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  • The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 – Smoke and Mirrors Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 – Smoke and Mirrors Review

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    Don't you hate when a TV series ends its season (or mid-season) on a cliffhanger? It keeps you on the edge of your seat for months, and you just want to throw your remote through the TV. Telltale Games creates a similar fury in me with every single game they release. And The Wolf Among Us is no different.Finally available after a bit of a delay (and nearly four months after Episode 1: Faith), Episode 2: Smoke and Mirrors continues the story of Bigby Wolf, sheriff of Fabletown, as he investigates a pair of beheadings that have occurred in the Fable community.What's a Fable? If you have to ask that, we suggest you stop reading this review now and go play Episode 1 (or even better, go read Bill Willingham's award-winning comic Fables that provides The Wolf Among Us its setting). Here's the short version for those not interested in taking our advice: due to some unseemly shenanigans, the characters that populate fairy tales had to escape their world to live in ours. They live normal lives masquerading as humans, but mostly try to keep to their own kind, aka Fables.
  • Octodad: Dadliest Catch Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Octodad: Dadliest Catch Review

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    I don't really need 600+ words to explain why you need to play Octodad: Dadliest Catch, as this single paragraph will be more than enough: You play as an octopus dressed in a suit, who has a human wife and two human kids, and must complete everyday tasks without letting on that he's an octopus. Oh, and you control each of his legs and arms separately, meaning that his cephalopod tentacles sprawl all over the place and make simple movements rather difficult.If that description doesn't already have you reaching for your wallet, then let me use my additional 550 words to tempt you even further. Octodad: Dadliest Catch isn't just a one-trick pony, serving up a silly salad of jokes and nothing more - the way it couples the hilarity with the sorts of banal activities that may usually be seen as dull is sheer genius, and when you break into the second half of the game and experience some of Octodad's more touching moments, it's impossible not to fall in love with his big slimy face.We join Octodad on his wedding day, and no one appears to realize that he is, well, an octopus in a suit. This is a running joke throughout the game - only one person, a dastardly chef, knows Octodad's true identity, and goes to great lengths to attempt to unmask our tentacled hero.The jokes continue when it comes to the game's controls, too. You move Octodad's legs separately, and his other tentacles fling around in the meantime, causing carnage and mayhem wherever he goes. He can also grab items with his "hands," but it's all purposely difficult to maneuver around, and highly hilarious throughout.
  • Jazzpunk Review
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    • iOS
    • PC
    Jazzpunk Review

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    Jazzpunk is different.  When its mother says it's a special and unique snowflake, that the other games only make fun of it because they have gout, that deformed ducklings are actually beautiful pigeons, she's right. If we had to categorize Jazzpunk in a "normal" genre so it can go to regular school instead of one with crocodile grades, it would be a first-person adventure.  But that's just a disguise.  Jazzpunk doesn't fit neatly into any classification, except something like "joke sandbox," of which it is the pioneering and only one of its kind. "And yet, it is still very much a game.  It looks like a game, it feels like a game, and it rewards its players like a game.  In fact, it's actually a lot of games: a yard sale assortment of almost-recognizable titles with strangers' names scrawled across them in black Sharpie, dropped in a one-price-for-all box someone decided to round out with whoopee cushions and books of Russian brain teasers.  This box is familiar and foreign, and while you can't possibly appreciate everything that's inside, you take it home and sort through the spoils, giggling at nostalgic discoveries of sticky hands and foam dinosaur pills.So what's actually in the box labeled "Jazzpunk"?  There's a 1950s spy motif, splashed across an alternate Cold War era reality where technology has evolved to the point of robot butlers but not past the point of banana phones.  This world is painted by a colorful, cartoonish brush that elicits memories of everything from Team Fortress 2 to Viewtiful Joe.  The characters that populate this 3D-but-at-times-2D land fit the strange anti-dimensionality well, as armless creatures that acknowledge they—or at least you, the player—look like bathroom symbols.
  • Dawn of the Plow Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    • PC
    Dawn of the Plow Review

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    When game developer Dan Fitzgerald decided to take a "mini-vacation"from developing his main game, Dog Sled Saga, he really didn't take a vacation at all. Instead, he got to work on another title, but rather than an Iditarod-esque adventure, this new game is much more...undistinguished —undistinguished in the task at hand, not the fun to be had. Make no mistake: Dawn of the Plow is plenty of fun.Dawn of the Plow has players clearing the roads of snow, allowing drivers to safely get home. Snow is constantly falling, and if left neglected, will pile up and completely block a road. As the driver of a snow plow truck, it is the player's duty to ensure that everyone can get home in a timely manner. Drivers waiting for extended amounts of time will cause the player's approval rating to plummet. The more a driver waits, the longer the approval meter drops. Too low of an approval rating and the player gets fired. Players get a point for every driver that makes it through the map and gets home. Each level requires a certain number of points before the next level unlocks.Sometimes in order to clear a pile of snow, players must go off-road to move around a car and tackle clearing out a pile. Easier said than done. The snow causes a severe loss of traction and makes tight turns impossible. Of course, there is more than one car on the road at a time, so skidding around out of control is complicated by other motorists attempting to get home. Accidently smashing into another car is grounds for immediate termination. Chances are, players will accidently sideswipe or rear-end another car, long before their approval rating hits zero.Luckily for players, Dawn of the Plow randomly spawns pickups throughout the levels, which upgrade the snow plow in some way. One of the most useful pickups is special tires that allow the player to drive on snow without loss of traction. Another pickup allows the player to coat an area with ice, which stops snow from piling up. All the pickups expire eventually, so you'll need to be as efficient as possible when one is equipped.
  • Midnight Castle Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Midnight Castle Review

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    In Midnight Castle, the newest social hidden object adventure from Elephant Games and Big Fish Games, players are summoned to a dim and eerie castle after their uncle's strange and unexplained demise, which seems to have something to do with the castle's hidden Mystery Chamber. But one step onto the castle grounds and one interaction with the spooky cast of characters, and you'll quickly see how the game's stunning presentation and masterful exploration of the genre leave nothing dark or mysterious about its great and truly rewarding nature.Despite being a free-to-play "social" hidden object game rather than a premium and streamlined "adventure," Midnight Castle is presented in a way that would make any adventure fan feel right at home. Instead of some lifeless map you have to click around to move from scene to scene, every area in the game is beautifully laid out across an interactive landscape, where you will move from location to location, interacting with characters and entering hidden object scenes. Even the smaller details are incredibly cool, like the way you're able to click to interact with key items in your inventory, and serve as a much-needed breath of fresh air for both sides of the HOG genre at large."The hidden object scenes are pretty much what you'd expect from a social HOG, with speed and repetition being the primary focus. You'll breeze through each scene finding small lists of items until you know their locations by heart and can start chaining together some high score combos from clicking on them in quick succession. Once you've played through a given scene numerous times, you'll unlock its next tier of difficulty, which adds more items to the overall list and rearranges their positions for a nice and welcome changeup. Typical social HOG fare, yes; but the hidden object scenes themselves are still some of the most detailed and nicely drawn that I've seen from such like-minded games in a while.
  • Broken Age: Act 1 Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Broken Age: Act 1 Review

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    For years, people have been insistent on saying that the point-and-click graphic adventure is a dead genre. And to that, I say "bullcrap." It doesn't have the mainstream appeal that it once had, sure - but thanks to the likes of companies like Wadjet Eye Games, Daedalic Entertainment, Telltale and more, the selection of great point-and-click adventure games has been bigger than ever in recent years.The problem, though, is that there was one person we all really wanted to see make adventure games, and he just wasn't doing it. That person co-wrote the first two Monkey Island games, gave us Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, and walked away from the genre completely once public interest died off. That man was Tim Schafer.And now that man is back.
  • The Banner Saga Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    The Banner Saga Review

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    The word 'epic' gets thrown around a lot these days, and it's starting to undermine what that word really means. Your Cheetos are not epic. That skateboarding porcupine, while adorable, is not epic. 'Epic' is a literary term used to describe a certain kind of story. One that takes us on a journey into a richly detailed universe; one that's existed long before we got there. And more often than not, the fate of the world is hanging in the balance.The Lord of the Rings is an epic. Star Wars is an epic. And this first chapter of The Banner Saga kicks off one of the finest interactive epics I've ever known."Set in a world of varls, humans and dredge, The Banner Saga can best be summed up as Tolkien by way of Scandinavia (if it were adapted by Don Bluth and Intelligent Systems). The developers at Stoic Studio have managed to blend these seemingly disparate influences together into something wonderfully original, creating a world that's even better than its gameplay.
  • Nidhogg Review
    Reviews
    • PC
    Nidhogg Review

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    I had first heard about Nidhogg back in 2011 when it was the recipient of the very first Nuovo Award. Every year at the Independent Games Festival, one title manages to rise above the rest and win the Nuovo for being the best abstract, shortform, or unconventional game presented to the judges that year. With a medal like that hanging around its neck, you'd better believe that I had to get my hands on it.…only I couldn't.Years passed, and as much as I wanted to try Nidhogg, the game remained an exhibition piece only. Friends and colleagues would go hands on at events and tell me how fantastic it was. I'd read articles that threw around terms like "perfect game." But at the end of the day, it seemed like Nidhogg and I just weren't meant to be.That all changed today when developer Messhof unshackled their game from its exhibition-only chains, launching Nidhogg on Steam for the masses. And yes - it was very much worth the wait.