Review: Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (360)

One of the hardest feats to pull off is switching a video game franchise from one genre to another, either as a companion title or a whole new direction.

Halo did rather well as a real-time strategy in Halo Wars after beginning as a killer first-person shooter. WarCraft took a wildly successful real-time strategy and turned it into the biggest massively multiplayer online role-playing game ever. For the Persona franchise, the leap was role-playing game to fighter, in Persona 4 Arena, released in 2012. Following that success, 2014 brought a refined sequel, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.

Review: Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director's Cut (PC)

Can you really have too much of a good thing?  Well, yeah, if it makes you sick of the thing you're consuming.  Too much sugar leads to diabetes.  Too much delicious fried chicken can cause heart attacks.  Too much good beer will kill your liver stone dead.  But too much cyberpunk RPG goodness?  That's just crazy talk.  Little pale skin, maybe, but plenty of adrenaline to keep the heart pumping and plenty of well crafted storyline to keep the brain firing.  Which is strange, since the “Director's Cut” of Shadowrun: Dragonfall seems to have a running theme within its characters and story about people who do have too much of a good (or even bad) thing, and the different ways that it can warp and scar them.

Review: WWE 2K15 (PS4)

Last year's WWE 2K14 was one of the best sports games (or sport entertainment games if you will) released for the previous generation consoles. Needless to say, after setting such a high water mark for the franchise any reasonable expectations would have to live up to, if not better, their previous results. Well… we have a partial success in this case.

Visually the design team did an excellent job of rendering the wrestling talent. All the wrestlers look even more real to life than they have in the past. The rings, crowds, and sets look a little sharper but not as drastic an improvement that the wrestlers have. That being said, there are some cases of the team reusing art assets from the previous game except not cleaning up anything. So we get storylines where last generation rendered Vince McMahon comes out to talk to current generation rendered talent. It would be like substituting the design of Mario from Super Mario on the NES into a modern Wii-U game. It almost feels though the sting of getting a yearly released game out the door meant that certain things would have to be skipped or left as is.

Review: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4)

For me Call of Duty: Ghosts was a low point in Activision's much beloved series. The game represented everything I had come to expect from a franchise being released year after year.

Too much familiarity. For every moment of brilliance in the game, there were ten more moments of familiarity. Going into Advanced Warfare, I was both skeptical and excited about the new direction the franchise was headed. I knew that Activision could only make so many games based on Modern Warfare and that eventually we would see a game set in the future with new weapons, gadgets and vehicles. Advanced Warfare represents the biggest jump for the series since the game shifted from World War II to Modern Combat.

Review: Watch Dogs (Wii U)

Starting a new franchise is never an easy task. Some games make it, and some don't.

When you have a big developer like Ubisoft behind you there is more at stake but there are also more resources to draw upon to create the game. Watch Dogs is one of those new franchises that had some new elements embedded into it that made it interesting enough to look forward to. It came out on most of the video game systems in the Spring but took around 6 extra months to come out on the Wii U. So, here it is.

Review: Escape Dead Island (PC)

Maybe it's because it's the close of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, and another birthday for yours truly, that I'm feeling too old, decrepit and tired to have any patience for video games that are slapped into lock-step with tried and true formulas that have proven effective in the past but stopped filling me with awe or, hell, interest.

And that, predictably, is where Escape Dead Island comes in.

Review: Skylanders: Trap Team (PS3)

"We have seen the evil of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in our midst; let us try prohibition and see what this will do for us."

- Thomas Jordan Jarvis

Swap out "intoxicating liquors" for "Skylanders" and you'll know where I'm going with this review of Skylanders: Trap Team. In fact, I really wanted to write this review in the spirit of a 1920's speech on the evils of liquor and the shortfalls of Prohibition because this is the era that Skylanders has started to conjure in my mind. Not just for the addiction angle and the corruption of youth, but because it would be pretty interesting to see what homebrew figures would look like.

Review: Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault (PC)

Ardennes Assaults shakes up Company of Heroes. The gameplay was already a deep well of strategy, tactics, and being able to quickly refocus attention elsewhere on the battlefield without completely abandoning anything, unless it served some larger purpose, but Ardennes Assault layers additional strategy and long-term planning on top of that with a Risk-like map of the area between Germany and France as borders ebbed under the push of the Allies against German forces.

Review: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition (PC)

If there's one thing that 2014 should have taught all of us it's that you can go home. Maybe there's someone else living in the house, maybe everything feels a little smaller, and that weird couple that lived across the alley have turned their backyard into a bone yard for rusty Studebakers, but it's still home somehow. That's what it feels like with Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition, where it's 1993 all over again.

Review: Ancient Space (PC)

If an old grognard of a strategy gamer is asked what the best space-themed real-time strategy game ever made was, chances are that it would be a toss-up between StarCraft and Homeworld.

While the former gets points for being one of Blizzard's best loved titles before World of WarCraft, the latter being one of the first RTS games to truly exploit the notion of 3D space and the tactical considerations it brought. It created a gold standard for what space combat should be like, and it's never been properly duplicated, sequel and expansion notwithstanding. Some might be bold and point to Digital Anvil and their only RTS Conquest: Frontier Wars as a cult classic that got overlooked in the noise of Chris Roberts' maladroit exit from the gaming industry so many years ago. Gamers have, for many years, been looking for something which captures the feel of Homeworld while advancing the genre. Sad to say, Ancient Space is not that advancement.

Review: Alien: Isolation (PC)

In this picture we observe the xenomorph "stepping out" as viewed from
a cowering position under a desk. Not pictured: My stained underwear.

The feeling of dread, suspense, and horror that permeates Alien: Isolation comes from such a weird place. Best know for their intense strategy games like Total War, developer Creative Assembly was quite possibly the least likely studio to be able to produce such an amazing first-person experience, especially with a license that has generated its fair share of mediocre or downright awful video games. Not only that, Creative Assembly has made a game for fans of the Alien film universe and people that possibly know nothing about Alien.

Review: FIFA 15 (Xbox One)

The annual release of sports titles continues!

FIFA 15 is still quite fresh in my mind having just a few months ago taken a swing at the World Cup title – but the EA team does not sit on their laurels and they continue to improve their masterwork. With the mid-year release, the improvements over last year's title are not as drastic as most iterations but that's not to say that there aren't any. Graphically and aurally, FIFA 15 is pretty much the same game as last year: still looks amazing, the sound from the crowd noise to the in-game commentary are top notch. No disappointments here, at best minor nit-picky points.

Review: Fantasia: Music Evolved (Xbox 360)

Guitar Hero took the world by storm, for a time. It wasn't the first time that a music game was released, but it certainly was the game that made it popular. Rock Band followed and then we got to play Dance games when Kinect and other motion controlled hardware made it possible. Now, we have Fantasia: Music Evolved as the latest in genre that for me, was getting very tired.

I started this game up and of course Kinect wanted me to do something. I was comfy on the couch. I thought, "Can't I fake this, and just wave my arms around?" I got up and put some effort into it because that is what game reviewers do. We sacrifice for the people.

Review: Destiny (PS3)

Because of lofty aspirations, Bungie’s first title following the phenomenal success of the Halo games was destined to leave many gamers disappointed in some way or another. It’s a difficult task in any entertainment arena to attempt a follow-up to such an overwhelming success as the Halo franchise was for Bungie. Destiny is that game.

And it has its share of disappointments, primarily in failing to be the massively multiplayer offering it had aspired to be, and having a primary focus on repetitive missions. But it clearly sustains many of the stellar qualities that made Halo a universally well-regarded and lucrative gaming hit, and has even showed improvement in first-shooting game-making, showing lessons learned from the past were implemented by Bungie in its present.

Review: Skylanders: Trap Team (PS4)

I first became aware of Skylanders last year at Activision's multiplayer event for Call of Duty Ghosts. We were whisked away on our last day to a hotel room that was showing off Skylanders: Swap Force. I was in awe because it was my first time playing a PS4 and seeing the Skylanders series. I rediscovered my inner child! This year sees the release of another Skylanders game called Trap Team. Trap Team introduces an interesting new concept that allows you to trap enemy bosses and play as them for a period of time.

Review: Halo: Master Chief Collection (Xbox One)

Halo defined the original Xbox. It single-handedly brought people to the machine, secured Bungie the respect of a world-class developer, and changed the lives of gamers everywhere.

While the original lacked online play, Halo 2 followed it up with the anticipated online play and a wonderful single-player campaign. Then Halo 3 and Halo 4 extended the universe and drew more players to the franchise. Bringing these titles back to life on the Xbox One is something I have been looking forward to since the announcement, and I'm happy to report that this does not disappoint.

This package contains all four main Halo games and this is the first time that Halo 2 has been available in high definition.

Review: The Last Tinker: City of Colors (PS4)

I love third person action adventure games.

In fact, it is my favourite genre. Games like Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper and the 3D Mario games are among my fondest gaming memoreis. I am not sure why the genre has declined but I'm glad to see games like the Last Tinker try to revive it.

You play as the Last Tinker in a world where the colours are like races and are no longer getting along. The bleakness has arrived to take all the colours away and you must figure out what happened and get the aid of the various colour spirits along the way in order to do so. Once you gain their trust and confidence, they provide you with their powers (conveniently mapped to the D-Pad) and you can progress further in the game.

Review: Sunset Overdrive (Xbox One)

Starting the game up I wanted so badly to love Sunset Overdrive. After all, I'm a huge Insomniac fan, with standees of Ratchet & Clank throughout my basement and I proudly wear the achievement of completing every single game in that series (even the mobile one). I never really got into Resistance (although I'm still willing to give it a proper try) and for some reason, Fuse hasn't even made it into one of my machines even though I own it. Come on, Insomniac, give me something to love if you aren't giving me the Ratchet and Clank HD remake until next year.

I closed my eyes and started to play. (Then played with my eyes open after that.)

Hands-On Preview: Evolve (PC)

Evolve is one of the highly anticipated titles for 2015, and the game is now entering it's first widespread alpha. After some hands-on time there is a lot I love about the game and a lot that still needs to "evolve." so to speak.

For the uninitiated, Evolve is a four versus one game where the group pursues the alpha predator. It plays like a highly charged game of Cat and Mouse, with the monster getting a twenty second head-start to comfortably situate themselves in the wild, consuming various wildlife to grow stronger.

Review: Stronghold Crusader II (PC)

Stronghold Crusader II is the sequel to the popular Stronghold series of games by Firefly Studios, and it’s safe to say that Firefly has delivered plenty of what fans loved about the series.

Stronghold Crusader II focuses specifically on The Crusades-Era, allowing the player to assume the role of King Richard, or Saladin should you so choose. The objective is simple: to overtake your opponents’ stronghold. This won’t be new to veterans of the series, but does the sequel they bring anything different to the table?