the dates of their events, the Streetpass Manchester group has shaved another month from their schedule pushing the time of their events from near tri-monthly affairs to bi-monthly shenanigans.

Their last event designed to celebrate the release of Capcom’s sleeper-hit Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on Wii U and 3DS saw their attendance numbers bolster. Fans finally had a sure-fire way to hunt with company just by treading on down to a Manchester’s original gaming bar – Kyoto Lounge – and it’s familiar geek-cave atmospheric feel.

Last weekend’s event, however, took the 40+ attendance numbers of the Monster Hunter meet and sky-rocketed the figure well into the triple digits – a feat that become more and more probable as the group’s Facebook feed (and Facebook as a whole) was overtaken by update-after-update of people’s whimsical, mayoral vacations in their new virtual towns, alongside more and more of the public succumming to the enticement caused by those very same posts.

Occupying the much-loved gaming lounge for a second time, it was clear the bar may have exceeded its viability as a venue from the get-go of the event’s 11:30 opening. As I joined the gathering of friendly folk outside the bar dot on the opening time, it was already evident things were going to get a little claustrophobic in a place I’ve never once been without a seat.

Walking down the double flight of stairs to reach the bar’s underground core saw dozens upon dozens of mayor’s pile waltz into the venue with no such official suit to be found. If there’s one thing that stands out on Animal Crossing: New Leaf is its level of unprofessionalism your villager brings to the role of head honcho of a town.

Regardless, trudging around the towns of the event attendees made it obvious that just about everyone treasures their town in their own little way. Money pumped into ‘Public Works’ projects, countless items generously donated to the museums through player-to-player teamwork and pavements carefully laid out to stop the grass from churning under the feet all the eager fruit collectors dashing about the establishments. Everyone at the meet respected each others hard work – top hat and monocle or not!

Early arrivers were the first to grab seats and the first to nab one of the many beautiful Animal Crossing posters on show alongside a single raffle ticket used to close the day off with a bit of rare swag. While the masses crammed into the bar were ready and waiting to show off the last 2 weeks of their hard work on the game, many took to the multiple WiiU consoles on hand to bust it up on Smash Bros. Brawl or mingle with Nintendo Land and its, in-theme, Animal Crossing mini-game.

Understandably, the start of the event consisted of much-needed chit-chat and frantic face-in-screen checking of every 3DS system in the house for the inevitable barrage of Streetpass hits bouncing too and far the dozens of machines – the day was certainly a good one for the King and Queen Miis trapped in the cage during StreetPass Quest – The royal must have appreciated the hordes of people rushing to their aid rather than play-coin purchases happy cats and eager hat collectors.

Despite the focused theme of Animal Crossing, the StreetPass UK members certainly didn’t shy away from the opportunity to race through the tracks of Mario Kart 7, suck up ghosts in Luigi’s Mansion 2 and beat each other to a pulp in Super Smash Bros (using the villager’s inclusion in the sequel as their excuse, of course) it didn’t at all end in tears.

While I drifted back and forth between the StreetPass meet and another social gathering going on closer to the city centre, I was pleasantly surprised to see my return being greeted with even more faces than were present when I left. There’s no shame in saying that I’ve never seen Kyoto Lounge so full in my multiple visits to the sleek gaming bar, and I’m positive in my thinking that even the wondrously friendly event organisers never could have expected such a turn-out to follow the previous gathering just a mere 3 months before. The free drink coupons and trivia prizes didn’t go unappreciated.

While socialising proved difficult with the lack of room (and air), my time in the bar was certainly a trip worth taking. The streetpass hits filled up the HH Showcase of my Animal Crossing cartridge and rekindled my love of Nintendo’s classic all-stars fighting masterpiece. With the next meet set to take place in the brilliant open space of Piccadilly Gardens, it’ll no doubt expand on the success of the last, and trade in the WiiU for some good old-fashioned sunshine to celebrate the group’s first year together.

For those interested in coming along, just join the Streetpass Manchester Facebook page and ready yourself for the August extravaganza!

[This article was originally published to NintendoFeed.com]

RIFT – The Shift to Free-to-Play

The past few years have proven time and time again that while the massively-multiplayer online (MMO) genre is here to stay, it’s not going to be the one to kick the industry into overdrive. Hundreds of games have splurged their way out of unknown development and into the internet pipes for all to see – and this vast overcrowding of the genre soon threatened to eclipse any fully fleshed out titles with worthless fat.

Thankfully, however, Trion Worlds managed to worm their way out of the death heap of cloned MMOs with its surprise announcement at a gaming show a few years back. Early demos had developer walkthroughs of the game’s primary function – spontaneous open-world PvE – from the ‘Rifts’ making up the game’s name.

Upon release, RIFT’s ego-filled marketing campaign littered gaming websites all over proclaiming ‘This isn’t Azeroth anymore’ – a blunt stab at it’s main competitor, and still king of the crop – World Of Warcraft. Many see their task of dethroning the behemoth Blizzard as the dream that eventually runs them into the ground, but years down the line Trion and RIFT are still putting up a good fight.

With a very similar trial system to Warcraft, I set out to rediscover the game that tore me away from World of Warcraft longer than any other MMO. Now that the game has followed suit with the migration over to Free-to-play; I had the unlimited timespace to hack my way through not only the 20 levels of Telara’s adventure offered through the unlimited free trial – ‘RIFT Lite’ – in the past, but the entire base game, expansion and newest patch. With no subscriptions to turn me away, RIFT managed to capture me once again.

RIFT does everything it can to grab a curious player and thrust them straight into what really makes a fantasy MMO – The lore – something more and more developers are slowly starting to realise.

Straight after choosing the side of the ascended Defiants or Guardians, you’re thrust straight into a war-torn land. Mastering the divine art of ‘ascension’ – the rebirth of a warrior – both factions begin to take the war to the invading forces caused by Regulos – The Dragon God of Extension and his attempts to break his comrades out of their banishment to the Elemental Planes.

With the ability to keep forces high, a brawl with the nearly regurgitated dark drake results in the ascended heroes being given the chance to travel back in time to stop Regulos’ original tide-turning attack.

Engrossed into the cataclysmic story within the first hour, RIFT’s opening section served as its beta portion just before release – a move that ushered in very healthy launch figures. But that isn’t’ all that caused this game to stand its ground against the monolithic world of Blizzard’s Warcraft universe.

Where Warcraft predominantly featured a very singular way of leveling, RIFT brought in enough tweaks and changes to give the standard questing progression path a new lick of paint. ‘Instant Adventures’ paved the way for much of my leveling experience – a feature that conveniently threw itself at me during a lengthy trek across the zone on the look out for more quests. The system gave me the option of joining a pre-made group of similarly skilled adventures to take part in a series of repeating quests.

With little to no more effect than clicking a button, I now had a plethora of XP coming my way and a group to run around with! When you’re logging in for a quick session or just bored of endless trekking, the Instant Adventure functions could be easily triggered from a queue menu to satisfy any cravings to kill a herd of cows and protect a salesman who already has a troupe of burly men batting off goblins from all sides.

While not included in the game on release, the Instant Adventure function certainly breathed life into the title that had already kept my attention for longer than most games in its genre. Before that, however, was the inclusion of the function the game’s name centered upon – Rifts.

These surges of power pop up all across the leveling zones on an endless basis. Tears open up in the lands alerting players to the incoming battalion of Storm Legion forces for which they can either choose to flesh out into a rift themselves or wait for it to rip open on its own accord.

Either way, every player in the resident zone will eventually flock to the anomalies to beat back the waves of monsters protruding from the holes to reap the benefits of being scrawny human with a giant stick. If left alone long enough, the world-travelling hordes will eventually decide to start the fight themselves in attacking the nearby quest outposts until the a player royally peeved at the death of their quest giver decides to shut them down. There’s every chance this can break out into a setting not seen since the eradication of 40-man raids from Azeroth; as the legion begins to invade, capturing areas and calling in the high-health world bosses to put up a final fight against their eventual opposition.

Given the fact that each of the game’s 4 classes split into 10 sub-classes – with 3 of these making the final talent tree of the character – Rift’s depth is by no means shallow. With each class being able to take on just about any role (given the right path) every aspect of Rift’s entertainment can be experienced without having to spend weeks leveling another character. What’s more, the constant calendar events, patches and even smartphone apps keeps you hooked to the game in much the same way World of Warcraft achieved through rep grinds and daily quests.

If you’re one of the 1.2 million who recently flocked away from Azeroth, then I can pride myself in saying Trion Worlds have amassed something superior with Rift. It’s hard for anyone to find something that fills the void after cancelling a WoW subscription, but this is certainly the best bet. Constant entertainment, a good community and plenty of post-game content makes Rift the best chance you have at finding true MMO love again. It even has a treasure hunt side-quest!

For the millions of players who flocked to the game during its original release – now is the time to return. The shift to Free-to-Play hasn’t cut loose any content from the flabby belly of the well-established game. With all of you characters in-tact, there’s little reason to get back into the swing of things – it’s undoubtedly going to cause an influx of new faces to cancel out the worries of those who jumped ship a few months into its release.

This article belongs to Alienware/Dell and was published to AlienwareArena.com on July 18th, 2013. You can read the rest of the article by clicking this link!

Five Features The Sims 4 Should Have

It’s no wonder why Maxis and Electronic Arts (EA) have claimed the lives and souls of more than 55 million people with their life simulation series, The Sims. The idea of playing God to wreck havoc on the lives of virtual townsfolk is a long-standing and ever popular pass-time of the casual game, even for the hardcore-strategical, mayor-figure gamer.

This article belongs to Alienware/Dell and was published to AlienwareArena.com on June 17th, 2013. You can read the rest of the article by clicking this link!

Fez Retrospective

Two or three years ago, the thought of playing an eight or sixteen-bit game for any serious reason had long gone. The days of Galaga and BattleToads were long in the past, and anyone showing even the slightest interest in the pixel-worlds of old was either hipster kids playing Pokémon Yellow on their GameBoy Colour or internet personalities looking to score big with their fans by ridiculing the games their parents relished before their birth.

This article belongs to Alienware/Dell and was published to AlienwareArena.com on June 13th, 2013. You can read the rest of the article by clicking this link!