Token Female Gamer

Way back in the day, when Portal was first released, you know the dark ages of 2007, purchasing a game that I already owned didn’t seem worth it. Portal was bundled in the Orange Box, a Valve game extravaganza including such games as Half-life 2 (owned it), two expansion packs, and Team Fortress 2.

But the Portal section of the box made such huge waves, it peaked my curiosity so I ran a ‘portal game’ search. The result was a poor, browser based imitation that frustrated me within the first ten minutes. This just reinforced my resolve not to purchase The Orange Box and I carried on, blissfully ignorant.

Enter Portal 2 with its cooperative multiplayer. That’s a tag line that is sure to get me to sit up and pay attention. So I begged my buddy to play it with me and after hours of badgering he caved, but set this one requirement – I had to play the original Portal first.

Best blackmail ever!

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Castlevania, though one of the longest and most glorified franchises, has never really been on my radar. It’s a bit of a drawback really, because I don’t have any warm gushy nostalgia surrounding this franchise, to soften any of its rough edges. In short, I’m less forgiving.

This also means I am not usually drawn to any new Castlevania releases, but a friend of mine insisted that this was the greatest game to evAr walk to the earth, so it had to be tried.

Let the slandering begin.

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The first time I met Lara Croft was in Tomb Raider 2. She kicked some serious ass and I loved her for it. The whole game made such an impression that I have been following Lara’s trials and tribulations ever since. And though I have hung in there, the quality of the Lara Croft titles has been in steady decline.

That is until ‘Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light’ came along.

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The Kirby franchise has never really drawn me, nor have the previous Kirby games I played impressed me much. But with all the fabulous reviews that Kirby’s Epic Yarn was pulling in, I admit I was curious.

So I set my expectations low, partially because it is a Kirby game, but mostly because I don’t often agree with the average reviewer. Those favorable reviews have sucked me in before, sucked me in a burned me!!

With low expectations and lots of caution I sat down to play the game and was blown away. I was simply stunned at how fabulous it was – mouth agape shocked!

It’s simple, it’s fun, it’s light, it’s cute, but most importantly it’s the most adorable game ever made.

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The last time I played a Prince of Persia game, Jake Gyllenhaal, the beefed out movie star of this movie, was probably still wearing footy pajamas. Which makes my game reference for this movie a bit outdated.

Even so, I was loath to pass this one up. The Sands of Time game was after all quite popular, plus beefcake, plus action movie. Total no-brainer.

Turns out, no matter how much beefing there is, I’m just not a huge Jake Gyllenhaal fan. Oh, he did a fine enough job, and he certainly didn’t ruin anything about the movie. One brand new little six-pack just isn’t suddenly going to make him my type.

From what I can tell the game aspect was translated fairly well. Plenty of fighting, lots of acrobatics and even a fair amount of ‘sanding’ back in time. Actually by the end of the movie all I could think about was that the turning back time using the sands must be an awesome game mechanic. Made me want to play the game.

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What a fabulously appropriate game for Halloween. Hauntingly moody backdrops frame a strange and perilous back-lit puzzle. It is missing a few pumpkins and there certainly isn’t any candy to be found, but it will evoke quite the appropriate mood. =)

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It’s always a pleasant surprise when a sequel manages to exceed its predecessor’s fun value. By retaining the chewy inner nugget of goodness and strengthening the original game’s weak points, Super Mario Galaxy 2 certainly succeeds.

From what I have read it wasn’t actually supposed to be a full-fledged sequel, but more of a continuation – a bit more fun to be had. But I guess the developers were inspired because it ended up as a bit too much more. =)

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Meet Nathan Drake, fortune hunter, grave robber (with a heart), rock climber, gunslinger, truck wrangler, and part time archeologist. Sounds great right? Yeah well turns out he is also an idiot, albeit an exceedingly competent idiot.

His physical capabilities are incredible. The man can scale icy cliffs, shoot almost any type of weapon, fling himself from one moving vehicle to the next, all while hardly breaking a sweat, but he is clearly lacking the common sense gene (aka dumb as a brick.)

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Kirby has been cursed by an evil witch and turned into a pink ball. It’s our job to help him along in his quest to break the curse and free the land.

The story itself is not intrinsic to the game. In fact I had to look it up for this review. What this boils down too is that the game play does just fine in the fun department without the story there to lean on.

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Nostalgia is back in style and the huge success of the newest Super Mario Bros game on the Wii is a true testament to the trend. With over ten million copies sold its clear that plenty of gamers are not only pining for the less graphic intensive games of their childhood, but also appreciate excellent game play.

As a long time Mario fan I truly felt that the soul of the Super Mario games was lost once they switched to 3D. But they are finally back, in original 2D with one of their best titles since Super Mario World.

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