All posts in Review

Review: Magical Beat

As far as rhythm puzzlers go, there aren’t that many around the block anymore. Lumines comes to mind, but it’s been MIA for quite some time. That’s why Arc System Works’ Magical Beat is such an interesting proposition. It’s a combination of familiar games like Tetris and Lumines itself, but it sets itself apart from the rest of the pack in a way few other games have been able to do so.

Your goal is to drop blocks down screen known as “beatons” to the exact beat of the music being played. This sounds simple in theory, but can be ridiculously difficult to those without a natural sense of rhythm or those unfamiliar with rhythm games. It’s easy to get up and get into with enough tries, however, and watching the Beat Sync Gauge will help tremendously.

If you line three beatons of the same color up, you’ll clear them from the game board. There’s a brief delay between lining them up and actually seeing them clear, which you can use to your advantage when facing off against enemies. The higher your combos and the more points you receive, you’ll see “jammer” type beatons being given to your opponent so they’ll have trouble clearing all the blocks in their way.

The types of songs you’ll clear blocks along to vary (and include memorable Guilty Gear and BlazBlue tracks) where their individual difficulty is decided by the song you’ve chosen and which mode you’re playing. Beginner Mode requires you to clear five stages as a type of tutorial level, and Normal Mode is a bit harder. Hell Mode is out of this world difficult and only features the most challenging songs to give you, well, hell.

Unfortunately there is no online multiplayer mode, but you can very well pick up a friend or two for ad hoc play, and that’s good enough for me given the fact that Vita owners usually end up purchasing the same groups of games anyway (we have to stick together!). Besides, the low asking price for the game ensures it’s cheap enough for most to get into anyway, and you shouldn’t have trouble finding too many people to jump in.

Magical Beat is a colorful, engaging, and frenetic rhythm puzzler that feels right at home on the Vita. While its lack of multiplayer can raise a few red flags, it’s still very much a great addition to any mobile gamer’s library — especially since it’ll only cost you about the price of lunch.

Review: Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep

Borderlands 2’s Tiny Tina has got some bizarre quirks and qualities a vocal few openly denounce, but she’s memorable in a way so few women in games are. All that, and she’s still a little girl. The frenetic little firecracker is a bundle of energy, so it makes perfect sense that she should host a game of Bunkers & Badasses, an obvious parody of Dungeons & Dragons. In “Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep,” your go-to Vault Hunter rolls for initiative with Lilith, Brick, and Mordecai as part of the very first play session ever sanctioned. The final piece of Borderlands 2 DLC serves up a hilarious send-up of nerd culture sprinkled with nods to D&D, marinated in Tiny Tina’s peculiar blend of humor.

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Review: Dokuro

The PS Vita is home to an expansive library of niche releases such as Gravity Rush or Lumines: Electronic Symphony–however, they come at varying degrees of quality. Dokuro, the latest platformer to hit the PlayStation Network, falls at the negative end of the “fun’ spectrum. While the game possesses an intriguing chalk artwork aesthetic, it’s just not very entertaining. With its irritating logic puzzles and uninspired platforming, it feels much more like a game that would have been released five or six years ago rather than an inspiring new adventure.

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Review: DayZ

Pitch-black night slowly crept in as you struggled to find sanctuary. The undead horde encroached on from the darkness, and the cold certainty of death became more of an absolute. Without a prayer for survival you fell, utterly defeated, as your shambling killers came to claim and later devour you. But you jumped right back on the server, because those zombies weren’t going to headshot themselves. Except this time, you were a little more careful, and a little more cautious, because all that was waiting for you otherwise was a swift and unmerciful death. That’s DayZ in a nutshell, the most realistic exercise in zombie apocalypse preparation you’ll ever take, save from actually living through one.

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Review: Awesomenauts

The MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) genre is a tough nut to crack, especially when the title attempting to do so has particularly interesting ambitions. Developer Ronimo Games, responsible for the brilliant Swords and Soldiers, approaches Awesomenauts, a DOTA-like brawler in a similar fashion – taking conventions that would ordinarily seem confusing or inaccessible to players unfamiliar with the genre and fusing them successfully with the styling of a 2-D side-scroller.

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