Mega Man Legends & The Future Archaeology

For a decade across the 8 and 16-bit generations, Mega Man had been an action-packed dynamo, but after some twenty odd games, his aging framework was in need of some vital upgrades. Powered by the PlayStation hardware, Yoshinori Kawano and his crew of robot masters successfully forged a new Blue Bomber, translating his action concepts onto a three-dimensional world.

The new 32 bit tech gave the series a chance to break away from the techno-future aesthetic found in both the Classic and X series with their cities dependent on robots for manual labor. Mega Man Legends is an adventure in a world covered in endless water where diggers explore the ruins of a lost civilization amongst the scattered land masses for Zenny and treasure.

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StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm: Astro Creep

Note- This text refers to the Campaign only.

As the Queen of Blades defiantly stands over a besieged Terran city watching her Zerg swarm breach its defenses and tear humanity to shreds, you remember again that the woman once known as Sarah Kerrigan’s thirst for revenge has killed the last bit of it in herself. But for all the great and terrible power she once wielded, Sarah has been confined to a sterile white-walled lab, a woman once more. Fitting of the ravenous brood at its core, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm’s campaign evolves Wings of Liberty’s versatile DNA into a powerful new beast.

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Blast Corps’ Controlled Demolition

For anyone who used to make believe with a box full of Tonka Trucks and action figures, Rare’s Blast Corps is a special kind of game, one that takes you back to the timeless parts of your childhood that don’t fade just because you’re now an adult. It allows you to relive the freedom that comes from the act of playing and the simple joys that come from pretending that you’re taking control of a roughneck crew out to save the world through demolition.

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Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7: The Cinematic ‘Not Quite Action’, ‘Not Entirely RPG’ Action RPG

Final Fantasy 7 so thoroughly revolutionized JRPG’s that its legacy was long and wide reaching. From it’s move to polygonal graphics that allowed its characters a deeper range of expression to its dense and layered environments that didn’t rely on sticking the perspective in the ceiling of the world to look down on its inhabitants to its mind-blowing CG cutscenes, it tolds its story of good and evil with a memorable cast of characters with cinematic (though not always consistent) flair. So it’s fitting that as a pivotal entry in the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7’s timeline, Crisis Core is the snake’s jaws wrapped around the back of its own head, further realizing the cinematic ambitions of that important milestone.

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Mega Man 9’s Speed Metal


Mega Man 9 fixed Mega Man by distilling the Blue Bomber’s staid gameplay to its essentials: moving and shooting. By striving to limit itself to the restrictions of twenty year old hardware, Inti Creates game highlights how bogged down with its own design the series core gameplay had become over its evolution. What they made is a long lost NES game.

The story immediately sets the tone in sprites full of personality. Having again been defeated by our blue hero, Dr. Wily swears off his evil ways. But its not long before the residents of Monsteropolis are in danger from a collection on renegade robots again. But its Wily that steps up to protect the city, claiming innocence and insisting the robots were created by the good-natured Dr. Light. To clear his name, Mega Man heads out.

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Metroid: Zero Mission: A Screw Attack to the Cerebral Cortex

Go immediately left from the start of Metroid: Zero Mission and you’ll find the Morph Ball upgrade exactly where it was in the original Metroid. This is the first in a series of discoveries that shows how the remake beautifully modernizes galactic bounty hunter Samus Aran’s first adventure that celebrates the past while recognizing the journey her series embarked on following it, rebuilding the original release in the structure of influential classic Super Metroid.

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Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Dog

The first time we see Wei Shen is through the monitors of a Hong Kong PD drug sting as he tries to conduct a transaction. When the sale goes bad, we take control as he charges through a densely packed fish market chased by a squad of uniforms. Unable to elude arrest, he gets thrown into lock-up and reunites with his childhood friend Jackie, now a low-ranking member of the Sun On Yee, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the city. Jackie promises to make an introduction. When Wei’s pulled into interrogation, we learn the setup for the story, and the linchpin connecting the game’s mechanics, systems and narrative; Wei Shen is an undercover cop, just back from fifteen years in America, trying to take down the triads. Sleeping Dogs is a bloody saga of betrayal and loyalty as Wei Shen takes down the Yakuza from the bottom up.

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XCom: Enemy Unknown: Operation Burning Sunset

[JOURNAL ENTRY. APRIL 5.]

I decided to write down my stories, in case they become the last ones told.

My squad was taking a breather after a tough firefight when a giant green behemoth charged through the burnt out husk of a Japanese office building and battered the front door into splinters. I’d never seen this alien before. Several of my soldiers were completely unprepared for another engagement- their magazines down to their last bullets and vitals were starting to wane. They had been scattered about the map, rummaging through the crumpled bodies of the large-headed Sectoids and the businessman-impersonating Thinmen trying to scavenge whatever loot they could to take back to HQ before starting the search for the lone Thinman that had retreated out of sight. The brute ran for the cover of a nearby planter, trying to keep its head low and prepare for its attack.

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Spelunky

This review is for the XBLA version of Spelunky. There is an extremely similar free version online, but this critique pertains to the specific changes made for the console release.

Embrace Death and Rise Above It

Most great things are difficult to qualify in words. You can tell somebody that the Mona Lisa is a great painting of an ugly lady, or that Blade Runner is a great movie about robots, but that does nothing compared to watching Rutger Hauer deliver his final soliloquy while slowly deactivating in the rain. It’s not solely what something is objectively that’s important, its the lasting effects of experiencing something that make it impactful. With that said, Derek Yu’s long-worked-on Spelunky  (there’s a free version online showing just how long it’s been tweaked) is not simply an indie platformer hell-bent on crushing your spirit, even if sometimes it’s hard to see past that.

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Mass Effect 3 ‘Omega’ dlc

Post-launch dlc has to be handled very carefully to succeed. Not only does every piece need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of its core game, but needs to be created in relation to the pieces that have already been released. In the two story additions to Mass Effect 3, we were given missions that were designed for very specific purposes- they expanded the universe fiction. Problem is, even though they do so in different ways, they’re both filling in gaps to a story that is already closed. The third piece is Bioware’s opportunity to get away from Mass Effect 3’s controversial ending and flex its creative muscle on something different. ‘Omega’ reminds us why Bioware are among the best storytellers in the industry.

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