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Chess Ultra
Chess Ultra sets out to deliver a solid way to play chess as well as teach players the fundamentals of the legendary game. I am a Chess newbie, and I learned a lot through the tutorials presented within. I wish there were more to that end as I found it highly entertaining and interesting. I’ve always wanted to learn the game, but I’ve never had a tutor. I mean, I learned how each piece moves, and never forgot that. It’s the deeper things and setups that I’ve always had difficulty with. Chess Ultra helps with that, but it only goes so far. It looks like there will be DLC in…
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Earth Atlantis
Earth Atlantis is a visual delight when you first see it, but everything that I loved about it, eventually became its downfall. The visual style is one not unlike my own school doodles of monsters and space ships, and other things. Naturally, my classroom doodles were far less refined or focused. Earth Atlantis, on the other hand, has a very focused style; everything is some kind of sea creature look alike robot. In Earth Atlantis, the world is submerged in water. The Statue of Liberty prominently stands in the background of the first area, albeit mostly submerged in water along with whatever buildings weren’t destroyed in the apocalypse that ravaged this world. Other…
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Ironcast
Ironcast is a turn-based strategy game that looks like a puzzle game on the surface. When I first got a glimpse of the game in action, it looked like a Puzzle Quest clone with a steampunk spin, but after playing the game, I came to realize that it has only aesthetics in common with that series. Originally launched on Kickstarter in the summer of 2014 by Dreadbit, Ironcast enlists the player as a pilot of a seven-meter tall walking tank called an ironcast. Only the most elite strategists are allowed to pilot these massive vehicles that are powered by a mysterious energy source called Voltite. The story revolves around an…
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Splatoon 2
When Splatoon came out on the Wii U, I kinda skipped it. I played a little bit, but I just wasn’t a huge fan of the Wii U, so I wasn’t drawn to play Splatoon on it. I am a huge fan of the Nintendo Switch; being a portable console, I’m much more drawn to it. With that out of the way, I can’t comment too heavily on how good of a sequel this is, but I can tell you my experience and thoughts on the game on the Switch. This game screams style right from the word go. I’m heavily reminded of the late 80’s and early 90’s with…
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ARMS
When ARMS was first revealed, I was not impressed in the slightest. When Nintendo held their April Nintendo Direct that focused on ARMS and Splatoon 2, I started to change my perspective. After playing the Test Punch a few times, I was a total convert. I forced myself to remain skeptical until the final game was released. Now that I’ve put nearly 30 hours into the game, I feel confident in my assessment of the game. As I stated a moment ago, I wasn’t originally impressed with ARMS. It looked like a casual and overly simple Punch Out type game with springy arms as the defining gimmick. While the game…
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Disgaea 5 Complete
When I heard that Disgaea 5 was not going to come to the Playstation Vita, I knew I would probably only put in the bare minimum on the PS4 version. Sadly, I didn’t even do that. I just don’t enjoy games like this on home consoles. I’ve played all the games in this series, except La Pucelle Tactics on a portable system. I really wished they had brought that to a portable system because I never finished it. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness was an amazing game to play on the PSP, and was the first of the series that I actually finished. Not only did I finish it, I made…
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Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap
When I started playing Wonder Boy, I was instantly floored by the beautiful graphics, but I ultimately hated the gameplay. It felt slow and dumbed down as if for an infant, yet the difficulty was far too high for a child of that age. Something felt off. I knew there was an old game called Wonder Boy, so I started looking into it. Wow! I felt like a complete dolt when I found out that this isn’t a sequel, but more of a 1 to 1 recreation of the original Master System game with new visuals. The game’s mechanics are identical to the original which says a lot both for…
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Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II
I wanted to talk about this game the minute I started playing it, but I knew a lot of people had just gotten into the first game to play them in order. Since it’s nearly impossible to talk about this game without discussing the ending of the first, I decided to wait a long time before I gave my final verdict. I originally wanted to do this in two parts. The first part was going to be how I felt about the game during the beginning chapters where Rean is searching for his classmates. The second was going to be how I felt about the game after pushing through to…
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Atelier Shallie Plus
Atelier Shallie Plus is a handheld version of Atlelier Shallie with all of the DLC packed in, much like all the previous “Plus” versions of the Atelier games have done. I have not played the console version of Shallie or any other Atelier games, so my review is based entirely on the Vita version. Let me start with some less flavorful notes. The frame rate is appalling most of the time. While not entirely gamebreaking, there are a few moments when the game seems to really chug along. The characters are all highly detailed and look great. Even the backgrounds are pretty nice considering other games on the Vita in…
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BlazBlue: Central Fiction
As the fourth entry in the Blazblue series, Central Fiction grants access to over thirty playable characters, several modes with upgraded features, and a story section that brings a grand conclusion to its very intricate plot. This iteration of Blazblue is unlike the rest, in perhaps, a good way for most, and represents a fantastic arcade fighting game experience. Blazblue Calamity Trigger was released in 2010, by Arc System Works, as a Japanese arcade game under the fighting game genre. It featured 12 characters in a brand new system. With the console release, several various modes were barebones at best, with the story mode being the most fleshed out, featuring…
Handheld Gaming Reviews
