Gaming Reviews

Even though I consider myself a pretty big Pokemon fan - I’ve played every mainline game since Red and Blue and to this day can still sing the PokeRap (it’s like riding a bike, honestly) - Pokken Tournament evaded me when it was originally launched on the Wii U. With Pokken Tournament DX, I’ve been given another shot at experiencing the game, so how does Nintendo’s Pokemon fighting title hold up in the jump to the Switch?

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As of yesterday, the Nintendo Switch has been available at retail for six months. In that time, it’s become clear that the Switch is a smashing success, at least at launch. Though we won’t be able to say if it will take a place among the console greats for quite some time, it certainly is off to an excellent start. This is evidenced by the fact that even six months out from release, Nintendo is having a tough time keeping it in stock across the country. That doesn’t bode well for the holiday shopping season, but it’s at least a good problem to have for Nintendo.

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I have no problem admitting that ARMS has caught me off guard. What I'd initially written off as “just another motion control game” for a largely post-motion control world has turned out to be a very interesting and refreshing take on the fighting genre. Before we dive into the review, though, you should know ahead of time that these impressions are coming from someone who doesn't necessarily consider himself a fighting game fan.

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Over the past couple of weeks I've been using a Go-tcha Wristband for Pokemon GO. This Pokemon GO Gotcha (or however you want to write it) is essentially a Pokemon GO Plus with its button held down. It comes from the folks at Codejunkies, a group who specialize in the sort of devices that are akin to a modern-day Nintendo Game Genie. Cheaters without cheating, winning games because they're very good at backwards engineering.

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That I’m sitting here in 2017 and writing a review of Mario Kart 8 definitely seems strange. I have played this game before - a lot - and now I’m revisiting the same game under very different circumstances. Nintendo, recognizing that the original release of Mario Kart 8 likely missed a lot folks because it was released on the Wii U (a console not many people had), has re-released the game on the Nintendo Switch as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, packing in some extra racers, modes, and all the DLC that was released for the original game. Do the extras make Mario Kart 8 Deluxe worth a second purchase?

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I’m not sure if you've noticed, but these super difficult games known as roguelikes - named for the 1980 game Rogue - seem to keep growing more and more popular. Distinguished by sometimes brutal difficulty, quick runthroughs that often end in failure, permadeath, and an element of randomness, these games are addicting in their challenge. You will fail a lot, but put in enough practice and maybe you’ll finally succeed. There are already plenty of great roguelike games on the market - FTL: Faster Than Light, Rogue Legacy, The Binding of Isaac, and Spelunky, to name a few. Now Has-Been Heroes from Frozenbyte wants to add its name to that list. Does it have what it takes?

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Despite my love for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its numerous brain-teasing shrines, I have to say that I’ve never been much of a puzzle game fan. Video games, in my mind, have always been about the adventure or competition or relaxation. Working through puzzles never seemed like something I’d want to do to wind down at the end of the day. As it turns out, I was wrong about that - I just needed a game like Snipperclips to show me the light.

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I'm just going to admit it right off the bat: I haven't been on board the Breath of the Wild hype train this entire time. When Nintendo first started showing the game off, alongside the promises it made about a truly open world and a reinvention for the Zelda franchise, I was skeptical. I didn't think Nintendo could deliver on its promises. After all, for the past 20 years, Zelda has been anything but open world – aside from a slight detour from the tried-and-true formula in A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS. I thought, if anything, Breath of the Wild would just be a console version of that.

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I have something of a love/hate relationship with Nintendo consoles, especially in recent years. While I grew up with consoles like the Super NES, Nintendo 64, and Gamecube, in the time since then my preference has shifted to Nintendo's handhelds like the DS and the 3DS. Now that the Nintendo Switch is on the scene, Nintendo is looking to bounce back from a horrible console cycle with the Wii U, while at the same time blending the worlds of console and handheld gaming. How successful is it in doing so?

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Razer's mechanical gaming keyboard line BlackWidow got a redesign with a new name: "V2". Today we're checking out the action on the keys, the color under the keys, and the build quality of the whole keyboard. Razer changed up their game 4 years after launching the BlackWidow mechanical keyboard line with programmable rainbow "Chroma" lighting and by manufacturing their own brand of mechanical switches for the first time. Here in 2017, Razer gave the BlackWidow keyboard a major redesign - refined for a new generation.

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Over the past two years just one device has been in near-constant use at my home - that's the original NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV. This piece of hardware sits quietly to the side of my television and serves content to my family almost every day of the year. Unlike any other device I've used over the past half-decade, the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV has never failed to feel like a natural part of my everyday routine - without the need for an over-abundant amount of software updates, and completely functional in every way I'd needed it to be. That's why I was skeptical when NVIDIA announced they'd be releasing another newer NVIDIA SHIELD device this year.

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In our first hands-on experience with the NVIDIA SHIELD TV, I made a strong suggestion that the Game Controller was the major upgrade of this generation in SHIELD hardware. As such, I've separated this review from our primary review of the NVIDIA SHIELD TV. The review here suggests that this new controller is largely worth purchasing on its own if the user already owns the Gen1 NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV device, and will be a positive piece of the puzzle for those that purchase Gen2.

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