ZTGD

Despite my complaints I still love Monkey Ball and I hope that if Banana Blitz HD does well that SEGA thinks about remastering Step & Roll, 3D, or Banana Splitz for current consoles. I am just too deeply attached to certain aspects of the series that I’m very critical. At $40 anyone with any love of Monkey Ball would be doing themselves a disservice not picking up a way better version of a game that was hindered by motion control.

In summation, Stranded Sails feels like a lot of potentially interesting combinations of systems and ideas that, in execution, is just too shallow and tedious to be all that much fun. The game certainly feels like it knew it didn’t have enough substance to stretch for their desired run time and thus slowed down and over-repeated the same loops to last longer. That’s really the only excuse I can think of as to some of the decisions made here.

I love this game. Playtonic definitely made something special here. It’s going to be hard to look at other platformers without wondering why they didn’t ape more of the concepts from The Impossible Lair. Not to mention the soundtrack by Grant Kirkhope and David Wise – which is probably one of my favorite soundtracks of the year. While I hope they give the 3D platformer another fair shake, I will be more than happy if Playtonic does more sidescrolling platformers in the future because The Impossible Lair is impossibly good.

This is the Complete Edition of the game. That means it comes with all the DLC including the two major expansions, Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine. The latter is a 30 hour story itself. There’s a ton of content here, all of it fantastic and full of quests and storylines that have some of the deepest and most interesting fantasy lore I have ever seen in a video game. There’s no denying this isn’t a great game.

It seems like Breakpoint saw the Assassin’s Creeds, the Far Cry’s, and The Divisions and decided it wanted to incorporate that into its own game. The issue is that throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the game isn’t going to make it great. They have a decent frame for Breakpoint and the feel of it is fine, but when trying to navigate the world or even the menus gives you a headache, it may be time to take a step back and think on what you need to do to make it better. The only way to play this game is with co-op friends. Single player people should avoid this one.

I’m not saying this is a no effort port, but that the effort put in and the price they are asking for a game that is six years old seem disconnected. Right now there are plenty of great RPGs available that are new and with a price tag so high it’s hard to suggest the old game rather than the new one. I can only recommend this to people who have never played it or the hardest of hardcore Ni No Kuni fans because otherwise just wait for a sale to play this one again.

On the surface WRC 8 would look like a game made for rally fans, but it misses the mark by miles and with there being so many other fantastic rally and racing games already out there to choose from, I can only recommend that you go looking elsewhere.

Grid is a decent reboot. Sure, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that some may expect and the number of tracks are a bit lackluster, but what it is missing is made up for with great handling cars and a fun race gameplay. People looking for a good racer havefound one here even with the issues it may have.

A Knight’s Quest has moments of brilliance. I wanted to love it a lot more than I did. I feel like this template could truly be something special to fill a void these other consoles have without a proper Zelda clone. Still, it finds ways to annoy me at every turn. Fix the exploration, backtracking, and mechanical glitches and it could be something special. As it is now it is just another title that will get lost in the sea of games hitting this time of year.

I loved this game when I first played the demo a year ago. I am glad players can finally get their hands on it, and truly this is not a game to be missed. It combines two genres perfectly and ends up creating the surprise hit of the year. It will be on my mind when game of the year rolls around and I recommend everyone giving it a look. I know the game world is swamped with releases this year, but this is one experience you do not want to miss.I loved this game when I first played the demo a year ago. I am glad players can finally get their hands on it, and truly this is not a game to be missed. It combines two genres perfectly and ends up creating the surprise hit of the year. It will be on my mind when game of the year rolls around and I recommend everyone giving it a look. I know the game world is swamped with releases this year, but this is one experience you do not want to miss.