Platform: PC

One of my favorite games of the coin-op era was Atari’s 720. It had a simple, but unique control scheme that’s pretty much impossible to replicate through emulation. You would basically jump then spin a knob (dressed up like a joystick), and the more times you spun the dial, the more points you got. As abstract as it was, this felt like skateboarding.

OlliOlli is the only skateboarding game that I have played that comes close to matching the rhythm and feel of 720°. The controls seem complicated at first: flick and spin the left stick to jump and press A to land. But once you start to get the hang of it (you never really get the hang of the landings) there’s an incredible flow as you grind from one obstacle to the next. Landing is everything though. If you don’t time that tap of the A button just right you lose out on big points.

In the end the game is better compared with a bullet hell shooter. Timing and memorization are everything. Strategy and exploration have no place here. Still, trying to get everything perfect is addictive and the reward of hitting a huge combo just right is greatly satisfying.

I was a bit hesitant to play this game. I really didn’t like FarCry 2 all that much. It was repetitive, dull and not a worthy successor to the first game. Then, I decided to give the eighties sci-fi themed expansion FarCry 3: Blood Dragon a try. That game was great, so when 3 went on sale I grabbed it hoping for the best, and, oh man, I was immediately blown away.

The first ten minutes of the game are incredible. Mind you, this is your basic tutorial sequence where you learn to crouch, sprint and look around. You are quickly introduced to the main bad guy, the dire stakes are laid out as you watch your comrades get tortured and die, and boom, in an instant you are forced into an absolutely heart-pounding, gunplay-free escape.

From there on out it’s shooting everything that moves, lighting the local fauna (and wildlife) on fire, and blowing stuff up. Yet, despite the seemingly limited variety, this works extremely well. Every outpost battle is tense, every tower climb is harrowing and even the hunting sequences are a blast.

On top of all this, there’s a real story here with interesting characters, narrative story arcs and real tension. Even the side quests are an important part of the game, as they help you gain experience and unlock some of the best weapons in the game. I loved this game and will probably keep it around as I attempt to get all the collectibles and explore every nook of the island.

Uh oh, here we go again with another mediocre adventure game. Surprisingly, this one comes from Wadjet Eye Studios whose games have all been really good to me up until this one. On the surface Resonance has a lot going for it: well done pixelated graphics, a decent score and some clever twists on point-and-click interaction. However, the story and characters never grabbed be. Maybe it was the sub-par voice acting from a few of the leads or perhaps the controllable character overload. Controlling four characters seems like it would make for some interesting game play, but it is more of a hassle than it’s worth. Constantly having to round up everyone to go to a different area is not fun.

One of the key puzzle mechanics of the game is the ability to access memories and items within dialogue sequences. It’s basically a point-and-click version of the old text adventure trope of typing “ask character about xxx.” It worked about half the time. The other half I reverted back to the old “try everything on everything” brute force method of getting through the game. I felt like my motivations or objectives were never quite telegraphed in a fair manner. In fact, as I type this I still have a sour taste in my mouth from the final two puzzles which are just dialogue trees in which you need to pretty much need to guess blindly how the respondent is going to react or die.

Pass on this one and play Primordia or Blackwell instead.

I’ve had pretty good luck with the string of adventure games I’ve played lately. It was inevitable that sooner or later I’d come across a dud. Yesterday had promise. I was initially drawn to the slick graphics (well, slick for a point and click game). However, the game is bogged down with nonsensical puzzles and an uneven tone to the story. There’s a horrible tangent where your character needs to learn martial arts that almost made me give up on the game completely. Eventually the story comes back around but it never is that gripping.

Started out okay enough despite the idiotic button mashing mechanics. But, man, this game became pure tedium by the ending. If there was a story here, it was totally lost on me. Just a bunch of feathery haired leather-boys jumping around and killing Raggedy Anne dolls. Is this what console gaming is like? What a bore.

The Witcher is a flawed but ultimately satisfying role playing game that puts you in the role of monster killing mutant named Geralt. In some aspects the game is a bit more hardcore than other recent RPGs. You need to pay close attention to dialogue as clues are not spoon-fed to you and the almighty quest arrow is somewhat deceiving. The first half of the game feels more like an adventure game in which you are talking to NPCs and running back-and-forth across the map to advance. I eventually got the hang of the way quests worked and was able enjoy the game much more about one-third the way through.

While story and questing are complicated, fighting and building your character have been simplified. Combat involved a timing-based system of clicks and weapon swapping. You only have two real weapon choices and five magic spells. While others may scoff at this simple system, I rather enjoyed it. It’s not the mindless clicking of Diablo and not the thinky strategic multi-character battles of a Baldur’s Gate style game. Relaxed but engaging.

The big story arc is a basic one in which you are to recover a stolen goods, but, along the way, you get entangled in politics, romance and lending the occasional helping hand. The side quests eventually tie in nicely with the main story, although I never quite felt like the main baddies were that much of a menace. Oh, and as for the “romance” aspect, that consists of bedding anything with a pair of polygonal boobs in exchange for a racy trading card. Classy stuff.

Not much to say about this one other that it’s a joke game. The gag is that in order to gain required abilities you need to purchase downloadable content. These abilities include moving to the left (as seen in the above screen grab) and colored text. The game itself is a simple platformer where your real goal is to collect coins and eventually get to the final (and only) bad guy. The game can be finished in less than a half hour so if you can get it for less than a dollar, have some time to kill and a low threshold for what you think passes for humor, go nuts.

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.