By Griff Hoffmann Megacorporate espionage, augmentation, and Lo-Fi cyberspace mark the world of Jazzpunk. It’s a first person adventure game set in a retro-cyberpunk Cold War future. If all that’s gibberish, then remember this: Jazzpunk is comedy.
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By Griff Hoffmann I was a Shadowrun Returns backer. At first, my reasons for throwing money at the game were an acute case of Kickstarter fever and a burning desire, similar to that of a middle-aged man buying a high-end sports car, to see my name in a game ever though I have no skills that would ever yield that result naturally. So essentially, I went the executive producer route. Like any good investor or more aptly, sudden bandwagon hopper for a fresh cause, I tried to learn as much about the Shadowrun Universe as I could. I wasn’t about to throw a bunch of money at something I knew nothing about; I’m crazy, not stupid. I was aware it originated as a pen and paper RPG with a few other video game spinoffs and most importantly: it is cyberpunk(y).
By Griff Hoffmann It’s all about time. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a game that rewards patience through diligent repetition and sooths the soul of any collectomaniac. For a newcomer to the franchise, New Leaf offers a robust amount of content and new features that make it the best and only place to begin. But since Animal Crossing unfolds slowly thanks to its reliance on a real-world clock it isn’t the kind of game one sits down to beat. The rewarding nature of the gameplay comes in the form of the small objectives set by the player such as earning enough currency to afford the next upgrade for the player’s house, or catching a rare fish, or enticing a new citizen to move into the town. There is plenty to do in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, it just takes time to do it.
By Griff Hoffmann Injustice: Gods Among Us combines popular DC heroes into a Mortal Kombat flavored fighting game that ends up being more spectacle than spectacular. NeatherRealm Studios found great success with their last game as it marked the franchises return to 2D fighting and did something no fighting game did before: have an amazing story mode. Injustice: Gods Among Us is takes that model and waters it down for better and for worse.
By Griff Hoffmann The perennial desire to do the cool stuff that happens in cut-scenes instead of just watching is half fulfilled in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The player takes control of Raiden, the over the top ninja cyborg, and dispenses some zan-datsu, bullet time dynamic cutting, while chasing down a nefarious government backed PMC in the conspiracy riddled future of the Metal Gear Solid world. Platinum Games manages to design a fast paced, high energy action game that sets itself far outside the standard patient sneaking of the Metal Gear franchise. The zany, anime nonsense story is no different from other games coming from Kojima, but it's fragmented and missing the in-your-face obsessive level of attention given to grey future tech that defines his style. The combat is just deep enough to remain engaging through the crazy trek and by the end, after the most grueling last boss in recent memory, it’s easy to walk away satisfied and never pick it up again.
By Griff Hoffmann My history with the Devil May Cry series is limited. The series debuted around the time my gaming habits changed. In the middle of high school my desire to play games (expect Metal Gear Solid 2 and Dance Dance Revolution) dropped off precipitously. I replaced video games with anime and Kung Fu movies. It would seem like playing Devil May Cry should have been right in my wheelhouse. At the time, Dante’s story was nothing new to me. I had been watching funny haired badasses sling guns and swing swords enough already. It even annoyed me that my friends would praise the series for it’s uniqueness (which they were right about) when I was trying to convince them to watch Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. I was too focused on criticizing the unoriginality of the characters to notice the skill rewarding action. Many years later I made another go at Devil May Cry but the motor accuracy required to perform the the crazy combos intrinsic to the series was too demanding. Plus listening to people denounce me for missing the life altering experience of playing the series only gave me more reason to snub it. But now we’re here and what was old is new again. Devil May Cry has been rebooted by Capcom and shipped off to Ninja Theory for development.
By Griff Hoffmann Halo 4 returns to the core of the series with gusto. Intensity and action are spun up to full force from the get go while also delivering rich fiction augmented with personal drama. Every detail of Halo 4 is polished from the soundtrack that sets the mood instead of stealing the show to the frosted glass on a spaceship’s cryo-sleep chambers. A passionate team could have only achieved this attention to detail with an almost fanatical love for the first games. 343 Industries carries the torch into the next trilogy on a high note with Halo 4 but still has room to grow.
By Griff Hoffmann Double Dragon Neon: is the Kung Pow: Enter the Tongue of video games as it dives down zany street fist bumps first. From the resulting “Touchdown!” yelled by a Lee after knocking a enemy out with a bat to the ten second parody tracks that play when selecting a Mix Tape, Double Dragon: Neon excels at humor. This depth of comedy and reverence for the series doesn’t make it to the gameplay side. Billy and Jimmy are fine brawlers but are outshone by other games and their own brodacious jokes.
By Griff Hoffmann When I finished Darksiders 2, I was let down by the ending so much that I felt like all those times video game ending made me crap my pants happened in reverse. I was meet with a sudden and violent fit of don’t give a crap constipation. I set out to finish the game and give it some leeway since the quality of the first garnered it some good will in my eyes but by the 20th hour I couldn’t take another overly large fetch quest dungeon. Combat and random loot made the dull experience less unentertaining but as a whole Death’s story in Darksiders 2 pales in comparison to War’s in the original.
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