Reviews
For a good year I was a regular reviewer over at The Reticule - packing this in was a difficult decision, but life caught up with me and I needed some more flexibility in my weekends (whilst still churning out written content every single day in a work capacity). Links to the originally posted articles are provided below, with a choice paragraph on some critical aspect of each game I reviewed.
Dead Space 2 review at the Reticule
"It’s an overused trope that completely gets in the way of an otherwise likeable character: she also manages to make even less sense than Alyx (and her bullet proof hoodie) in context. This is a game where the player routinely gets blasted into the vacuum of space, sees their torso ripped in half and is forced to watch as a creature pins them down, mounts and violates their face. By the end of the game, you have several suits of advanced space armour going spare: how is it possible for a character in a vest top to maintain her integrity?"
Alice: Madness Returns review at the Reticule
"There’s one word that keeps nagging at me to be said in reference to this game: it’s ’sincere’. The list of faults nags at you as you play, and it will cause many to simply give up and play something more worthy. But that list of faults results from good intentions and a genuine passion for a literary classic; I know I won’t be the only one that ticks boxes for. For those who stick it out to the end, I’m sure you’ll agree that the only real problem here is the nagging sense of under-achievement, because the parts that make this product a ‘game’ are so rarely exceptional. But you’ll also see that there’s more than a spark of something incredible here when taking it merely as ‘an experience’."
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - the Missing Link review at the Reticule
"The ‘Missing Link’ title was obviously chosen in reference to the human evolutionary theme so central to the new Deus Ex discourse, but it seems to me a rather unfortunate choice. Unlike the sometimes elusive evidence of humanity’s ancestors, The Missing Link just doesn’t seem like a significant find. In fact, it seems specifically engineered to be as inconsequential as possible. It’s not like you can blame Eidos Montreal for this: consumers typically have nothing less than utter disdain for developers who place critical story in paid-for downloadable content. But after the significance of a product like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, it wasn’t unreasonable to suspect this developer to put out a DLC that actually matters."
Sonic Generations review at the Reticule
"Does it squeeze too much extra playtime out of too few assets? Probably. Does the 30 frames per second cap undermine the speedy platforming? Sometimes (though reportedly, not on PC at all). Does the ‘modern’ act become incredibly frustrating the second you slow down to explore? Unquestionably. But a perfectly executed run in either mode is an exhilarating experience, made possible by constant iteration through seeking all those collectibles in these nine fantastic looking environments. It wins you over in the end."
Assassins Creed Revelations review at the Reticule
"Even the process of training your master assassins comes with its own unpleasantness. Again, you send your trainees throughout Europe to get XP, gold and now via a joyless menu system. However, now you can gain control over the cities for greater returns. But to keep the cities under your control you have to constantly send your team away. It’s a logical evolution of a system of dubious worth, and the micromanagement injected into it have turned it into an odious piece of digital plate-spinning, a feature that constantly nags at you to the point of distraction. It’s like having Roman Bellic page you every five minutes, except instead of going bowling, he wants you to spend some quality time with him dicking around in Excel."
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception review at the Reticule
"The idea that there’s a certain compulsory level of interactivity in a game is one that is creeping into a lot of games writing at the moment, and I’m not sure it’s entirely useful. Even as we welcome artsy, indie games where gameplay is more incidental, we seem to turn our noses up at any action game that takes back even the slightest fraction of control. And even if Uncharted 3 ought to stop serving up the solutions to its puzzles and put some of the challenge back in its ledge grabbing, its environments are still open enough and filled with enough collectable trinkets and visual rewards that it’s far better than the ‘one long corridor’ problems of a lot of contemporary action game design."
Soul Calibur V review at the Reticule
"Don’t let the dashing, hooded Italian on Soul Calibur V‘s boxart fool you. Namco and their rivals aren’t in the business of trying to squeeze a big release out every single year. They understand the value of leaving land fallow. It has been nearly three years since the last Tekken, dead on three years since we entered the fourth Street Fighter era. And Soul Calibur IV? Nearly four years old. The Soul series’ sixth instalment arrives this week, and it’s a game that reaffirms the series’ position as a major fighting game franchise whilst reacting to the less-than sweeping changes that have been wrought by its alternatives."
Dear Esther review at the Reticule
"There’s no doubt that the commercial Dear Esther‘s Hebredian island is a far more beautiful place to visit than that in the prototype – everything from the way that the land is shaped to where streams have formed seems authentic. Even at the game’s trademark walking pace, trudging along a dirt path, through thick scrub is an incredibly immersive experience. And yet, immersion isn’t the graphical aspect’s only achievement. My experiences with the original mod, underline this – the level of thought and detail that has gone into the environment serves the experience’s themes."
Ys - The Oath in Felghana review at Valvetime.net
"And then the boss battles happen. Personally, I'm of the opinion that they're kind of superb, but I'm pretty sure my housemates won't have this impression. There isn't a boss in this game that didn't take at least five attempts, and most took twenty (and the rest). And given that there are no potions to neck in this game, that you go into a boss battle with just your sword, your magic and your skills, I compensated for the lack of statistical boosts by daisy chaining expletives until those dastardly bastards finally croaked."
Retrospectives
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 retrospective at the Reticule
I review my childhood.American McGee's Alice retrospective at the Reticule
I attempt to have a retrospective opinion on something I've never played. Not my finest hour (I'm kind of unpleasant about McGee's track record and kind of dismissive of his vision here, something I hope I redressed in my Alice: Madness Returns review). Why admit to writing it? Bizarrely this was the first and only time I managed to get a Reticule article featured in Rock Paper Shotgun's Sunday Papers.
Features
"Assassin's Creed and the Curse of the Uphill Series" at the Reticule
This started out as a by then entirely irrelevant Assassin's Creed Brotherhood review, and I ended up looking at how frustrating (and how inevitable) tricky first installments can be for players when you suddenly embark on a multiple-title series. In retrospect, the series did start to fall apart a little with Revelations...
"Where is my Nausicaa Game?" at the Reticule
As a fan of Studio Ghibli, I wrote this dossier on why Miyazaki's seven-part Manga epic would be a perfect subject for exploitation. I was meaning to do a series of these "where is my..." pieces (I think another was to be "Where is my Jane Austen game?", because if we're going to finally crack a video game about relationships is there a better place to start than a set of novels about rigid conventions, romance and wit?)Guides
A Beginners Guide to Soul Calibur V at the Reticule
Creating this was partly influenced by my linkbaity work as a content writer (as far as I know, this guide still regularly gets hits for the site), but it did bug me how not-obvious most of SCV's moves were made by its tutorials and menus.The honest truth is that writing this stuff down didn't help any lessons stick - I still suck expertly at this one!
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