Author: Robert Gomez

Brothers is a surprisingly excellent game that’s filled with beautiful visual storytelling and a unique game-play mechanic that has the player controlling two characters on screen at the same time. This game requires a dual-stick controller. Each stick independently controls the movements of each the two titular brothers while the L/R triggers serve as the interact/action buttons for boys. This sounds like it would be impossible to control, but it doesn’t take all that much getting used to. What it does is open up the game to all sorts of puzzle solving where the left side of your body needs to cooperate with the right to get everything working on screen.

Fortunately, this isn’t just another puzzle platformer. There is a simple and effective adventure story that leads the player from set piece to set piece. Each section of the game has its own little story to tell and interesting characters to meet. Although it is really linear, you are encouraged to take time and explore little nooks and corners of the levels to see how the two brothers react. The game is short (finish-able in 2–3 hours), but the length feels just about right for the limited amount of variety the unique control mechanic can offer.

Torchlight is a game that has been resting on my back-burner for a long, long time. I got it for something like three dollars during a Steam sale many years ago and played it off and on since. It’s basically an updated version of Diablo, a game which I played through once and thought was just okay. The whole concept of hack-and-slash with the goal of loot collection just doesn’t appeal to me. Without a decent story it’s just mindless clicking and inventory management.

Levels are randomly generated and your task is to click on as many monsters as possible and hit the heal button at just the right moment. It’s kinda like playing Free Cell or Minesweeper. Not much skill, just watch your health bar. That said, it’s a fine looking game and does what it’s supposed to do. I could see this as a multiplayer game (it’s not) that would allow to to chat with friends while clicking away. Like I said, it took me forever to finish this game because it just got boring after a while.

Oh sweet Shatner, this game is brutal! The Nintendo DS Giana Sisters game was a cute, simplistic and moderately challenging throwback platformer. Twisted Dreams is a relentless, brain twisting modernized update.

First off, the game is visually stunning. The richly rendered backgrounds and overall attention to detail is amazing. On top of that, the game’s primary mechanic is the ability to switch between aggro Giana and sweet Giana which, not only changes your abilities, changes every visual element in the game from dark to cheery and back again. Owls transform into devils and flowery blooms become wilted and rotten. The effect is seamless and jaw dropping.

That switching mechanic is the key to overcoming many of the more puzzling obstacles. The control does not come very intuitively and I would would often find myself fumbling and button mashing as I would try to time a switch just right. The main goal is to finish each level with as many gems as possible and with as few deaths as you can. The better you do the more stars you earn which, in turn, opens up boss levels. Death comes very easy and I rarely could finish a stage without racking up at least fifty deaths. Like I said, this game is brutal. I’m sure a twelve year-old might breeze through it, but my middle-aged reflexes weren’t quite up to snuff.

This was a game that I supported in Kickstarter, and, despite my sore thumbs, I’m glad I did. It has been one of the few crowd-funded projects I paid into that delivered within months of funding and has been more than generous with updates and DLC.

Saints Row IV is an obvious rip-off of Grand Theft Auto all the way down from the open-world mechanics to the gangster themed plot. In realizing this, the makers of Saints Row opted to differentiate themselves by completely disregarding the gritty realism of GTA for an insane sci-fi fantasy plot twist in IV. Aliens have destroyed Earth and the last remaining humans are the Saints gang leaders, all of whom are trapped in a Matrix-style virtual world. The game never takes itself seriously and is filled with amusing quips and plot moments. As the game progresses you begin to overcome the simulation, causing it to glitch and pixelate and giving you unstoppable super powers.

The plot is really stupid and revolves mostly around reviving your friends, none of whom I knew anything about since this was the first Saints Row game I ever played. I guess fan of the previous games may get a kick out of each of these characters, but I really couldn’t care less. The plot and characters are just a necessary background to what is really the fun of this game: open-world mayhem and ridiculous player customization. I spent half the game with a bra on my head and my character talking like a duck.

Like any open-world game this hinges on the variety of missions and activities. Saints Row IV does okay with this for the first half of the game, but once you start to gain powers most of the tasks become trivial and you can just explode everything. That said, I did manage to waste a bunch of time on collectibles and side missions so it must not have been as repetitive as I am remembering it. I would love to see one of these open world games to make the world persistent so that your path of destruction would scar the land forever.