Tag Archives: Puzzle

ESH | Moss Review

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Vir­tual real­ity has often been used to insert play­ers into sit­u­a­tions that would oth­er­wise be impos­si­ble. Moss, one of the newest PlaySta­tion VR titles, goes about this in a slightly dif­fer­ent way. Instead of mak­ing the player the focus, each stage of the game is a sort of inter­ac­tive dio­rama. Con­trol­ling the adorable mouse pro­tag­o­nist Quill, play­ers can make their way envi­ron­men­tal puz­zles by inspect­ing every nook and cranny of the tiny world set in front of them. It cre­ates an expe­ri­ence that feel unique to VR and facil­i­tates a new sort of immer­sion that is the breath of fresh air that VR needs right now.

Moss1

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Wednesday Night Stream | Shadow of the Colossus: Remastered

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BenColossus

Join me for some colossus-stabbing action at 10pm EST! Feel free to com­ment on this post directly or head off to my Twitch Page to chat with me as I play!

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ESH | The Fall Part 2: Unbound Review

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Crash­ing down on us in 2014, The Fall was a fas­ci­nat­ing adven­ture game with some admit­tedly clunky com­bat. The story mainly con­sisted of a com­bat suit with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, named A.R.I.D. search­ing for med­ical atten­tion for the passed out human inside of it. In a major twist, stop read­ing here and go play The Fall if you haven’t already, the suit turned out to be empty the whole time and her whole pur­pose has been made null. As you might expect, I was eager to see where the story went from there and The Fall Part 2: Unbound does cer­tainly go in some inter­est­ing directions.

TheFall21

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GOTY 2017 | Number 3 — Super Mario Odyssey

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Pick­ing the order of the top three games of 2017 was a night­mare. Each of these games are amaz­ing in their own right and rank­ing them was near impos­si­ble. That being said, I have decided on an order and I am stick­ing to it! Super Mario Odyssey is a joy to play in nearly every way. The bright and col­or­ful envi­ron­ments are packed with fun stuff to do and inter­act with, nearly all of which will earn you some power moons. I never had a play ses­sion with Super Mario Odyssey where I felt that no progress had been made and I always spent the entire time smil­ing ear to ear. It has been a long while since we’ve got­ten a Mario game as open as this one and this could arguably be the best one that fol­lows that for­mula. The main game doesn’t over­stay its wel­come, allow­ing you to blast through each world and get a short intro­duc­tion before mov­ing on, but doesn’t dis­cour­age stick­ing around and play­ing in each king­dom for a lit­tle longer. There are some very fun sur­prises after the cred­its roll and the game is a great one to come back to every now and then for some relaxed fun. Super Mario Odyssey just barely came in as the 3rd best game of 2017.

BenOdyssey

ESH | RiME Review

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Atmos­pheric explo­ration puz­zle games have long been per­fected by the likes of Team Ico with titles like Ico and The Last Guardian pro­vid­ing stel­lar exam­ples of how the genre is done right. Show­ing clear inspi­ra­tion from the afore­men­tioned games, Tequila Works has crafted a beau­ti­ful game in RiME, trans­port­ing the player to a sea­side tem­ple with a bevy of secrets to unfold. Tech­ni­cal glitches occa­sion­ally mar the Nin­tendo Switch ver­sion of Rime, but the over­all expe­ri­ence is a gor­geous and sat­is­fy­ing puz­zle adventure.

RiME_1

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ESH | The Escapists 2 Review

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Ago­niz­ing over the per­fect plan, metic­u­lously prep­ping all the nec­es­sary com­po­nents and then hav­ing it all come apart due to an unseen cir­cum­stance. Escap­ing prison seems like it would be an endeavor that which I would fail mis­er­ably to exe­cute with the per­fec­tion it requires. If noth­ing else, The Escapists 2 has only proven this fact as I have spent plenty of time in soli­tary con­fine­ment for my failed schemes. Thank­fully, unlike real life, the con­se­quences of these failed jail­breaks are min­i­mal and with enough prac­tice, I was even­tu­ally able to spring myself from the joint. It’s this con­cept that makes The Escapists 2 the per­fect action puz­zle game for any­one with a lot of patience look­ing for a real challenge.

E2_1

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ESH | DeadCore Review

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Plat­form­ing sec­tions in first-person games can be noto­ri­ously hard if they’re not done well. Spot­ting plat­forms while you’re jump­ing and nail­ing tar­gets mid-air is tough as nails, but if the con­trols are tight enough it can feel really good. Dead­Core has you steadily climb­ing a tower full of deadly traps and giant leaps, but as through the adver­sity of mak­ing it through this gaunt­let, you will even­tu­ally feel like a first-person god of plat­form­ing. Not every sec­tion is strong, but what is there is chal­leng­ing enough to really make you feel like you earned it.

deadcore1

 

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ESH | Embers of Mirrim Review

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Rub­bing your stom­ach and pat­ting your head has always been one of the great­est exer­cises in mul­ti­task­ing. Get­ting your brain to process two sep­a­rate tasks simul­ta­ne­ously is sur­pris­ingly dif­fi­cult. Cre­ative Bytes Stu­dios is look­ing to put you to the ulti­mate test with the new plat­form­ing adven­ture Embers of Mir­rim. Jump­ing through the world as two crea­tures that have been com­bined into one, you must use the pow­ers of each simul­ta­ne­ously to tra­verse the dan­gers as you cure the cor­rup­tion plagu­ing the land. Embers of Mir­rim is not only a com­pe­tent and beau­ti­ful game, it is chal­leng­ing and fun in a way that I haven’t seen in quite some time.

Mirrim1

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