Spooky Reviews!

On 10/27/2016 at 10:43 PM by Cary Woodham

Boo! Here’s another batch of games I’ve reviewed over at GamerDad.com. They’re so good, it’s scary! Whooooo! Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a comment or two here or there. I’d appreciate it, thanks. Now let’s begin…if you dare!

Bustin’ Ghosts at Dave & Busters

A couple of months ago, for my birthday, my family and I went to Dave & Busters. It was the first time that I had fun at a modern arcade in a long time. The highlight was that I got to play Luigi’s Mansion Arcade! Yes, there is an arcade version of Luigi’s Mansion, and if you want to know more, you’ll just have to read my article! I played a lot of other interesting games as well and took a lot of nifty pictures, so you’ll definitely want to check this one out.

LEGO Dimensions Ghostbusters Story Pack

This is a new expansion pack for LEGO Dimensions. Not to be confused with the Ghostbusters Level Pack, the Story Pack is based on the new movie and features not one, but six levels. So it’s like half a full LEGO game. It’s actually pretty decent, with a big dose of fun LEGO humor. A lot of people bashed on the new movie when it came out. While I don’t think it was near as good as the first one, the new Ghostbusters was a comedy and it made me laugh. So I figured it did its job. Anyone care to take a guess who my favorite characters are?

Axiom Verge (Wii U)

This game is REALLY good. One of the best I’ve played this year so far. Nintendo doesn’t seem to know what Metroid fans want, but at least we have this game. It plays and looks a lot like Super Metroid, which is a good thing. It’s not QUITE as good as that classic, but it’s still a lot of fun. It’s available for a lot of current game consoles, so if you like old school 16-bit Metroid style adventures, you should check it out!

Marvel’s Women of Power (PS3)

Halloween makes me think of spooks and monsters, but also superheroes since many kids dress as them to go trick or treating. This is a pack of two pinball games for Pinball FX2 and Zen Pinball 2. It features female Marvel comic heroes. The first one is about Black Widow as she fights some people I’ve never heard of in a cosmic cube induced alternate reality where Russia takes over New York. The only other character I recognized on that table is She-Hulk. I guess if I had to pick a favorite female Marvel character, it would be She-Hulk because Phoenix Wright is in her ending in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. The other table is more lighthearted and features more characters I’ve never heard of before, like Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, and Spider Gwen. This table is more colorful and uses cartoony sound effects, so I liked it better. Aside from She-Hulk and Power Girl, I don’t really know too much about other female Marvel super heroes, so if you can think of any others that you think I’d like, please let me know. I’m pretty clueless about this stuff.

Noitu Love Devolution (Wii U)

One of the things I like about reviewing games is getting the opportunity to learn about games that I otherwise would’ve never known about. This is a good example. Noitu Love (think about what it spells backwards), was a 16-bit styled 2-D platformer/brawler for PC. And this is the sequel, now playable on the Wii U and 3DS with touch screen controls. Both have been out for a while on the PC, and the sequel plays and looks very much like a 32-bit Treasure game. Especially Astro Boy: Omega Factor, which is my favorite Treasure title. Unfortunately, this game has many of the same faults I feel a lot of Treasure games have. One, it’s too short, and while it’s not as hard as many Treasure games, I still couldn’t beat the last boss. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? But if you like classic Treasure games, you’ll want to check this one out anyway.

Pac-Man Pop! (iPad)

What happens when you combine my most favorite video game of all time (Pac-Man, duh), with one of my most favorite puzzle games (Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move)? Well you get this game, so I had to review it. It has a lot of problems that free-to-play games have, so it’s not that great. But the character designs in this one are just so adorable!

Jotun: Valhalla Edition (Wii U)

This is a top-down viewed action game where you play as Thora, a strong and burly female Viking who must fight her way past gods and critters based on Norse mythology on her way to Valhalla. This game has awesome hand-drawn graphics and animation, and I do like strong female characters, but she moves too slow for this game to be any fun. Her regular attack is as slow as most characters’ strong yet slow attacks, and I hope you have about two seconds to spare for her actual slow attack! And her dash move is totally useless. It’s like she ate too much Viking Chow for breakfast or something!

Poncho (Wii U)

And finally in this 2-D platformer you play as a happy little toaster robot wearing a poncho as you save humanity from a rather colorful looking post-apocalyptic world. The gimmick is that you can switch from the foreground to background at any time, but the game looks and sounds better than it actually plays. It kind of reminds me of FEZ, but I ended up not liking that one much either.

Con-BOO-sions!

And that’s all for now! Thanks for reading my reviews and posting comments. I really do appreciate it. So what’s everyone doing for Halloween? Tonight I just got back from seeing Rifftrax’s Carnival of Souls (it wasn’t very good), and Halloween night I plan on staying home and handing out candy to kids, which is always fun. Let me know what you’re doing in the comments section as well. Later! --Cary

Matt Snee Staff Writer

10/28/2016 at 10:47 AM

hey i saw somewhere you were playing and liking World of FF. What do u think? I think I'm gonna buy it soon, for Vita.

mothman

10/28/2016 at 11:37 AM

Did you check out the demo? I had a lot of fun with it but it's definitely not for everybody

10/28/2016 at 11:44 AM

I didn't check out the demo. I will look it up, thanks for the heads up.

10/28/2016 at 12:02 PM

Turn based combat. You weaken the enemy and then you can imprism it kind of like catching Pokemon. By default you and your imprismed critters play as "stacked" i.e. standing on top of each other and you get 1 turn per team member using any of the powers available to you.

You can unstack and each member of your stack gets a turn but attacks seem to be much weaker.

You are probably going "Huh?" right now because you kind of have to play it to understand. You aren't given much in the way of instruction either so you need to figure a lot out for yourself.

10/28/2016 at 01:30 PM

no, I've been reading about it and understand the stacking and pokemon elements. ANd I love turn based combat. I hear the game is chill and whimsical, though a little cutesy in parts. I've played all the FF games, so seeing the characters again, even in cutesy form, kind of thrills me. I'll check out the demo though.

Cary Woodham

10/28/2016 at 06:52 PM

Yes I've been playing Worlds of FF on my Vita for a review. I really like this game. How much so? Well, let's just say that when my Game of the Year awards comes around, this'll get a very prestigious award.

10/28/2016 at 07:19 PM

I did not know what I thought when I first started playing but as soon as I got the hang of it I had fun and frankly that is all I care about. It's not going to appeal to the blood and guts "I'm a big boy" crowd but I don't really care.

10/29/2016 at 07:40 PM

Yeah if you've been reading my blogs and reviews for a while, you know I'm not part of that "I'm a big boy" gamer club. In fact, I'm more in the "I'm a big baby" club since I play games like Kirby. I think the only mature game series I ever got into was Phoenix Wright and Soul Calibur.

10/29/2016 at 10:03 PM

Cary I know you from wayback and I'm pretty sure I know what you like. IMO the "big boy gamer" club is for suckers. You play games for fun and that is what gaming it all about.

10/30/2016 at 10:46 PM

Yeah I just play what I like. It does make it hard to talk to other adults about gaming, though. :)

VisuaLIES

10/29/2016 at 12:49 AM

Axiom Verge was amazing.

10/29/2016 at 07:41 PM

Definitely one of the best games I've played all year.

Machocruz

10/29/2016 at 02:42 PM

You know what I like the most? No where in your Axiom Verge review did you use the term 'metroidvania'. Because there no damn 'vania' in the game at all. It's all Metroid. You should feel proud you're one of the 1% who understand how language works.

10/29/2016 at 07:46 PM

Thanks. Me know English real good.

You know, there's just some gaming terms that I think tend to be overused, and 'metroidvania' is one of them. Plus, this may be a habit that I carried over from my newspaper days, but I try to not use too many gamer-centric terms in my reviews. Not everyone in my audience of readers may know what some of those terms mean.

Blake Turner Staff Writer

10/30/2016 at 08:32 AM

I really like reading your reviews, especially with the kid factor section at the end. I don't really know why I enjoy reading the kid factor section, I just do.

Axiom Verge is great, but I found the second half made things a little too navigationally complex, which is odd since I'm usually alright at navigating in these types of games.

I've had Noitu Love 2 for a while and I feel really stupid that I didn't notice that it was Evolution backwards. I love treasure games, but this one left me cold. I think I just couldn't really enjoy the combat system. On pc, you fight with the mouse by pointing at your enemies. I'd much rather use my PS4 controller or use normal attacks than the method it uses.

10/30/2016 at 10:53 PM

First of all, thank you so much for reading my reviews. You don't know how happy that makes me that you read them. I really appreciate it.

The "Kid Factor" is what originally separated GamerDad.com from other sites. That's why I still do it.

Axiom Verge was great, but it's still not as good as Super Matroid. Axiom Verge had a little trouble with keeping goals and objectives clear. Super Metroid did that much better.

The main character in the first Noitu Love game was the same as the title. The main character in the second game is Xoda Rap. Spell that backwards and see what you get. Lots of game companies do this. You know what Alucard spells backward, right?

I also wish you could've just used a regular controller. I think I would've been able to beat the last boss that way.

Nick DiMola Director

10/30/2016 at 03:41 PM

Not sure why, but I didn't really enjoy Axiom Verge. I felt like I wanted to like it more than I actually liked it. I love Metroid games so much too, but this one just felt off to me.

The end was also pretty aggravating too. Most of the enemies did tremendous damage and getting through certain areas was a real slog. I guess I'm in the vast minority, but I'm glad everyone else really enjoyed it.

10/30/2016 at 10:56 PM

Well it is true that Axiom Verge was not as good as Super Metroid. It wasn't as much fun to control the main character, the storyline was garbage, and goals and objectives were sometiems not as clear. But it was a heck of a lot better of a step in the right direction for the Metroid series than what Nintendo's been doing with it lately

Enemies in Axiom Verge were pretty hard unless you had just the right weapon at times!

KnightDriver

10/31/2016 at 01:44 AM

I didn't know they did a Luigi's Mansion arcade game. I liked looking at the photos you took at Dave and Busters. There's lots of interesting new arcade machines out there. I should make a trip to the place sometime to check out the new stuff. It's probably been many years since I went there and was underwelmed by the game choices.

10/31/2016 at 01:50 AM

Yeah this was the first time in a long while that I had fun at a modern arcade.

rmsk8r05

11/01/2016 at 12:58 PM

I've been meaning to jump into Lego Dimensions but I barely have enough space in my room for the playsets.

11/01/2016 at 02:13 PM

I have a plastic bin with Ziploc bags that I used to hold my LEGO Dimensions stuff in. Doesn't take up too much room. At least not as much as amiibo figures and Skylanders do.

PixlBit