FROM THE ARCHIVES

Tag: excellent games

Fall Guys
Game Reviews

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout Review

Gary Smith1 Comment

It's been almost a month since Fall Guys took the world by storm. Since its release on August 3rd, the game has quickly become of the most popular (both played and watched) games on the planet and also is the most downloaded game in PlayStation Plus history. While it's been free on PS Plus, it has still managed to sell over seven million copies on Steam at an MSRP of $19.99. It's been an amazing success story, has become a favorite of many, and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime…

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Book of Demons
Game Reviews

Book of Demons Review

Gary Smith

Book of Demons is the first installment of developer Thing Trunk's series Return 2 Games, which is creating a "Paperverse" of games inspired by the "early golden days" of PC gaming. Return 2 Games is planned to be made up of seven Books where the game world is a pop-up book, paper style. Book of Demons kickstarts the series with a tribute to and parody of a true PC gaming classic, Diablo. Like Diablo, Book of Demons is a hack and slash ARPG and shares a similar theme. Here, you'll make your way…

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Assassin's Creed Origins
Game Reviews

Assassin’s Creed Origins Review

Gary Smith

Assassin’s Creed first released in 2007, and two years later saw its first sequel. After that, fans of the franchise got a new entry every year from 2009 to 2015 with the release of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. With a technically flawed release in 2014 with Unity, many fans began to feel burned out on the series. Thus, 2016 came and went without any major Assassin’s Creed game releasing. In October 2017, ten years after the release of the first game, Assassin’s Creed Origins released and promised…

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Assassin's Creed Syndicate
Game Reviews

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Review

Eric W.1 Comment

Back when it came out I and many other people considered Black Flag a watershed for the series and rightfully. Simply put: This is the next watershed and if they can continue to crank out games like this at this level of quality the I hope they making these games for as long as they sell because I'll never get tired of something like this. I'll welcome a game like this every year with wide open arms.

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Destiny The Taken King
Game Reviews

Destiny – The Taken King Review

Gary Smith

A little over a year ago I posted my review of vanilla Destiny, which I gave a superb 4.5 star rating. That review encompassed the game from launch to three weeks after launch with a little over 85 hours invested in it and having done everything but the raid. Now here we are a month and a half removed from the release of Destiny’s first major expansion, The Taken King, and it is time to review it all over again.

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Knights of the Old Republic
Game Reviews

Star Wars – Knights of the Old Republic Review

Gary Smith

Seven years. That's how long I considered Knights of the Old Republic my all-time favorite video game. It's still a top five, but it was knocked off by Red Dead Redemption back in 2010. Still, that's a good amount of time considering during that seven year (well almost) span a lot of really great games were released. They just weren't better than Knights of the Old Republic to me. I wasn't into gaming websites in 2003, but I did read some magazines (GamePro, Tips & Tricks, and of course Xbox…

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Metal Gear Solid V
Game Reviews

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review

Eric W.

What do you get when you cross the best elements out of a Grand Theft Auto game, the Metal Gear series, stealth games like Splinter Cell,  and for grins an almost MMO lite online mode for a bonus? You get Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain which is easily in contention for Game of the Year even up against stiff competition like Witcher 3. GRAPHICS: Stunning. Simply stunning. It's becoming a cliche which is a good thing that games like this or Witcher 3 come out that push the envelope and game…

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Game Reviews

The Witcher III – Wild Hunt Review

Eric W.

This gaming series has been a frustration for me. Frustrating because I have played and tried each game in this series and did my darnedest to fall in love with the games and just couldn't because some of the gameplay and combat mechanics were not to my liking. I just couldn't get on board and get excited. Until now. The third time really is the charm for me and likely a lot of other people out there judging by the feedback I have been able to gauge since the game came out. The reason this…

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Grand Theft Auto V
Game Reviews

Grand Theft Auto V (PS4) Review

Gary Smith1 Comment

Rockstar wowed the majority of us a year ago when they released Grand Theft Auto V on PS3 and Xbox 360. Even on old hardware, it was an excellent looking game that still looks better than some games released on the new systems. Now that Rockstar has released the game for PS4 and Xbox One, it looks even better. For starters, there's increased detail for everything. Textures are better, overall image quality is greatly improved thanks to anti-aliasing. There's greater draw distance, and even…

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The Last of Us
Game Reviews

The Last of Us Remastered Review

Gary Smith4 Comments

The Last of Us was an undeniable hit when it landed a year ago on PS3, both with PS3 owners and critics. The game received perfect scores galore (including from me) and over 200 Game of the Year awards (again, including mine). For me, it was one of the swan songs for the PS3. It was no surprise then earlier this year when The Last of Us Remastered was announced for PS4. After all, the system has been selling very well, and a lot of PS4 owners never owned a PS3. With the updated and more powerful…

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Assassin's Creed Black Flag
Game Reviews

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Review

Eric W.2 Comments

I am a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed games so admittedly I approach these games with a healthy benefit of the doubt and positive bias in place. I hope I'm not an outright fanboy and I don't think I am since I can harp on some quibbles and nitpicks I had from previous games, whether it be the KBM controls on the first one or the utterly ghastly first person platforming that was in Revelations. In complete defiance of the normal trend of sequelitis, this series continues to expand and improve…

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Grand Theft Auto V
Game Reviews

Grand Theft Auto V Review

Gary Smith2 Comments

This has proven a hard review to even begin. Not because I don’t have anything to say about Grand Theft Auto V, as a matter of fact I could say plenty about the game, but rather because I haven’t wanted to stop playing it. We’ve seen some truly amazing games this year: BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us standing out for most folks (myself included), and I’d personally add Saints Row and LEGO City: Undercover to the list as well while others would include Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, and Rayman…

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Splinter Cell Blacklist
Game Reviews

Splinter Cell: Blacklist Review

Eric W.1 Comment

Splinter Cell has finally “come back.” That's my short teaser for the theme of this review and many others reviews out there for that matter. This game brings the best aspects of Splinter Cell Conviction and previous pre Double Agent Splinter Cell games and merges those aspects together in a new and extremely satisfying whole. What Blacklist does it does very well. It feels like Splinter Cell taken to the next level in a lot of ways and I'm pleased enough with it that it will very likely be…

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The Last of Us
Game Reviews

The Last of Us Review

Gary Smith13 Comments

I’ve gone back and forth trying to decide how I wanted to handle this review. The Last of Us released this past Friday, and of course, it was a hugely anticipated PS3 exclusive. Reviews from the larger Metacritic outlets went up weeks ago, and so by now people who may have been on the fence before will have seen dozens and dozens of all positive reviews and have likely purchased the game. So with that said, I’m going to do something different with this review; I’m going to talk spoilers. Don’t…

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Call of Juarez Gunslinger
Game Reviews

Call of Juarez Gunslinger Review

Gary Smith11 Comments

It’s a funny thing when a franchise can have three retail games available, the last of which is widely considered to be quite bad, and then have a fourth game be reduced down to a cheap digital only title. Now you may be asking “well what’s funny about that?” and the funny thing is the $15 downloadable title with almost no promotion whatsoever is easily the best game in the franchise. And it’s not even close. After the horrible decision to take Call of Juarez to the present day with “The…

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BioShock Infinite
Game Reviews

BioShock Infinite (PC) Review

Eric W.

I'll state it upfront: This game will be on my Game of the Year shortlist without a doubt and it's set a very high bar for the remainder of this year across the board. I know that's a bold claim and challenge considering this only March as I write this review but that's the kind of impression this game has left with me. I have the same feeling coming off this game as I did after I had finished playing the first Bioshock. I'd played a game that almost transcended the genre and was something…

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Bioshock Infinite
Game Reviews

BioShock Infinite Review

Gary Smith2 Comments

Note: BioShock Infinite was played to completion on “Hard” difficulty. This first playthrough took between 10 and 11 hours to complete, and I did not seek out every collectible (sight seeing or the voxphones) this time through. When I got my PlayStation 3 in 2009, I got a bunch of games to go with it. One of those was BioShock, and out of the entire stack BioShock was the very first one I played. My first PSN trophy was “Toaster in the Tub,” and it was also the first PS3 game that I beat. The…

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Crysis
Game Reviews

Crysis Review

Gary Smith

Today we will be looking at the PC version of Crysis. I'm not much of a PC gamer, and as my luck would have it, right after I started this, I found out they were releasing a console version. Nevertheless, I got my PC gaming on and beat this offering from EA and Crytek. So without further adieu, let's get to it. For a 2007 game, this game has fantastic graphics. Even by the standards of some more recent offerings from the last couple of years on either PS3 or Xbox 360, the graphics for Crysis are…

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