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Fire Emblem - Awakening review: One life to live

Garrett Martin — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST

Fire Emblem: Awakening is the best soap opera since CBS cancelled Guiding Light.

If you've never played a Fire Emblem before, imagine Final Fantasy Tactics from an overhead perspective, or a particularly bloated derivation of chess. Nintendo's stalwart helped establish the turn-based tactical RPG genre, and Fire Emblem: Awakening features everything you expect from the series. Dozens of warriors team up to protect the magical Fire Emblem from an ever expanding army of evil miscreants. Each chapter is a different battle fought on a square grid, with your small army of various combat classes fanning out across the terrain to wipe out the opposing forces. The standard array of RPG unit types are present - warriors deal heavy damage with axes or lances, wizards hurl bolts of fire and lightning from afar, archers arch and thieves thieve.

Forget the standard medieval fantasy trappings, though. Forget the swords and arrows, the burly warriors and lithe Pegasus knights, the pointy-hatted mages and high-hatting nobles. Forget the vast array of combat tactics permissible by the game's open-ended approach to strategy. Forget the experience points earned with every attack. Forget the more powerful unit types unlocked once characters hit level ten, and the forges that upgrade your weapons, and the Paralogue missions that provide a secondary story to explore. Those are all vital to Awakening's compulsive allure, but what elevates Fire Emblem above other turn-based tactical RPGs are the deep roster of characters and the relationships that flower between them. You'll get as wrapped up in their stories as your grandmother did with the vengeful harridans and scheming suits of a soap opera.

Gallery: Fire Emblem: Awakening (01/11/2013)

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Fire Emblem - Awakening review: One life to live originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skyrim - Dragonborn review: Miraak-ulous

Garrett Martin — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:30:00 EST

The first thing I did in Solstheim was kill a cop.

I didn't want to. I was trying to steal a key to a jail cell. I didn't know what was in the cell--I just knew I wouldn't be able to open it otherwise. I guess I'm a bad thief, as the Dunmer guard immediately pulled his sword. My housecarl and I made quick work of him.

I took the key, searched the cell and found a hidden passage. There was also a bed. I hadn't slept in over a year, literally, since whenever I last played Skyrim, so I took a nap before searching that hidden passage. Bad idea: I woke up in a daze, far away from the cell, on the outskirts of the town I was visiting, dutifully hammering on a giant monolith called the Earth Stone. Something, or someone, had transported me in my sleep. The Earth Stone had been taken over by the cult of Miraak, the ancient Dragonborn turned false God who wanted me dead. I probably shouldn't have killed that cop.

Gallery: Skyrim (Dragonborn)

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Skyrim - Dragonborn review: Miraak-ulous originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crashmo review: Push some mo'

Garrett Martin — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:00:00 EST

You might be wondering just what a "crashmo" is. The word is meaningless. It's not even a word. It's just an awkward collection of letters that means nothing to the average person. It might look familiar if you've played last year's 3DS puzzler Pushmo, though, and the similarity isn't a coincidence. This here is a full-blown sequel.

If you didn't play Pushmo, go do so. Now that you have, know that Crashmo isn't just a booster pack of additional puzzles. Crashmo expands on Pushmo's block-pushing dynamic, resulting in a better and more complicated game.

Gallery: Crashmo

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Crashmo review: Push some mo' originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Little Inferno review: Burn it all

Garrett Martin — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:15:00 EST

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Take your TV. Just yank it out of your entertainment center. It doesn't matter if you unhook it from the cable box or your Wii U first. You're just going to stick it right in the fireplace. Burn that TV. Burn your plates, your sunglasses, your radio. Your favorite stuffed animal from childhood? Your precious family photos? Straight into the fire. All the stuff that's accumulating in your house, all the junk you work to pay for that sits untouched on shelves or in the back of closets, pull them out and toss them in your fireplace and burn them. I mean, you're already wasting your time. You're playing a video game.

That's what Little Inferno says. Except this weird little downloadable from Tomorrow Corporation (a team-up from the designers of World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure) isn't really a game. It's an anti-game, featuring few of the qualities necessary for an activity to be called a game. It has rules, but there's no challenge. There's a win state, but you can't lose, so it's more like an inevitable stopping point. Mostly, Little Inferno is an interactive story, but it's even low-key about that until an unforgettable conclusion. That story mocks us for fixating on this repetitive, unproductive activity and ignoring the world around us, arguing that this passivity and neglect is as destructive as if we intentionally tried to ruin the world. And somehow Little Inferno makes this subversive point about as adorably as possible.

Gallery: Little Inferno

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Little Inferno review: Burn it all originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sing Party review: Vocal opposition

Garrett Martin — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EST

My wife is a karaoke person. She's not a hustler, but when we lived in a small town with nothing to do, we'd hit the same dive bars and Mexican restaurants every week so she could sing while I slowly got soused. We own a karaoke machine and a hundred or so discs, and instead of hiring a regular DJ our wedding reception was one big karaoke party. My wife doesn't play games but she owns almost every Karaoke Revolution and breaks out the Rock Band mic every few weeks. She knows karaoke, she knows karaoke games, and she knows that Sing Party isn't particularly great at either.

Gallery: Sing Party (Review)

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Sing Party review: Vocal opposition originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pid review: Ups and downs

Garrett Martin — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:30:00 EST

I hate this butler.

I don't know any real butlers. I'm talking about Pid's first boss, a giant flying neat freak that swoops down to clean up any mess I make. I've spent an hour or two coasting through the blandly whimsical world of Pid, a side-scrolling platformer set in a storybook-ish alien planet overtaken by mean robots. I can jump and kill the bad guys with my very limited stash of bombs, but the action consists largely of using antigravity beams to float above and across obstacles. Suddenly I find myself on a giant table in a banquet hall larger than the UNSC Infinity. It's a dead end, and the only thing I can do is smash some glasses. Mazel tov!

Gallery: Pid

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Pid review: Ups and downs originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dance Central 3 review: No pants dance

Garrett Martin — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:30:00 EST

It's October, which means it's once again time to hook up your Kinect, take off your pants and play some Dance Central. Not that it's always wise to play games half-naked, especially ones that depend on jumping around in front of a camera, but pants will only slow you down and make you sweat even more than you already will. Wear gym shorts, if you must.

Like leaf-peeping, apple-picking and umpire second-judging, Dance Central has become an autumn tradition. You can argue that it's grown a bit repetitive by this third installment, but repetition is the key to pop music. A steady beat, a memorable bass line and a chorus that'll itch in your brain until you hear it one more time are the rudiments of a hit. Can you attack a game for reflecting pop music when that's the very bedrock upon which it is built?

Gallery: Dance Central 3 (E3 2012)

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Dance Central 3 review: No pants dance originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Raskulls review: Take my skull for a ride

Garrett Martin — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:30:00 EST

Wait ... a Raskulls game? In 2010? What's next, Pele's Superstar Soccer?

Who still remembers the Raskulls, those third-rate Smurf knockoffs from the 1980s? Even the biggest fans of Peter Cullen and June Foray probably recycled their tapes of the Ruby-Spears cartoon, which aired on ABC's Saturday morning cartoon block for a few months in early 1984. The Kenner toy line, Star comics series, and Atari 2600 game (released in the wake of the crash of 1983) were all embarrassing failures. Even the Snorks looked good next to the Raskulls.

Okay, absolutely none of this true, but this fake history perfectly fits the tone of Raskulls, an XBLA exclusive from Halfbrick Studios that combines racing with puzzle-platforming. It might be a brand new property, but Raskulls is an obvious parody of The Smurfs and the assorted rip-offs that littered the Saturday morning airwaves back in the 1980s. The self-aware and absurd Raskulls basically Shrekifies The Smurfs.

Gallery: Raskulls (12/14/10)

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Raskulls review: Take my skull for a ride originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes del Ring review: Suicide dive

Garrett Martin — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:29:00 EST

Wrestling fans are a forgiving bunch. We excuse the industry's numerous problems -- the high mortality rate, intelligence-insulting storylines, John Cena -- whenever two guys do a really good job of not actually hurting each other. As long as a match is exciting, with consistent psychology, believable near-falls and a well-told story, nothing else matters. It's the same with wrestling video games; they're only as good as the matches they let you experience, which means Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes del Ring translates to "no bueno."

Gallery: Lucha Libre: AAA Heroes of the Ring

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Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes del Ring review: Suicide dive originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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