Happy Summer, fellow gamers!
Where decades before we gamers had very little to work with and were forced to kind of actually go outside, there’s just a nonstop floodgate of games in 2016, and in our new binge culture its never been more acceptable to stay inside the house during the most beautiful weeks of the year (well… now that I’ve made everyone feel guilty, expect a bunch of portable games in June’s post.)
While we’ve escaped seasonal rainstorms and pollen onslaughts this spring, we gamers were treated to new titles like Doom by Bethesda and ID Software, and Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4 less than a week apart from each other. We have two official reviews of those games linked here, but click ahead to see some second opinions from us other writers on those, as well as some retro and modern classics. – Evan G.
To read what we played in April, click here.
Ally (and her sister) have been playing “Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD”
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Wii U
I, if this hasn’t been fully explored yet, am not a gamer. This isn’t because I don’t want to be but mainly due to what I lack overall in hand to eye coordination when it comes to using the controllers. I am a grade A button smasher and typically just hope that what I’m trying to accomplish will work. That or I hide if it’s Super Smash Bros. This has made my little sisters foray into the gaming world, so to speak, all the more entertaining to watch because not only is she, at eight, already better at video games then I will ever be but she also cares more. We share a competitive spirit and every new game she’s been introduced to I’ve watched on as she’s yelled a little at said game, thrown her arms up in agitation (as I’m sure most gamers are used to) and watched as finally she gets the hang of it and can kick my ass with whatever game it is. For her eighth birthday our very own video game editor (Mr. Evan Griffin) suggested “Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD” promising a relatively small learning curve.
Alas, it was tougher than I thought it would be and my 8-year old sister has turned into a teenager now whenever she plays the game.
I’m sure she will get the hang of it soon (in part due to Evan’s assurance that he will answer any and all questions that she has. I’m thinking of giving her his personal email.)
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From my point of view as a self-proclaimed newbie, the visuals are a lot of fun, incorporating the sleeker look of newer games while also utilizing a classic, rough around the edges aesthetic-every character kind of looks like they were built out of blocks, don’t they? – Allyson Johnson
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Alex has been playing “Uncharted 4”
PS4
It’s not too often that a game deeply affects me on an emotional level, but I’ll be damned if Uncharted 4 didn’t get to me. More so than the crazy action set pieces and tense combat, the thing that I can’t get out of my head is the existential crisis presented through Nathan Drake. Here’s a man who’s lived a life full of all sorts of adventure and danger, and we see him now struggling to adjust to a life of comfort and normalcy. He files paperwork and plays PlayStation with his wife, Elena, all while nostalgically going through his collected treasures and longingly staring at paintings of wild scenery. There’s this soul crushing moment where he’s kissing Elena and she stops to ask him, “Are you happy?” And he pauses. Because he isn’t, no matter how much he wants to be.
As someone who’s graduated from college semi-recently and is now stumbling around a desk job in “the real world,” I couldn’t help but feel like the question was being asked to me directly. After various adventures and freedoms of being a student, the 9-5 work life leaves me ever-yearning for days past and wondering what I really want out of my life. As a result, I was more emotionally invested in Drake than I’ve ever been before, seeing him as a real person with regrets and flaws as opposed to just a generic action hero. The campaign feels like actual human drama, as Drake is now seeking adventure because of who he is as a person more so than the adventure being thrust upon him. And as I played the game to the conclusion and got to see how Drake was able to balance stability with purpose in his life pursuits, I couldn’t help but feel inspired to figure out the same with my own life.
So kudos to you, Naughty Dog. As if it wasn’t enough to blow me away with cutting edge graphics and crazy frenetic fun, you had to go and leave an imprint on my life too.
Luckily, even after I’ve gone through the campaign, the multiplayer is a fantastic way to keep me hooked on the Uncharted action. The inclusion of the grappling hook and platforming in all of the levels make flanking, escaping, and grabbing vantage points almost as fun as the fighting itself. The formation of loadouts with various guns and abilities feels like Call of Duty, the staggering amount of cosmetics available to unlock feels like Team Fortress 2, and the third-person cover-based firefights full of downing and reviving opponents feels like Gears of War. Despite having its fingers in all of those pies, Uncharted 4 multiplayer doesn’t feel like a diluted ripoff, but instead a great culmination of several multiplayer styles into one cohesive damn good time.
Seriously, if you have a PS4, you owe it to yourself to play this game. – Alex Suffolk
Justin has been playing “The Wolf Among Us”
PS4, XOne, Android, PS3, X360, PS Vita, iOS, PC, Mac
I love a good narrative. The chance to start with a character at the beginning of their adventure, embarking with them on their journey, and seeing how their story develops as they make choices due to the events around them. It may be one of the reasons I love video games and TV! Years ago, I played a video game series influenced by one of my favorite TV shows. The game, Telltale’s The Walking Dead, featured an episodic-style adventure where the events/dialogue/characters/content shifts based on the actions made by the gamer. I enjoyed the experience of playing through the first two seasons of the game so much that, when I saw another story by the same developer with a similar style, I decided to check it out.
The Wolf Among Us is based/influenced on the DC Universe comic book series, Fables. The five episode game serves as a prequel to the comics, which means that everything discussed in the game is canon, with some influenced leeway (the player does affect the course of the game, after all). The characters are inspired by iconic characters from classic storybook fairytales who are forced to live in the real world and adapt. It’s a modern, dark twist on the stories we love – be prepared to see your favorites in a new light.
Now that I’m a few episodes into the story, I can say I didn’t know what to expect. There are discussions about drugs, sex, murder, fights, and dark developments for these classic names; like I said, these aren’t your Disney fairytales characters. I love the gritty, comic book-inspired design of the game; it’s something that feels mature and suits the tone of this story. The characters are well-written, the story is developed for a five episode series, and the twist at the end of the first episode got me hooked (I really didn’t expect it). For those who love the plot aspect of a video game, this would be a good one to check out. – Justin Carreiro
Evan has been playing “Doom”
PS4, XOne, PC
Everyone knows Doom, and as a result, they know the smarmy DoomGuy, the BFG 9000, the demons of mars-hell, and that goofy level music. Despite the cultural impact of the original Doom, to the degree of being installed on more computers than Windows 98 (hooray for white bread trivia), there are plenty of people out there now, especially in the millennial generation, that haven’t received the full Doom experience. I know that I could be crucified for admitting this, but my first time playing it, as sad as I am to admit, was on the Xbox Live Arcade release in 2006 when I was a freshman in high school. It’s the same game for sure, but still a measly port and played on a dual joystick controller. Veterans of Mars in their 20’s and 30’s at the time mocked me. Well as it turns out, I’ve already received that experience throughout the last two decades, as ID Software’s original Doom made such an impact on the gaming industry at large that so many shooters to follow it were inspired by it’s ultra-violent glory. So, yeah. Joke’s on you, guy-with-ponytail at a comic con who made me feel like a loser.
So how the hell do you reboot something that? Quite frankly, It’s a miracle that it is balancing the original spirit of the Doom franchise while also feeling like a modern shooter, and entirely packaged in something that feels new to some, and to people like me, a lot like Metroid.
Hear me out, because this game isn’t just your run-of-the-mill first person shooter. It makes you anxious, forces you to think on your toes, and if a screaming demon makes your heart skip a beat, then you just might die. Between the tension caused by a wave of enemies blocking your path, getting lost while trying trying to speedily move your way through a map, on the fly swapping of super-powered weapons and the kind of backtracking that proves itself to be delightful and rewarding instead of a chore, this new Doom campaign surprises me by feeling a whole lot like Metroid Prime. This is a welcome feeling, as it is one of my most replayed and favorite games of all time, and I haven’t had a game like it since 2007. It may be more kinetic, insane and combat based, but the essence of strategy, exploration and isolation are what it shares with Prime. So for the first full priced game I’ve purchased since Metal Gear Solid V, I couldn’t be happier. Now on to the multiplayer. – Evan Griffin
Ryan has been playing “Klax”
Arcade, NES, GameBoy, Sega Genesis, Atari 2600, Atari Lynx, Master System, Commodore 64, Turbografx-16 and probably everything else
I’ve been revisiting some old retro favorites over the past month. In particular, Klax, one of my favorite puzzle games of all time.
Klax is a unique take on the match-three game, in which you have to match tiles in various combinations as they tumble down a conveyer belt. In some of the longer waves, the game can get pretty fast paced and hectic but maintains its charm and never seems like a chore.The game is fairly unique in that the tiles come at the player from an event horizon point, as opposed to vertically or even horizontally.
Klax first appeared in arcades in 1990 and was part of a series of games that brought Atari back to the forefront of the industry it pioneers (other games they produced at this time include Gauntlet and Paperboy)
You can find a version of Klax on practically every console and computer from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The one I’ve been playing lately is the TurboGrafx-16 version, but there are excellent versions for the Game Boy Color and the Genesis, that are worth tracking down for fans of those systems. The sparse and simplistic, but surprisingly decent, version for the Atari 2600 was the final game Atari ever officially released for that venerable system.
Whichever version you manage to track down, Klax is a wonderful little puzzler that is definitely worth your while and deserves more recognition than it has received. – Ryan Gibbs
Tyler has been playing “Ratchet and Clank”
PS4
The new release of Ratchet and Clank on the PlayStation 4, which is based on the movie, which is based on the original 2002 PlayStation 2 game, is simply a piece of nostalgic gold. For anyone who has played even one of the several games in the series created by Insomniac Games, this one feels like home. The gameplay and controls remain true to the original game and its respective franchise. The only real issues I had with the game was it’s extreme influence from the Ratchet and Clank film, released less than a month after this title in April 2016. It is admittedly hard to look at a game like the original Ratchet and Clank and see it given the “movie tie-in” treatment, but it’s by no means a terrible story. At the worst, the troubles of the game’s plot, and thus the film, is that there isn’t a whole lot that’s original in it. As a result of being ‘tied-in’ the humorous one liners and cutscene narrative of this game are ripped directly from the film, which, depending on how you liked it, can be good or very bad.
Even with some tweaks to the story, this game still tries it’s hardest to remain close to the classic plot line of the original game.
Including several callbacks to classic moments and best jokes from the 2002 original, the awesome, and occasionally goofy, weapons that are unlocked throughout the game, and of course the witty banter between our two titular unlikely heroes in Ratchet and Clank. If there is one positive side effect of the film’s influence, it has to be the amazing voice talents that took part in the game such as Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson, who make sense in the film, but in the game may feel strangely surreal. Overall, this game was a very enjoyable entry in the series and the memories it brought flooding back made the mediocre film’s influence a little easier to swallow. – Tyler Carlsen
Yasmin has been playing “Uncharted Collection”
Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard of the Uncharted series at all. The name Nathan Drake would come up every now and then, but I never knew where it originated from. After the constant urging from my boyfriend, I decided to pick up the remastered collection to see what was the commotion about. After a week and a half, I have already gotten through the first two games and am currently in the middle of the third. That’s how addicted I became to the series.
In 2013, I fell in love with the rebooted Tomb Raider and its adventurous story. The tropical settings, compelling plot, and (most importantly) Lara Croft had me finishing the game in a week. Uncharted grabbed me in the same way and had me falling in love with Nathan Drake. Nathan isn’t just some cardboard cutout action hero; he’s human with real emotions and we see him goof off and become scared. It actually makes him relatable and has us care about his well-being.
While the first game was predictably formulaic, the second and third installments had engrossing levels and puzzles. You engaged in epic train shootouts, fought against pirates, and discovered Shangri-la. With the last game in my view, I now know why this game was so beloved by everyone. The beautiful settings coupled with this interesting protagonist left me wanting more adventures. It’s the Indiana Jones video game I always wanted. – Yasmin Kleinbart
Grant has been playing “World of Warcraft”
I recently re-subscribed to World of Warcraft. Over the past couple of years, the same years I’ve been at University, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the game. Whenever I’m not playing, I miss it. When I’m playing, I get bored pretty quickly. Usually what stops that process is the promise that comes with a new expansion release, and low and behold we have one at the end of the summer with Legion. In Legion, we get the re-emergence of Illidan, and the introduction of the new Demon Hunter class.
Getting reintroduced this early just allows me to get some of the classes that I’m having more fun with up to the current level cap of 100 in order to be ready for the expansion release date. As well, I can get familiar with my old guild mates again. We can go through the now exhausted raid content and find our chemistry again. In my first couple of days back, it’s been really fun to reconnect, especially with a couple of people I even knew in real life.
The leveling and raid content is still feeling a little stale, but I’m really excited for Legion, and since I have more free time this summer, I’m hoping to get some of the tasks that feel like chores finished and over with. So far, it has been working, and surprisingly it has all become fun again. World of Warcraft is a great game when the social overrides and influences the personal grind of leveling and winning some gear. That’s what has been happening for me, and I could not be happier to be back right now. – Grant Johnson
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