The Outer Worlds from Obsidian Entertainment was my favorite game of 2019, and I already replayed it on PC in early 2020. It was an excellent role-playing game with tons of great shooter and melee combat, fantastic writing and characters, and storytelling. It has now arrived on the Nintendo Switch as an absolute hot mess of a full-priced port.
A few weeks ago, I was excited by the announcement of another large update/patch for Neverwinter Nights on Android, and now PC game fans who use either iOS or Android can celebrate the release of two major games! Neverwinter Nights is out for iOS devices, and Civilization VI is available for Android after releasing for iOS back in late 2017. I have played both of these new releases and highly recommend them! Neverwinter Nights is the classic 2002 PC role-playing game that got an ‘Enhanced Edition’ from Beamdog a few years ago that updated the game for modern computers and…
It has been more than a year and a half since Beamdog released the 2002 classic RPG Neverwinter Nights for Android on Google Play. The patch includes usability, graphics, and performance in addition to a host of bug fixes. This follows another huge patch nearly a year ago that similarly improved the graphics and gameplay experience.
Nearly seven years ago, we reviewed the PC & PS3 release of Bioshock Infinite. While there were a few niggles with the game, we saw it as a great entry into an already classic series. Now the game (along with the entire Bioshock collection) has been ported to the Nintendo Switch, so let’s see how it looks and plays in 2020!
For fans of classic PC role-playing games, few games evoke as much love and loyalty as the original Fallout 1 & 2 from the late 1990s. So in late 2017, when ATOM RPG arrived for the PC, it was met with much anticipation and excitement. In the last couple of years, the developers have been making improvements and filling out some gaps, and now the full game has arrived for iOS devices and will soon also be available for Android!
Pinball is one of those nostalgic games that you’re just drawn to when you see it in a bar. Who can resist dropping in a few quarters and watching the laws of physics torture them with a tiny silver ball? Stern Pinball has always known how to mix the nostalgia of pinball with the fun of pop culture, and they’re looking to capture that magic again with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themed Stern Pinball machine!
When most people think about buying digital games for their PC, they immediately think of Steam, and perhaps GoG (Good Old Games) if they are into classic games. But more recently, Epic Games, known for their games Unreal and Gears of War and the widely-used Unreal Engine, has launched their own store.
We seem to have hit another golden era of Vampire games – the early 2000s gave us Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption and Bloodlines, and recently we have seen a few games announced or released including Vampyr, Vampire: The Masquerade The Coteries of New York, the upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 and the adventure RPG, Nighthawks.
Last week the final entry in the Skywalker Saga – Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker – arrived on BluRay in stores (it has been out for digital purchase for a few weeks), and I thought it might be worthwhile to look back at the Sequel Trilogy and compare it to the original Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) that was ‘purged from canon’ when Disney took over the franchise.
While I have been critical of a couple of releases (Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Wolfenstein Youngblood in particular), in general, last year was an excellent time for PC gamers who were looking to get in some modern portable console gaming.
If I had to choose a list of ‘desert island games’, in my top five you would find Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. As I said in my ‘Netbook Gamer’ retro review, “Jedi Knight II is my favorite of the entire Kyle Katarn saga, my favorite Star Wars game, and my favorite first-person shooter.”
Point and click adventure games had a heyday back in the 1990s with Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango, Broken Sword and more. Then about a decade ago we saw a resurgence as TellTale games brought us a renewed look at Sam & Max, and many other excellent adventures followed.
I have always been an ‘update first and ask questions later’ kind of guy, but every now and then an update arrives that hits at something critical me – and that is the case with MacOS Catalina. Because it is incompatible with 32-bit applications, everyone has known that older applications would be in danger – but for me an entire industry seems to have been waiting for the last possible moment: music production.
It has been nearly eighteen years since release and almost a decade since my ‘Netbook Gamer’ retro-reviews here, but my love for the Jedi Knight games from Raven Software has not waned and I replay them at least annually. Now I will have to make more time for these playthroughs because Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are coming to the Nintendo Switch!
The 1980s & ’90s were an incredible time for video games with huge leaps in graphics and gameplay and controllers starting with the NES and leading into the launches of the PS2 and XBOX. In between we got some of the greatest console and game releases – NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and Sony Playstation.
Are you considering buying the newly released multiplatform game Wolfenstein Youngblood? Please stop! Don’t do it! Let my purchase and playthrough serve as the warning beacon that saves you from unnecessarily wasting time and money on one of the worst shooters I have ever played, one that highlights some of the core issues with formerly great Bethesda Software and with current shooters in general.
This week is QuakeCon, and aside from the usual huge sales at every PC game shop we got two big surprises! First, on the iOS store the classic DOOM has been updated for the first time in 6 years, released on Google Play for Android, and DOOM II has been released on both stores.
I have been a fan of Mahjong games since 1986 when I played Shanghai on the Apple Mac Plus, and so have been thrilled over the past several years to see many high-quality mahjong games released for smartphones, tablets and handheld game systems. Now the Nintendo Switch has been added to the list with the release of Pure Mahjong.
For the last month, we’ve been hearing rumors about the Nintendo Switch Lite, and now Nintendo has made it official! Releasing September 20th and costing $199 – a full hundred dollars less than the current price of the original Switch – the Switch Lite is the handheld-only gaming system fans have been clamoring for since the release of the Switch!
For all you pinball wizards, Stern Pinball has a third game for you to enjoy in their Black Knight series called Black Knight: Sword of Rage. The game is offered in three different models of Pro, Premium and a Limited Edition which has only a 600 production run globally.
Back in September when we posted the announcement of Sony’s PlayStation Classic, there was a load of enthusiasm – which is easy to understand when you look back through the press release and list of included games.