Pardon me while this blog post is a couple of weeks late, it’s still better than never. The controversy with EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II and its loot boxes made the rounds in gaming news, even culminating in governments condemning the game and loot boxes in general as gambling. While loot boxes had become the norm in games, especially free-to-play games with not that much room for monetization, publishers had been slowly but surely pushing it as far as it’ll go until the dam breaks. (more…)
This is the first official event coverage for the blog, so I was looking forward to it for a good while. I haven’t been able to attend other local gaming-related events such as ESGS and Pinoy Gaming Festival, so I saw this as my chance at catching up. While I’m only able to publish a post about it already a week after the fact, I was able to put together a video tour of GameCon PH as coverage. (more…)
It’s being pushed as the biggest gaming convention in the Philippines. GameCon Philippines is a 3-day gaming convention taking place on July 7-9, 2017 at SM Megamall Megatrade Hall 2. The first day features a conference and workshop for game developers and artists, then an exhibit and trade show takes place on the next two days. (more…)
As the title may indirectly suggest, I’m a regular viewer of The Jimquisition, which is independent games journalist Jim Sterling’s weekly YouTube show. While a lot of it is him getting people rabidly enraged with his opinions, as well as his distinct style of delivery and propensity to tell his audience to thank divine providence for his existence, he often covers stories unlike those tackled by most of games media. He can get quite deep into even what seems pedestrian at first, like these two Jimquisitions I’m about to talk about. (more…)
Recently, I’ve been rethinking about my approach to Overwatch. Since late last year, I’ve been a Zarya main as I found her to be my most dependable option. She lets me consistently(?) contribute to my team, whether I’m doing particularly well or not. Constant use of barriers, consistent splash damage, picking off stragglers every now and then, staying alive, and well-placed graviton surges are pretty much the basics to a competent Zarya. (more…)
It seems like coming late with these annual top 10 games lists is now a tradition. Publishing a month late does give me more time and room to meditate on which games really moved me in the previous year, thus coming up with a better video and post to explain my feelings about my picks. With that said, I didn’t play as many games as I could have last year, which explains why I left so many good titles out. Despite that, I feel pretty good about this list of the ten best games of 2016 I got to play. (more…)
With the seemingly lightning-fast recent cracking of Resident Evil 7, taking only 5 days since release, I thought a bit about Denuvo and the whole thing about DRM protection. Cracking groups have always been there to break the DRM of game releases, with names like RELOADED, RAZOR1911, 3DM, and CPY being familiar to those who have no qualms about pirating games, whether it’s to try them out or to be a complete freeloader. Whichever side you’re on in the discussion, perhaps we can all agree that this whole thing with Denuvo is pretty interesting. (more…)
As of this writing, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun since the end of 2016. Since I’ve played it within 2016, it can technically be included in my Top 10 Games of 2016 list (which is coming soon). While you may say that less than a week isn’t enough for a thorough assessment of a game, I fell in love with this game right at the first few moments as it reminded me of Commandos—a series I played growing up. It was one of those franchises that truly made you think while you played. (more…)
The adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is said as an advice for those who tend to judge quality by appearance because humans tend to do the opposite. Most human beings do judge things by aesthetics, so they’re not to be seen as mere decoration but a substantial part of our world view. This applies to video games as well, although judging their appearances is not from a cover art or such, but how the actual game looks. (more…)
After taking ye olde sweet time to get another video uploaded after the This is the Police review while still having a mental block, I used said mental block as inspiration for a non-review video. What came from it is a commentary of sorts on the thing I should be doing more of on the channel and blog, which are game reviews. (more…)
This review was planned a month back, but it only got finished now, but it’s somehow still relevant due to current events. There are also quite a few layers to This is the Police, which made for a harder review, but it did get boiled down to a few points due to the latter portions of its gameplay. As good of a concept as it was, and as good of a narrative experience as it had been, I ended up with a ‘meh’. (more…)
In a concerted effort to create more content in the style of video essays that I love watching so much, here is one I made for Overwatch, specifically the new character Sombra. I have to admit that it’s not the most solid of videos I could’ve made as it doesn’t even scratch the surface and may have gotten some things wrong in it. Nonetheless, I do hope it opens the floodgates for more presentations like this in the coming weeks. (more…)
