Most everything can be improved by editing. This review, almost assuredly, did not get published in the same state I submitted it, and we’re all better off for it. I sound smarter, and you’re reading a better review. SSX, similarly, would benefit from a good dose of editing. There is a great game hiding underneath all of the fluff, but that fluff gets in the way and the modes are set up to make it mandatory. READ MORE
The tower defense genre is a difficult one to enter. If you change it up too much, you’re not really creating tower defense, and if you leave it the same, people will decry it for being just like the tower defense games they’ve already paid for and played. Defenders of Ardania, however, manages to still feel like tower defense, even if the combination of all of the added elements means that none can really take center stage. READ MORE
I hate seeing a good idea go to waste, so I hope that a development team with more time and money accidentally played Deep Black: Reloaded and realized that if you add fun to this formula you’d have a good game. As it is, I can’t recommend it to anybody. If you want to shoot guys there are a million better options, and if you desperately want to play underwater your choices are fewer, but Deep Black still isn’t the game for you. Something like Undertow would serve you better, and it has the added benefit of actually taking place primarily underwater. READ MORE
I like some unique games, and while Microsoft’s XBLA service used to scratch that itch for me, lately I’ve been finding great games on the PC instead. Break Blocks, aside from having a terrible name, is another little gem that probably would never have been published without digital distribution on the PC. READ MORE
Jagged Alliance: Back in Action has a lot going for it, but it also has enough going against it that I can’t recommend it to fans of the original or newcomers to the genre. It’s too hard for its own good, ideas are half put-together, and some of the design ideas, while fine on their own, are wildly incompatible with one another. I wanted to like Back in Action, and it makes me sad that I just don’t. READ MORE
