Posts By Chris Mack

I’ve long said, along with countless others, that Xbox Game Pass is the best deal in gaming.  Microsoft and big box retailers frequently run promotions on subscriptions, and I’ve personally never paid more than $100 for a year of Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both PC and Xbox games in addition to an Xbox Live Gold subscription.  Playing through two brand new games per year is enough to make the subscription worth it.  There are hundreds of ...

There’s no sign of the roguelike rush stopping any time soon, and ScourgeBringer is the latest to join the often-punishing genre.  A well made game that nails its gameplay execution, ScourgeBringer is a fun ride that will remind you of a game with tight controls from the NES or SNES era. There’s a story to ScourgeBringer, but it’s ancillary to the experience.  From the time you first load up the game, you’ll be playing through your first ...

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! takes the fevered cooking game on the road, which opens up a slightly different gameplay style while further refining the original gameplay concept along the way. All three of the games in the series amount to what is a frantic rhythm game as orders come in associated with specific sequences of button presses to complete.  For many of the early orders, this can lead a player to a zen-like experience of hitting the sequences without ...

Undermine is the latest game in what’s starting to feel like a flood of roguelikes (or really, ‘roguelites’) hitting the market.  While it’s not pushing the boundaries of innovation, it’s a polished experience and one that stands out in an increasingly crowded genre. The cadre of miners that the player controls get a pickax and bombs.  The pickax can be swung or thrown and to avoid damage, you can jump.  Jumping is what provides ...

While there are all sorts of nifty benchmarking tools out there for PCs, it feels like for years that the common refrain when testing a new PC build was to see how it ran Crysis.  It’s a game that, at its best, is one to show off to your friends.  With gorgeous landscapes and  superhuman abilities for the player, it’s a game that’s supposed to look good.  It’s an old game though. It originally came out the same year as…

Videogames are often about defeating the big scary monster that’s tormenting the humans, but if you’ve ever wanted to flip the script and be that scary monster, Carrion is for you.  The folks over at Phobia Game Studio have put together a metroidvania style game that makes you feel powerful, clever, and has some of the most fluid movement of any game this year. Carrion puts you in the role of an unnamed monster that’s broken out of containment ...

Mojang recently released their Jungle Awakens DLC pack for Minecraft Dungeons, the first of two planned packs offered as part of the $30 Hero Edition of the game (the packs can still be purchased individually). Even if you don’t buy the DLC, there’s a free level, Lower Temple, on the main map.  That map has also been updated to show other hidden levels you may have missed along your playthrough.  On top of that, you can join a game hosted…

Bioshock has been around for so long at this point it’s almost difficult to remember how excited people were when it first came out.  Through broken street dates, fights over comparisons to System Shock, and evaluations of objectivist philosophy, the one thing the game hadn’t done was appear on a Nintendo console.  Now the original, sequel, and adventure in the sky Bioshock: Infinite are available to take with you on the go on the Nintendo ...

Turmoil, an oil baron simulator, has been out on PC for several years now, but it just made the leap to the Switch.  It’s a fun, if somewhat shallow, game that wouldn’t really make sense on other consoles.  In Turmoil, you compete with three other AI characters to extract oil from various plots of land, earning money to be spent at an auction on shares that will determine the next mayor of the town. The game consists of two phases,…

After launching for the PC all the way back in 2016, oil-tycoon simulator Turmoil is now available for the Nintendo Switch.  The simulation game comes with it’s previously released DLC pack, The Heat Is On, which gives players access to new maps and mechanics.  Turmoil will have you bidding for land, and extracting oil from the earth below.  Success comes in the form of growing your town, outbidding others for more land, bribing authorities, and expanding ...

irst wrapped up my playthrough of Minecraft Dungeons on the default difficulty, I thought it was a fun game, but perhaps a bit shallow.  I came away from it thinking I'd seen all that the game had to offer, and that the Adventure and Apocalypse difficulties would, for the most part, be more of the same.  After all, I'd unlocked a couple of hidden levels, and felt that I'd explored each map from head to toe.  By the time I'd completed the game on Adventure ...

Fury Unleashed is a 2D-action-platformer-roguelike set in a comic book.  That’s a lot of different genres thrown out there, but in reality, the game is similar to others already on the market, most closely resembling games like Enter the Gungeon or Rogue Legacy.  Players explore a hand-drawn world, spanning four different procedurally-generated comic worlds, fighting off themed enemies as the titular Fury, and learning more about the comic’s author, ...

Stranded Deep, originally released in Early Access on PC in 2015, has brought its island-hopping survival experience to consoles. It’s an addictive and enjoyable experience, but one that still feels several steps away from greatness. The game, like many others in the genre, drops you on a deserted island and requires you to craft, explore, and survive, while hopefully advancing the barebones plot. That plot is essentially that you’ve survived a ...

Opening day has come and gone, and we still don’t have any baseball.  With major sports brought to a standstill by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the only outlets for sports is video games. RBI Baseball ’20 would very much like to be one of those outlets.  Believe it or not, this year’s release is the seventh in a row of the more modern iteration of the franchise.  RBI Baseball generally flies under the radar because it’s impossible to ...

Operencia: The Stolen Sun is an old school dungeon crawler that evokes real feelings of nostalgia, but might be a bit more difficult to adapt to for those used to the comforts of more modern games.  These challenging retro-style games have seen a bit of a comeback recently, most notably with surprise hit Darkest Dungeon.  Operencia operates in a bit more straightforward way than DD though, with a static cast of characters, and no fatigue or other usage concerns ...