Adventure

Disney and Final Fantasy characters fighting alongside each other, a story about hearts and key blades, real-time button mashing combat, and a main character with hair that defies gravity; Kingdom Hearts hit the industry with originality, bravery, and charm back in 2002. Fast-forward 11 years and we have a well made HD remastering of the original classic and its direct sequels.

I'm sure there was a lot of scoffing when they announced the original LEGO Star Wars. Taking a toy license that was based off of a movie license and digitizing it must have seemed like the worst idea in the world, spawning a shoddy mess for children who have no idea what a good game is. Funnily enough, the exact opposite occurred and a gaming phenomenon was born. Now there have been approximately a billion LEGO games since then, all as fun and addictive as the last, and LEGO Lord of the Rings is the latest game in Traveller's Tales quite literal blockbuster series.

Resident Evil: Revelations was a hit when it came to 3DS ahead of Resident Evil 6 and the controversy surrounding it. A handheld Resident Evil title that seemed to manage to successfully bridge that gap between the old and the new, the survival horror of our youths and the more action-based focus of today.

It’s hard to judge a sequel without comparing it to the original. Broken Sword: Director’s Cut set the standard for the series, which I praised in my review. Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror - Remastered is a decent game, however, it simply does not measure up to the original in most categories.

After playing through chapter one of The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief, I walked away with mixed feelings. The puzzles were a mess, and the story was a downright bore until Constable Zellner hopped aboard a ship headed to Cairo to continue his search for The Raven, who is hell bent on stealing the second Eye of the Sphinx. It was during this final act, with the murder on the ship, the detective work that followed, and the cliffhanger ending, where the game finally piqued my interest in the next episode, Chapter II: Ancestry of Lies.

There's a lot of mixed voices about Disney's Planes, the spin-off from Pixar's 2006 hit Cars. Whether disappointed with the quality of the actual film itself (Planes currently "boasts" a 39 on Metacritic, with a user score lower than that) or if you've got wrapped up in some of the other minor controversies that have come out over the past few months, it's unlikely you're in a rush to go out and by merchandise or games based on the IP.

Like everyone, I looked at Disney Infinity when it was announced and saw only a money grabbing rip-off of Activision's popular Skylanders series. ANOTHER game where I have to buy overpriced toys to unlock some on-disc DLC? Ridiculous.

When the Wii U was released, it brought with it a handful of ports and "enhanced" editions, partly because they were awesome games and partly because Nintendo wanted to prove that the Wii U was just as capable of playing "grown up" games as any of the other consoles. That they didn't need to worry about proving themselves in that way, and that many of the quickly-rushed ports actually seemed to prove the opposite probably didn't come into it.

While many indie developers are attempting to make old genres relevant again, there are those that are trying to create new ones. One such dev is Lucas Pope, with his latest game, Papers, Please, being labeled as "A Dystopian Document Thriller". The word "Dodocument" will no doubt throw some people off, but after spending some time cross-referencing passports and work releases as an immigration inspector in the fictional country of Arstotzka, I can safely say that stamping papers can definitely be thrilling.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a PlayStation staple. Along with Rayman, I'm not sure there was a single person I knew that didn't have that iconic green sewn-up mouth grinning within their PS1 collection. When the Oddworld series jumped to the Xbox, abandoning not only much of the userbase but also, in a small way at first, Abe himself. Stranger's Wrath ended up under-performing and would have been lost to time if not for Just Add Water and their release of Stranger's Wrath HD.