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If I'd known they were gonna kill my Hunting Horn next time out, I would've sank more time into this and actually played Icebreak when it came out. Alas.
1991
If you're going to make a wrestling game that you have to play, this is a pretty neat place to start. It shouldn't have been a surprise that the attempt to resurrect it flopped, because it's a misjudgment about what the modern wrestling fan can tolerate or enjoy. They like the salacious details, tribalism, and animated gifs, and if your game doesn't generate those sorts of feelings you're gonna have a bad time.
If someone were to ask me "what's the most 90s video game," I'd give deep consideration to this. It eerily predates the dark cultural turn of the late 90s and early 2000s, where shit got edgy cuz they had to grrr. Mutant League Football was gross cuz it wanted to be. In the face of EXTREEEME culture, it feels more celebratory and joyous than contemporaries.
1995
Often as fun as being cajoled into trying a show that "really gets good in season 3."
The Real Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
often as fun as trying to recreate an in-joke a month later
2005
As someone who's only regret in life is seeing The Ring (because all other mistakes have taught me a valuable lesson), it's a good thing the encounter design in this game is a distant peak of FPS design, where as waves of shooters tries to replicate the successes of things like Doom and Call of Duty, no one has the nerve to look at this game long enough. I understand. I've heard records before that have intimidated me out of making my own music. I threw out a symphony over someone else's record before. Anyone making a boomer shooter would look at this and just go "yeah I cant fucking do that," and anyone making a modern shooter would just see no profitability in making a game that can kick your ass this hard.
2009
Time for the periodic reminder that in my personal review scale, a 3 means "I don't regret playing this" and not that anyone else should.
As someone who found the single pre-release interview where they admitted that it was going to be an RTS, I rented this solely because I wanted to see how poorly Quirky Herzog Zwei was going to map to modern development, and I wasn't disappointed. I don't regret being there for that, but I do regret the sunk cost fallacy that got me 90% through the game.
As someone who found the single pre-release interview where they admitted that it was going to be an RTS, I rented this solely because I wanted to see how poorly Quirky Herzog Zwei was going to map to modern development, and I wasn't disappointed. I don't regret being there for that, but I do regret the sunk cost fallacy that got me 90% through the game.
In a lifetime of playing weird arcade games, the first time I sat down at a 2049 cabinet and had to enter a pin number with the phone dial to get a ranking to register on the network of systems in the arcade, I remember thinking "this has to be the future." Wrong as fuuuuuuck, but I think the future where homes have arcade cabinets with network upload capabilities is at least a little more fun than this one. Now games just do that with zero flair.
The last Call of Duty campaign I have played, and I think that's been the right call because it's fucking hysterical. I played it on a PC that was in no way strong enough to run it and it only enhanced the complete delirium of "WHAT ARE THE NUMBERS" and the bit with the sunglasses and the Uncle Sam Cumsplosion ending. "What if you were the Bayhem" is an amazing idea for a game.
It's so awesome that Konami beat everyone to the first shitty Rondo of Blood clone.
1999
I have a phobia of giant closeups of eyeballs. In one of these tracks, an enormous eyeball emerges from the water to act as a three-way fork: either go on either side of the eye, or ramp it. My older brother had to pause the game and go to bed upon seeing the giant eyeball. It is the closest I have ever got to giving someone one of my mental illnesses.
2010
I can't imagine a less likely candidate for a game to be great than the EA revival of NBA Jam after they bought the rights following Midway's death, but they actually completely nailed it. One of the better arcade basketball games of the 3D graphics era.