Playable Press

Don’t think less of me for this, but the extent of my knowledge of Poker Night at the Inventory going into playing its sequel was a few YouTube videos of character interactions and a few Wikipedia searches. Really though, foreknowledge isn’t terribly important when it comes to something like the latest iteration of a poker sim, so even with my admittedly limited knowledge base on the subject I feel fairly safe in rendering judgment on Poker Night at the Inventory 2 (or simply Poker Night 2 depending on the listing).

A trip on a boat with your best friends. What could go wrong?

Let me start with the assurance that Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is, in fact, not a port of the Gamecube original. Normally I wouldn't assume a statement of such to be necessary, but over the course of playing the game for this review enough of my gaming friends made that assumption that it became clear the game looked and sounded enough like the 12-year-old title to cause confusion.

As a fan of Platinum Games and progenitor Clover Studio, it’s been a dream of mine for some years now to see a giant crossover title in the vein of Super Smash Bros. or Cannon Spike bringing their steadily expanding library of characters together for some big, dumb, out-of-continuity fun. Anarchy Reigns isn’t exactly that, but given just how many characters from MadWorld make a return appearance – in addition to Bayonetta’s titular protagonist in the form of preorder DLC – it’s a first step, and probably the closest I’m ever going to see.

It’s always an awkward time when a genre or sub-genre starts finding its feet. Base elements are evident, but when it comes to fine details, accusations of a game being a glorified copy of its inspiration are common: Saints Row was considered a Grand Theft Auto III clone before sandbox games were classified as such; Many called Doom a clone of Wolfenstein 3D before the term “first-person shooter” entered common usage. When you don’t have many instances of a particular type of game to compare it’s surprisingly difficult not to do this, and this is the position that SuperBot Entertainment’s Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale finds itself in.

I consider myself a fan of the Paper Mario series, and whether it’s because of that or in spite of it I’ve learned to be cautious whenever there’s a new release on the horizon. Super Paper Mario took everybody by surprise when it eschewed the majority of the RPG elements that the first two titles developed, and since then it seems that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems want to use the series more as a test bed for nonstandard roleplaying experimentation than an opportunity to plant feet firmly in traditional RPG territory. Maybe they think the Mario & Luigi series is doing a good enough job on its own and don’t want to step on AlphaDream’s toes?

I haven’t played a Halo game since the original trilogy wrapped up, but with the news that Bungie gave up the property to Microsoft and passed the development reins on to a fresh studio my curiosity was sufficiently piqued to give Halo 4 a try. It can be said with certainty that 343 Industries has taken the franchise and run with it in their own direction, and considering that this game is universally presented as the opening to a new trilogy now would be a better time than any to tinker with the formula. It’s a pity that, more often than not, 343 loses ground for the series in the process.

Your name is Player. You take up a career as a henchman with a supervillain who fancies dressing like a clown, act as wheelman for a violent bank robbery, blow up your getaway car with a handgun, murder a quartet of mutant amphibian martial arts practitioners and a group of ex-military soldiers of fortune in cold blood, hijack a time machine phone booth from a pair of teens, break it in a trip several years backward, and convince a crazy old DeLorean-driving scientist to help you repair it.

I’ve spoken before about how powerful of a tool nostalgia can be. Let’s face it, when you’ve got a standing audience waiting for a new entry in a favorite series or genre you essentially have an established customer base and a certain amount of money guaranteed for a given project with it. Sometimes nostalgia runs just as deep on the developer’s side of things, and members of one production team love their old project so much that they take special effort to find their way onto a similar new title. Such is the case with Code of Princess, which unfortunately proves, if anything, that sentiment can only carry a product so far.

A technicolor theatrical ninja is just the tip of the silliness iceberg here.

Those familiar with Pokémon know very well how the franchise has fallen into a fairly predictable pattern since its inception: outside of experimental side games each "generation" starts with two near-identical versions of the same game, followed within a few years by a third version acting as a patched/remixed version of the preceding two with a slightly expanded or altered story and mechanics. So, as a longtime fan fully aware of and expecting this pattern, imagine my surprise when Nintendo and Game Freak decided to instead take the opportunity to introduce the series’ first ever direct numeric sequels: Pokémon Black and White 2.