PixlBit

So as most of you have probably heard by now, I’ll be going to E3 after a five-year long hiatus.  I’ve been going to E3 since 1997, and while I did skip a couple of years here and there, it was by my own choice for the most part.  But the past five years I didn’t get approved for a media pass because they said the site I write for was too small.  But I kept applying each year anyway and to my surprise, this year I was approved!  I don’t know what changed, but hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right?  So we’ll see if E3 is still better than PAX.  Oh yeah, speaking of, since I am going to E3, I won’t be going to PAX West this year in August.  Mainly because I don’t have enough vacation time plus it’s really hard to take off around Labor Day where I work.  I will post my E3 coverage over at GamerDad.com when I get back, so please be sure to check that out after the show.  But in the meantime, here are some game reviews I’ve posted lately there.  Please click on the links and read as many as you can and maybe even post a like or comment or two.  I’d really appreciate it.  OK let’s begin! 

Eat Beat Dead Spike-san (Switch)

This is a music rhythm game featuring tunes and characters from the BlazBlue fighting game series.  The characters are all chibi-fied here, and the story goes that Ragna, one of the main characters, can’t seem to win a fight.  So his friend (?) Dead Spike-san, decides that if Ragna eats more, he’ll get stronger.  So he drags Ragna on a quest to eat a ton of food in time with the music.  Controls on the Switch aren’t very good, kind of mushy, really.  And while BlazBlue has good music, it’s all butt-rock and doesn’t make for a lot of variety in a music game, and I do prefer variety in my rhythm games.  Can you guess who my favorite BlazBlue character is?

Star Wars Pinball: The Last Jedi (PS4)

It’s another set of pinball tables from Zen Studios.  Not quite as good as the last couple of Star Wars tables they put out.  These are based on The Last Jedi movie.  I recently saw the new Solo movie and I thought it was better than The Last Jedi.  I wonder if Zen will make pinball tables off of that movie, even though they already have a Han Solo table.

Fox n Forests (PS4)

This is a 2-D platformer made to look and feel like a 16-bit game, which I’m all for that.  It even has muffled orchestral music like the SNES was known for!  It’s fairly decent, but the characters aren’t quite as charming and you do a lot of un-fun backtracking.

The Swords of Ditto (PS4)

I wanted to like this game so much, I really did.  It’s a top-down Zelda style adventure with great cartoony graphics.  But the overworld and dungeons are randomly generated each time you play, and I really prefer a single, well thought out overworld and dungeons over random ones.  This game even had a special Loco Roco sidequest on the PS4, but the randomness of the game kept me from getting to that part.

Don’t Die, Mr. Robot! DX (Switch)

This game is styled after classic arcade games, and reminds me of a mix of Pac-Man, Missile Command, and Robotron.  It’s not bad, but the graphics are so big and you don’t have a lot of maneuvering space, so it’s a bit hard.

Tiny Bubbles (iPad)

This is a color matching bubble popping game, but it’s not like any you’ve played before.  The bubbles are more like soap suds, and offers some pretty unique gameplay ideas.  Unfortunately, the game gets pretty hard quickly, but at least it’s not a free-to-play game so you don’t have to worry about ads or limited playtime or anything like that.

LightSlinger Heroes (iPad)

So match three puzzle games are popular on mobile, and so are bubble popping puzzle games.  There have been a bunch of match three games that combine RPG elements to them, like Puzzle Quest and Puzzle & Dragons.  But you don’t see too many of the bubble popping variety that have RPG elements to them.  Until now.  Unfortunately, the character designs are hit or miss, but even more important, the game gets too hard too quickly, forcing you to level up your team using the fiddly ways that free-to-play games make you do.

And that’s all for now!  Thanks for reading and posting ‘likes’ and comments on my reviews!  I appreciate it.  And please pray that I have a safe and fruitful trip to and from E3! You’ll probably still hear from me before I go, though, because I plan to post one more blog before I head out.  But until then, later!  --Cary