Review Archives (Staff Reviews)

You are currently looking through staff reviews for games that are available on every platform the site currently covers. Below, you will find reviews written by Jason Venter and sorted according to date of submission, with the newest content displaying first. As many as 20 results will display per page. If you would like to try a search with different parameters, specify them below and submit a new search.

Available Reviews
	Disney Infinity review (WIIU) Reviewed on September 21, 2013 Infinite possibilities on the drawing board suddenly feel quite limited once they've been torpedoed by disappointing execution.	2.5/5
	DuckTales Remastered review (WIIU) Reviewed on September 21, 2013 DuckTales Remastered is neither a complete failure nor the triumph it so easily could have been.	3/5
	Dragon's Crown review (PS3) Reviewed on August 22, 2013 So, just what do you get as a reward for overlooking the boobs? The answer, it turns out, is an enjoyable romp through fantasy tropes that include nefarious wizards, mythical creatures on the rampage, heroic knights, and even damsels in distress. What makes it all so enjoyable isn’t the fact that we get to cover all of that familiar ground once more. Rather, it’s the commitment to that approach, along with those beautiful graphics I mentioned and a surprisingly addictive character development system.	4/5
	Shin Megami Tensei IV review (3DS) Reviewed on July 20, 2013 Shin Megami Tensei IV is in many ways exactly the game I didn’t dare hope it would be, a genuine triumph that belongs in your library if you love the series or even if you just like a challenging and mostly unique JRPG, portable or otherwise. With all of that high praise appropriately heaped, though, I must add that the game is most certainly not without its flaws.	4/5
	Quackshot Starring Donald Duck review (GEN) Reviewed on March 23, 2013 Although the various equipment available had the potential to facilitate a rousing adventure that could have offered a true sense of exploration, most stages are instead hampered by extremely linear design with little or nothing worthwhile to see that’s off the beaten path. Item swapping mostly just amounts to busy work, necessary though it is, and that process becomes less tolerable each time you’re forced to take another run through an area because you lost your last life and were returned to the world map.	2.5/5
	Fortune Street review (WII) Reviewed on March 18, 2013 Before you begin a game, you can choose to play using either “Easy” rules or the “Standard” set. The latter is definitely the way to go, even if it comes with a hefty learning curve, because it has the potential to dramatically alter the way everything flows. Players can invest in stocks in any region, whether they own property there or not.	3.5/5
	SimCity review (PC) Reviewed on March 12, 2013 Social features bring something different to the new SimCity formula, but you might wish Maxis had left things well enough alone.	3/5
	Battletoads review (NES) Reviewed on March 09, 2013 Most people have trouble enjoying this game nowadays. In related news, most people have trouble getting past the third level...	3/5
	Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!! review (3DS) Reviewed on February 04, 2013 Jake and Finn's quest to retrieve their trash from the Ice King borrows a number of cool ideas from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but the adventure doesn't last long enough to do anything substantial.	3/5
	Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion review (3DS) Reviewed on February 03, 2013 Although the stages are large enough to be interesting, you’ll have to visit each one several times if you want to discover all of the castle’s secrets. You unlock life meter extensions and improvements to your various attacks by completing various side quests, so you might have a rough time defeating Mizrabel if you don’t seek out all of your potential allies (though perhaps not, since she’s not actually a difficult opponent).	3/5
	Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask review (3DS) Reviewed on February 01, 2013 Since we’ve now reached the fifth game in the series, it’s natural that not every puzzle is a winner, but the stuff that you’ll find here is mostly very good even if it mostly doesn’t utilize the 3DS hardware in any meaningful way. There are some challenges that do repeat a few times, including some irritating ones that ask you to divide a board into four pieces of the same size while gerrymandering your way around chess pawns, but a lot of the brain teasers are intuitive and creative enough to keep you absorbed even if you find yourself stumped for a few minutes at a time.	4/5
	Just Dance 4 review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 29, 2012 You might not realize it, but even simple repetitive motions like lifting your arm and then lowering it can start to take a toll on a person—most particularly someone who spends his days sitting in an office chair and typing words about video games—and that’s even before you start lifting your legs up high, or twirling in circles like a rose petal caught in a whirlwind.	4/5
	Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 29, 2012 Properly equipped, your warriors have amazing range and can cleave through hordes of enemy soldiers, even on the Normal difficulty setting. Special moves are also available and they can inflict even more damage, but in general you can save those moves for the more challenging bosses that sometimes storm the field. Those more gifted foes mostly block your slower special attacks unless you wait until they’re open, so you’ll be forced to also block attacks and wait for a limited opening if you want to unleash some real pain.	3/5
	Tank! Tank! Tank! review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 23, 2012 Unfortunately, the only objective you’re ever given is to kill everything that moves. That’s not entirely bad, since mayhem can be a lot of fun, but there aren’t enough enemy types available to keep things interesting across so many stages. You’ll wind up fighting most of the same monster waves three or four times over the course of the campaign, and the last 20 stages or so are mostly just battles against the same few giant enemies.	2.5/5
	Midway Arcade Origins review (PS3) Reviewed on December 22, 2012 If you grew up around arcades, Midway Arcade Origins is likely to disappoint you because many of the games simply don’t control the way you remember. Home conversions did a great job of making the classic arcade titles function on inferior hardware, and yet these new releases abandon that refinement in favor of ill-advised faithfulness to old code that no longer matches contemporary hardware.	2/5
	Rabbids Land review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 16, 2012 The game changes up who faces who during each event, which keeps things relatively even and ensures that no single player is always stuck going up against a computer opponent. Still, the whole process is definitely the most fun if you are competing with at least two human friends… even though that means you’ll be passing the gamepad and any other controllers around the room as if they’re participants in a game of musical chairs.	2.5/5
	Game Party Champions review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 15, 2012 However, the game is more challenging for newcomers than the developers likely intended, mostly due to the control scheme. The game simply requires more precision from the touch pad than it allows. For instance, the Basketball attraction features three hoops that move toward the screen, then recede or spin. You have to move the gamepad to affect the direction your arrow points, and then you have to swipe the stylus just the right amount so that you throw the ball hard enough but not too hard.	1/5
	Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 10, 2012 Unfortunately, Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is a disappointment compared to its imperfect but promising predecessor. The ambition and inventiveness that were so evident the first time around have been obscured by a sloppy retread that may well leave you wondering why anyone bothered to create it.	2.5/5
	Wipeout 3 review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 07, 2012 Courses in Wipeout 3 feature a variety of obstacles, but for the most part the differences between one hazard and the next are cosmetic. You’ll need to swim across pools of murky water sometimes, but in general you are running along platforms that are suspended above a massive liquid field. Falling into soup when you’re not supposed to will knock you back to the last checkpoint.	2.5/5
	Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed review (WIIU) Reviewed on December 05, 2012 The new tracks also do a great job honoring their source material. Of particular note is the NiGHTS Into Dreams stage, which finds you flying through the familiar orange rings and even chasing after a fat ballerina on an oversized ball who crashes through walls just like one of the bosses in that classic title. It’s quite spectacular and it shows that Sumo Digital really is familiar with the previous titles that inspired this kart racer.	4/5

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