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.
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.
Over the past two weeks the world has been in an uproar about NBA 2k20, a basketball video game that comes out yearly with what could be considered minor gameplay changes, but updated rosters. However, minus a few grievances, NBA 2k20 has been my favorite of the franchise in recent years.
As the title implies, those are just a few of the retro-feelies UNIS’s Pong coffee table will fill your home with. Alas, it is not all retro here my friends. Oh, no. UNIS ripped the classic game right out of its ATARI cartridge skin then stretched, molded, and modernized it into a sweet piece of functional furniture.
Remember the rainy days and long nights spent sitting in front of a small, glowing cube that weighed more than you while clutching a small rectangular controller? I do.
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.
There’s a reason the Pieces of the Galaxy Puzzles were funded on day 1 of their Kickstarter campaign. These challenging puzzles are made up of uniquely shaped pieces that come together to create stunning works of art. As I wrote in my initial post about the campaign, the collection includes 8 planets, the sun, the moon, and a mystery planet.
Pieces of the Galaxy by HelloFish Creative Studios is a set of impressive puzzles where no two pieces are alike. These challenging puzzles are meant to de-stress and delight with high quality craftsmanship while building the planets in our solar system. These unique puzzles are now available for pre-order on Kickstarter with an estimated delivery date of January 2020.
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.
Neverwinter Nights (NWN) is a 2002 PC role-playing game (RPG) developed by Bioware as the follow-up to their classic Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, which is regarded as one of the greatest games ever made.
At the end of March, Beamdog Studios – the group responsible for bringing the Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and other 90s classic games to the modern age – released an ‘enhanced edition’ of the venerable 2002 RPG ‘Neverwinter Nights’.
Monument Valley is a great portable game – it was Apple’s ‘ Game of the Year’ for 2014 and won countless ‘best game’ awards for iOS and Android that year. And while the sequel is also available, the original game remains beloved, and it tends to be the one I jump to more often than not.
Bummed you missed out on Mar10 Day (March 10th)? Fear not, because Bumkins has you covered with their line of Nintendo themed children’s merchandise. They’ve got everything from throwback Mario teethers to NES controller bibs. Now your kids can grow up on Mario just like you did back in the 80s. Starting at $5.95, your baby can be indoctrinated early.
I don’t normally cover video games for Gear Diary; they just aren’t on my radar. But this week we received a pitch for a video game that made me so angry, I’m pretty sure my women’s studies degree became sentient, broke out of the frame in my office, and is currently trying to escape the building to protest. I’m glad it can’t, though, because then the creator of the Super Seducer video game might hit on it.