Borderlands Review
When it first came out, Borderlands seemed like a bizarre video game Frankenstein: the mission structure of World of Warcraft, the loot system of Diablo, the humor of Conker’s Bad…
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Isaac Davis
27 posts
Isaac Davis is a NYC writer, recovering student, and downtrodden former rollercoaster tycoon. Any leads on amusement park design work are greatly appreciated.
LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Team Up Review
Superheroes are no strangers to the fighting game genre. The Marvel vs. Capcom series has proven successful for nearly twenty years, and the DC heroes themselves had a recent hit…
Doodle God: 8-bit Mania Review
I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something very cynical about Doodle God. On its face, it’s no worse than free-to-play chart-toppers like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans. Though…
PataNoir Review
Noir film (and the games influenced by it) obviously owes much to pulp detective fiction. But one feature that rarely comes through in either is the obsession with flowery introspection.…
Lara Croft GO Review
Reducing Square Enix’s greatest hits down to single-player board games is not a formula that should work. It’s not even an idea that should cross an executive’s desk and come…
Battlestation: Harbinger Review
I have yet to determine what the titular “harbinger” in Battlestation: Harbinger actually is. There are plenty of battlestations around the map, but I’ve not seen one named “Harbinger.” Many…
The Mystery of the Mayan Ruins Review
Despite my love of the point-and-click adventure game, its descendant genre, the “escape the room” game, has never really connected with me. There are certainly several design improvements in escape…
Bad Dinos Review
Bad Dinos wants very badly to be a Flintstones game. From the opening screens of the story, a family of cartoon cavemen is working their way across a prehistoric landscape…
Lifeline Review
I would not have expected text-based games to make such a comeback, but here we are. Twine is becoming more and more popular with novice game developers, and the discussion…
The Last Warlock Review
Turn-based strategy has entered a bit of a renaissance lately. After being almost totally sidelined by action games and real-time strategy, titles like XCOM and The Banner Saga brought some…
PlanCon: Space Conflict Review
In playing PlanCon, I frequently found myself thinking of EVE Online. Though widely regarded as impenetrable to casual players, EVE makes up for it with the sheer breadth of possibilities.…
Grim Fandango Remastered Review
Fans often talk about the death of the adventure game in the late 90s, and Grim Fandango was the game that did it. Lucasarts was on a roll for a…
The 7th Guest: Remastered Review
It’s difficult to judge a game like The 7th Guest with the benefits of hindsight. Although critically acclaimed upon its release in 1993, the game is part of a genre…
Playworld Superheroes Review
There are very few games about play. Maybe that makes sense. The appeal of a game world is to live out experiences that one can’t in real life. Least among…
X-Men: Days of Future Past Review
The world of X-Men is an excellent backdrop for storytelling, especially in games. It has a huge array of memorable heroes and villains, a winning combination of political strife and…
Lego Marvel Super Heroes: Universe In Peril Review
Traveler’s Tales (now TT Games) hit upon an excellent formula with the original Lego Star Wars, which they’ve only refined since. If games like Lego Marvel, Star Wars, and Indiana…
Warhammer: Snotling Fling Review
Even five years after its original release, Angry Birds remains one of the seminal mobile games that marked the true beginning of the touch screen era. Of course, this has…
Tap Heroes Review
Playing Tap Heroes, I ended up looking like some kind of “gamer” character in a sitcom: face contorted somewhere between bliss and frustration, body convulsing as fingers frantically mash  the…
Almightree: The Last Dreamer Review
I’ve talked at length about the problems with platformers on mobile. Virtual buttons just don’t seem to have the precision that’s required of traditional twitchy action games like Super Mario…
Evolve: Hunters Quest Review
“Companion apps” for big triple-A PC and console games are becoming increasingly common. Destiny offloaded most of its story content into an app, and it seems that every Ubisoft game…