Gaming Reviews

If there was any reason at all to own a Wii U, Super Mario Maker was it. Super Mario Maker was so unique and so popular that I think if it would have been a launch title, the Wii U may have succeeded despite all that was working against it. Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch, then, was inevitable, and if you’re looking for more of a good thing, you’ll definitely find it here. Unfortunately, it isn’t all sunshine and daisies in the world of Super Mario Maker 2, as the consistent problems with Nintendo Switch Online hold this game back from achieving true greatness.

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Even though Yoshi is one of the best things about the Mario franchise, our green dinosaur friend is often times relegated to the role of sidekick. Every once in a while, though, Yoshi gets to star in a game of his (its?) own, starting with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island way back in the days of the SNES. Since then, a variety of games starring Yoshi have been launched for various Nintendo platforms, most recently with Yoshi's Crafted World on the Nintendo Switch.

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Were it not for Super Smash Bros., the GameCube controller would probably be a distant memory for most people. A curiosity of the past, perhaps, given its rather unique design and button layout. A stepping stone on the path to the more refined gamepads we have today. Thanks to Super Smash Bros., though, the GameCube controller is none of those things, and instead it’s alive and kicking. Though the original Wii had a set of GameCube controller ports all its own, Nintendo eventually figured out a way to bring GameCube support forward to the Wii U, all in the name of Super Smash Bros. and the Melee veterans who love it.

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is here and it’s unquestionably the biggest Switch game of the year. While every Smash Bros. release is a major event, there’s a certain excitement for this one, as all fighters that have ever appeared in a Smash Bros. game are returning for Ultimate. Pair that roster, which now includes more than 70 characters, with a map pool that climbs over 100, and we’ve got quite the massive game on our hands. Even though it sounds like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a balancing team’s worst nightmare, it’s definitely exciting for us veterans who have been playing since the first game. It begs the question, though: Can you have too much of a good thing?

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I have to admit, I have a strange history with the Mario Party series. I’ve been playing since the very first game launched on the N64 back in 1998, and while I’ve always been entertained by them, there’s always been this voice at the back of my head saying “you know this probably isn’t very good, right?” Still, I would play them, and I never really listened to that voice until Mario Party 9 rolled around. In that game, Nintendo decided that having everyone move around the game board individually wasn’t a good idea and plopped them all in a car that meant they’d be stuck side-by-side for the entire match. Why? I don’t know. Reasons, I guess.

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After more than a year of waiting, Octopath Traveler has finally arrived on the Nintendo Switch, and boy are JRPG fans excited. One look at its aesthetic is all you need to begin drawing comparisons to the many excellent JRPGs from the 1990s, like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI, and Chrono Trigger. It’s safe to say that hype among the folks who love this genre was incredibly high in the lead up to release, but now that it’s here, does Octopath Traveler live up to the hype? Is it the 16-bit throwback we’ve all been waiting for?

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It isn’t very often we see a game come around and define a new genre, but after building Battle Royale mods for a handful of other games, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene is doing just that with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The game has taken the world by storm this year, which is saying a lot because PUBG had to share the limelight with huge titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Horizon: Zero Dawn. Despite that, it’s managed to become a sensation and win over millions of players while still in beta. Now, 9 months after it first arrived, it has left early access and launched into version 1.0, a milestone that some early access games infamously never arrive at.

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The first Razer Phone clearly wasn't designed to take on the competition with bright, flashy colors. Razer didn't make their first phone with curved edges, and it didn't include a front-facing 3D face-sensor setup for animated emoji messages. Instead, Razer took the top-notch knowhow of the team at formerly-NextBit and combined it with their own understanding of their massive cult of modern gamers. With some top-level branding and a genuinely nice box to package it all up, the Razer Phone is like no other company's "first try" I've ever experienced.

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The HTC VIVE Tracker is a new tool for the VR universe - an extra bit of zazz that opens up new doors and dimensions. Over the past few days I've had the opportunity to test out the HTC VIVE Tracker with the relatively limited set of games it already works within. Included with this review package was a set of accessories with which the tracker works. The best of these is the Hyperkin Hyper Blaster - a VR-ready version of a pistol, extremely similar to that of the original NES Zapper from Nintendo.

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It's sort of hard to believe, but it's been a whole nine months since the Nintendo Switch launched. Part of what makes that feel unbelievable is just how big of a year the Switch has had. 2017 was indeed packed for the Switch, and as we close in on the end of the Switch's first full year of retail availability, it's clear that Nintendo is onto something special.

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A year ago, I reviewed Pokemon Sun and Moon and found that the changes they brought to the long-running (and in many ways stale) Pokemon series were great. After all, Pokemon is not usually a series that makes drastic changes from game to game. Though Pokemon Sun and Moon are completely different than Pokemon Red and Blue, that isn’t the result of some sweeping reinvention, but rather incremental changes that have been implemented over the course of the series. With Pokemon Sun and Moon, Game Freak rethought its approach and took more risks, and the results were very successful.

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Over the past few weeks we've been testing the Gigabyte Aero 15X gaming notebook. This is one of the newest in new gaming notebooks - as such, it is not part of the "massive performance means massive hardware" families of the past. This machine also boasts a few other features that make it unique - like long battery life, a highly decent display (with TINY bezels) and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q graphics inside.

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