If you’re an old dick like me then your first gaming experience wasn’t with the Wii, or the Game Boy Advance, or the PlayStation: it was the Atari 2600.
While the NES was my first true love, my dad owned a 2600 – it launched in the late 1970s – and so that was my first exposure to this glorious hobby. Its games may look like cave paintings by today’s standards, but they were immensely important to the history of gaming.
Retro specialist Blaze is attempting to keep this history alive with this officially licensed handheld, but how do its 50 games hold up today, and does this £35 gizmo do a good job of replicating them? Let’s get stuck in. Continue reading “Atari 2600 Retro Handheld Console (Blaze) review”→
I already reviewed Sega Mega Drive Classics (known as Sega Genesis Classics in North America) when it was released on the Xbox One and PS4 this past summer.
If you want to read my general thoughts on it, head over there and fill your boots.
It’s now coming to Switch this week, and those interested are keen to know thing: how well does it run on Nintendo’s system?
So, rather than just tell you, I’ve decided to turn this review into an epic hour-long video, showing all 51 games in action and concluding with my final thoughts.
By the time you’ve finished this video, you’ll have seen the entire line-up of games included, know what they’re about, and know how they run on the Switch.
Enjoy!
Sega Mega Drive Classics is out on Nintendo Switch on 6 December. You can pre-order it from Amazon UK for £29.99. It’s also currently available on Xbox One and PS4.
In order that I could write this review, I received a digital copy of the game from Sega. The content of my review and the opinions therein were in no way positively influenced by this.
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Nintendo / The Pokémon Company International / Game Freak Nintendo Switch
This review needs a bit of a disclaimer first, because different people play Pokémon in different ways.
Some like to focus mainly on the battling side of things, their priority being the building of an unbeatable squad of Pokémon that can take out any hapless sod foolish enough to challenge them to a fight locally or online.
Others consider it more of a solo affair: their focus is on playing through the main game, defeating the Elite Four and then – if they’re still keen on more – attempting to ‘catch ‘em all’ and fill their Pokédex.
To be clear, I fit very much into the latter category, and this may affect the review you’re about to read. You see, Pokémon Let’s Go does feel like the sort of game that will appeal more to collectors than battlers. Continue reading “Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu / Eevee (Switch) review”→
As a result of this, the number of reviews I’ve been putting on the site has dropped dramatically: there just aren’t enough hours in the day any more to play these games.
If you don’t like this new idea, direct all complaints to Serena Scullion. But bear in mind she can’t read
Well, actually, there are. There just aren’t enough hours to finish them. And that’s where wee-views come in.
The general rule for reviewers (or at least the rule I’ve always followed) is that you should always complete a game where possible before writing the review.
That way, if there are any odd quirks near the end of the game – a sudden rise or drop in quality, some brilliant post-game content, a game-breaking bug, that sort of thing – you’ll be in a position to mention it in the review and deliver a comprehensive, complete verdict with all of this in mind.
The thing is, after 12 and a half years of doing this, I’d like to think I’ve got a fairly good grasp now on whether a game is good after a few hours of playing it. Granted, there will always be those “you need to put some time into it before it gets great” situations, but those are fairly uncommon, especially with the smaller non-triple A games I tend to play and cover on the site.
Wee-views are mini reviews where I make it clear – both in this intro and a ‘how much I’ve played’ section in each wee-view – that the verdicts I’ve reached are based on me playing enough of the game to decide what I think of it, but not necessarily playing it to completion.
If you aren’t keen on this idea, don’t worry: I’ll still be doing ‘proper’ reviews of bigger games and the like. This is just a way for me to help advise you on a wider range of new games with opinions that are generally going to be fairly accurate rather than spending a long time trying to beat a single game.
Put it this way: if you’re at school / at work / in the pub with a mate who has a game you’re interested in, and you ask them “is it any good?”, you can pretty much guarantee they won’t reply: “I can’t say yet, I haven’t finished it.” They’ll always tell you what they think, even though they haven’t seen the credits. That’s the idea here.
To avoid spoiling anything major in Red Dead Redemption II, this review deliberately avoids revealing any plot details beyond what’s already been shown in official trailers. It also doesn’t describe any mission details beyond what you’ll discover in the first five or so hours of the game.
As ever, this review is available in both written and video format. The video shows the game in action while I read the review as a voiceover, so if you watch the video you don’t need to read the written review that follows since it’s the same ‘script’.
Rockstar Games / Rockstar Studios Xbox One, PS4 (Xbox One version reviewed)
Look, I’ll save you the time. This one’s special.
In an ideal world, that would be all I’d need to tell you, so I could get back to playing Red Dead Redemption 2 instead of having to force myself away from it to write this review. But you’re here for yer man Scullion’s take, so I duly oblige.
It’s been eight years since the last Red Dead Redemption, a game that blew everyone away by taking Rockstar’s impressive RAGE engine – designed for GTA IV – and placing it in a wild west setting.
Since then, thanks to Rockstar’s famously lengthy development cycles, only two more games have used RAGE: Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V, both initially released on last-gen systems. Red Dead Redemption 2, then, marks the first RAGE game created specifically for the Xbox One and PS4, and it shows.
Ubisoft / Ubisoft Toronto Switch, Xbox One, PS4 (Switch version reviewed)
This review is available in both written and video format. Naturally, the video shows the game in action while I read the review as a voiceover. If you watch the video, then, you don’t need to read the written review that follows since it’s the same ‘script’.
It’s fair to say the toys-to-life genre is on its arse.
What began as a craze when Skylanders appeared seven years ago has burned out: plastic figures now replace plastic guitars in this generation’s second-hand game shops.
Skylanders may not officially be dead but considering Activision hasn’t released one of its annual games since 2016, it’s safe to say it’s been benched indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the death of Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions – two games much better than Skylanders – showed that not even two of the world’s strongest child-friendly IP could stop the toys-to-life boat sinking.
The only thing still hanging in there are amiibo, but that’s because they’re video game themed – not Disney, Lego or original creations – and many gamers (like myself) collect them for display purposes.
It’s a little odd, then, that as toys-to-life finds itself lying in a coma, Ubisoft’s turned up at the hospital with a crate of beer looking for a party.
Continuing the plastic guitar analogy, Starlink is the DJ Hero of toys-to-life, turning up late in the genre’s life and offering one more inventive way to breathe new life into it.
I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it too. But before you roll your eyes and say “too little, too late”, do consider that Ubisoft has made a very clever decision that could make all the difference to you:
2K Sports / Visual Concepts Xbox One, PS4, Switch, PC (Xbox One version reviewed)
This review is available in both written and video format. Naturally, the video shows the game in action while I read the review as a voiceover. If you watch the video, then, you don’t need to read the written review that follows since it’s the same ‘script’.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the NBA 2K series, which started in 1999 with the fittingly named NBA 2K on the Dreamcast.
For two decades now developer Visual Concepts has been tweaking and improving its take on America’s third-favourite sport, and by this point it’s got everything down to a fine art: on the court, at least.
At this stage NBA 2K is as close to a perfect representation of basketball as you can get, so it’s probably unsurprising that things don’t feel massively different this year compared to 2K18. Continue reading “NBA 2K19 (Xbox One) review”→
Capcom Xbox One, Switch, PS4, Steam (Xbox One version reviewed)
This review is available in both written and video format. Naturally, the video shows the game in action while I read the review as a voiceover. If you watch the video, then, you don’t need to read the written review that follows since it’s the same ‘script’.
I’ve been an enormous fan of the beat ’em up genre for decades now, though it’s not as prolific as it was back in the days of ’90s arcade gaming.
Capcom was arguably the company most responsible for the growth of the beat ’em up in those days, with 1989’s groundbreaking Final Fight the main driving force.
It was such an important and much-loved game that if you owned an arcade and you didn’t have Final Fight, you didn’t really own an arcade at all: you just had a bunch of shiny light-up boxes in a big room.
Dark Souls? Easy. Cuphead? No problem. Bloodborne? Pfft, didn’t even break a sweat.
No, friends, the hardest challenge in gaming today is finding three spare hours to build a cardboard steering wheel when you have a 10-week-old baby in the house.
But find that time I did: yer man Scullion’s been spending the past week and a half utterly rinsing the newest Labo kit, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it’s the most ‘game-like’ package so far. Continue reading “Labo Toy-Con 03: Vehicle Kit (Switch) review”→
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