10. Assassin’s Creed: Unity
This game has gotten so much hate from the gaming community this year, some of it admittedly deserved, that it feels strange to say that I really enjoyed it. I don’t like the pirate ship combat and controls in Assassin’s Creed, and I thought that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was a weak entry (albeit worlds ahead of the abysmal Assassin’s Creed III). In an Assassin’s Creed game, I want a solid city to explore with lots of interesting things to do, as well as some connections to the modern-day struggle between the templars and the assassins. While Assassin’s Creed: Unity completely abandons the modern plot, the city is interesting, and I found Arno’s character to be the best replacement for Ezio the series has found yet. I, luckily, didn’t run into the myriad of technical issues that so many others seemed to experience. If you’re a fan of Assassin’s Creed II, I would implore you to give Unity a chance. It’s not perfect, but it really is a lot of fun. READ MORE
Fantasy Hero: Unsigned Legacy achieves the gameplay goals that it sets out to hit quite well. It functions as a straight dungeon crawl, with individual quest runs broken up into bite-sized five-to-15-minute chunks. It isn’t the most interesting game, and it doesn’t really push the envelope in any new ways, but it is fun and it is designed well for portable play. If you enjoy short dungeon runs, beating up bad guys and collecting loot, then you should seriously consider Fantasy Hero. READ MORE
Life as an outlaw in the Wild West must have been rough. Secret Ponchos focuses on the romantic notion of the Western shootout, and allows up to eight players to simultaneously enter an arena and duel to the death in a variety of score-based modes. Occasionally I would feel completely untouchable, a dead-eyed outlaw taking no prisoners and gunning down my opponents while ducking in and out of cover and evading the bullets that could end it all.
Much more often, however, I felt like a clunky joke that was constantly out of bullets and missing point-blank shots. When everything clicks just right, Secret Ponchos is a lot of fun, but things never seem to do that often enough. READ MORE
In the My Favorite Game series, get to know us better as staff writers share the game they love most and why.
I’m a high school teacher, and inevitably, my students learn about my obsession with video games. Without fail, the next question I’m asked is, “what is your favorite game?” I’ll admit, I struggled with this question for a long time. There are so many amazing games that I didn’t think it would be possible to narrow the list down to a singular title. In a lot of ways, this is true, but answering “it’s too hard to choose!” is definitely not satisfactory for high school students. Lately, my answer to this question has finally settled down and become fairly consistent.
My favorite game of all time is Portal 2. READ MORE
LittleBigPlanet 3 includes over 150 tutorial videos to lead a new user through the crazy amount of creation tools available in its creative mode. This fact alone should give you a glimpse of the potential that it provides to someone dedicated enough to dive deep and learn the intricacies of its system. Unfortunately, the experience from the perspective of someone that purely wants to play through the story mode of the game falls far short of this potential. READ MORE
