Game Reviews – Random Tower

Arc The Lad: A 120 Hour Sidequest With A Smidgen Of Main Story

Published December 27, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

It really is tough for me to find the right words to describe how I felt as I played and then finished up Arc The Lad. My first experience with the series was Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits on PS2 and I had a lot fun playing it. I really liked the strategy RPG aspect of the game and the characters and story were great. Because of that experience, I bought the original Arc The Lad to get a better feel for the PS2 game’s roots. Boy do I have mixed feelings about this.

Gameplay wise, I enjoyed the game. The combat mechanisms, while not as deep as Final Fantasy Tactics, were still fun to explore. The game is a strategy RPG, more similar to something like Valkyria Chronicles than to something like Final Fantasy Tactics. During your characters’ turns, you can move them freely around their field of motion and then choose their action, whether to attack, use magic, or use and item. When attacking, you must take into account your own character’s direction as well as that of the enemy to maximize your damage.

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Alundra Is A Wonderfully Dark Adventure With An Unintentionally Hilarious Scene

Published December 20, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

I first played Alundra way back during the actual PS1 era, back when it was just the Playstation. As a fan of top down action adventure games, such as Zelda, Secret of Evermore, among others, I was excited to play this new franchise. I remember enjoying this game immensely. So when I had the opportunity to buy it again as a PS1 classic, I did so without question.

Even though I have played it before, I was pleasantly surprised to still enjoy it. The game is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it for anyone that is a fan of these types of games.

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Legend Of Dragoon Took 65 Pretty Cool Hours Of My Life I Won’t Get Back

Published November 29, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

A few months back, I started playing Legend of Dragoon for the PS1 for the first time. I had the first three of four disks sitting on my game shelf for years and just needed an excuse to start playing. Had I actually played that, I would have been able to borrow disk four from my brother. However, I was planning on buying that disk somewhere at sometime. That didn’t work out. Instead, I bought the game through the PSN store as a PS1 classic game.

It sat for a few months in my PSN library waiting for me to play it, but I never got around to it. Playing it on my PS3 was kind of a pain because my kids used the PS3 for TV and movies as well as Minecraft. The couple of hours I had after they went to bed were often spent spending time with my wife or working on my side projects. That all changed when I got my PSP. I picked it up at a thrift store for $8 and had to replace the battery for another $9. It was probably the best gaming hardware investment I ever made. I now had the freedom to play all those PS1 classics at will and I decided to start with Legend of Dragoon.

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My Pokemon Go Experience A Month And A Half In

Published August 26, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

I have been playing Pokemon Go since the game launched in early July. The game has had numerous ups and downs, as can be easily read about on other sites. I am not here to give a review of the game or tell you about all that. What I want to do is document my experience playing this game.

When I say play, I mean that in the loosest meaning possible. There is little play to this game. You toss pokeballs at the mons, tap furiously at the screen in gym battles, spin pokestops, and select options from menus. Not much else. But that is not what makes the game interesting. It is finding the pokemon in your daily lives in real locations. That doesn’t work out for everyone though.

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There Ain’t No Stopping Pokemon Go

Published July 13, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Last week sparked the largest fitness fad to hit the world since Wii Fit by Nintendo. I don’t think it was entirely intentional on the part of the Pokemon Company or Niantic. But I also don’t think that it was entirely unexpected. But that isn’t the only result of the launch of Pokemon Go either. People are also getting fresh air and making new friends.

I have been playing Pokemon go for almost a week now and I must say that my kids and I have not had this much fun walking around the neighborhood and the park in a long time.

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A Look Back At E3 By This Hardcore Casual Gamer

Published June 22, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

As I sat and watched E3 this year, I had this nagging feeling at the back of my mind. As each game was introduced and I saw trailers and gameplay footage, this feeling got stronger and stronger. I couldn’t shake it. But I couldn’t quite place it for a while though. Then about halfway through Microsoft’s press event, it finally dawned on me what I was feeling. So I put it in a tweet.

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Linux Game Review: SteamWorld Dig By Image And Form

Published September 29, 2014 by E. Zachary Knight

I recently bought the Humble Bundle 12 in order to get a copy of Gone Home and Papers, Please. I really wanted to try both of those games. After playing Papers, Please, I decided to play a different game from the bundle and tried out SteamWorld Dig. As a result, I found my favorite game of that bundle so far. It doesn’t often happen that the game I bought a bundle for is not my favorite, but when it does, I am pleasantly surprised.

SteamWorld Dig is a clever platformer staring a steam powered robot named Rusty. Developed by Image and Form, SteamWorld Dig takes you to the heart of a mining town built on top of a mine with many dark secrets about the past and source of the robots that make up the cast.

The game opens up as Rusty travels to the mining town to visit his Uncle Joe just to find out that his Uncle is dead, beyond repair. Inheriting his trusty pickax, Rusty must dig through his Uncle’s claim to find out what happened to him. Throughout exploring the mine, Rusty finds ore and minerals that allow him to purchase new equipment and upgrades. Additionally, Rusty stumbles upon mysterious platforms that provide him new powers and abilities that allow him to reach harder to explore areas. Eventually, these new powers allow Rusty to solve the mystery of his Uncle’s death.

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Ouya Review: Toto Temple Deluxe

Ouya Review: Toto Temple Deluxe

Published August 29, 2014 by E. Zachary Knight

Not long ago, Juicy Beast, the creators of Knightmare Tower, released their latest Ouya exclusive game Toto Temple Deluxe. (Full Disclosure: Juicy Beast provided me with a free game code for Toto Temple Deluxe) Toto Temple is their first foray into the growing world of local multiplayer competitive gaming on the Ouya. Following the success of Towerfall, the Ouya has seen a growing number of games that are competing for that audience. And Juicy Beast has created one of the best contenders of late.

Toto Temple has a simple concept. Grab the goat and keep it. It is essentially a capture flag game, but that is only the beginning.

In Toto Temple, 2-4 players enter an arena which has a goat in the middle. Each player then attempts to grab that goat and carry it on their head. The other players then use a dash attack to knock that player down and take the goat for themselves. As the game progresses, powerups appear that grant non-goat holding players special moves and attacks that aid their effort to capture the goat.

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Game Review: House Of The Lost By F5 Games

Published August 1, 2014 by E. Zachary Knight

I am a sucker for my Ouya. I backed it when it was on Kickstarter and love it every time I pick up a controller to play. There are so many great games on it and I never seem to run out of something new and interesting to try. So imagine my excitement when I learned that F5 Games, out of Tulsa, were releasing their rogue-like game House of the Lost on the Ouya.

I had played HotL a couple of times on my phone but never really could get into it because of the touch screen controls. They were a bit unwieldy for me. I could never make it through more than a couple of rooms. So when I learned about the Ouya version, I just had to try it out with a controller.

To give you an idea of what HotL is like, it is what is considered a rogue-like game. These are games that feature often brutal difficulty, randomized levels and perma-death. HotL features both perma-death and brutal difficulty and slightly randomized levels. Each level has a bunch of different predefined layouts but the game randomly picks which one you play.

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Ouya Review: Neon Shadow

Published January 20, 2014 by E. Zachary Knight

In my college days, I used to play hours of Unreal Tournament 2013 with my friends. We would play it between classes, during classes and after classes. I had a lot of great memories of the game, even though I really sucked at playing it. I haven’t found a FPS that I enjoyed that much since then, not that I have really looked. However, I have found something that I think could be a good modern replacement for someone like me. That game is Neon Shadow by Tasty Poison Games.

I had been eyeing Neon Shadow for a while and got around to playing it this weekend. After spending the time to play through the demo content, I have found a very enjoyable game.

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Category: Game Reviews