In a post-mobile and digital market, where "free" games have become a thing, publishers who've become accustomed to traditional pricing methods need to wake up. The review community should continue to force the issue as well.

Back in the stone age when I was in college, and the internet was in its infancy, writing game reviews was quite a different animal. Aside from the obvious differences in the online review landscape another massive difference was that this was long before smartphones (and concepts like the mobile... Read more...

The proliferation of sources for game reviews over time have brought many benefits to people in search of consensus opinions. Unfortunately, because of bias and other factors, more reviews can also bring more noise, especially for Metacritic.

The release of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild certainly brought out a lot of opinions. Many of them were extremely positive, but there was obviously both a reflexive backlash of “artificial” reviews (created with the express purpose of simply trashing the game) as well as “reviews” whose... Read more...

Arms and Street Fighter II are the odd couple in some respects, but the pair have more in common than I thought.

I played two games at PAX East 2017 one right after the other that were more similar than I would have guessed. One was Ultra Street Fighter II, the retro-stylish Switch port of the classic fighting game. The other was Arms, Nintendo’s weird motion-controlled fighter. Now it’s not crazy to come... Read more...

Thoughts on the Switch from a guy who played it.

Let me apologize for that title immediately. The phrase “a mixed bag” has long been considered the laziest phrase a reviewer can use when talking about a video game, but man, is it accurate here. The Nintendo Switch is the most mixed bag that ever did mix.

I say this as someone who played... Read more...

Or how the only launch game Donald buys is from Konami.

Nintendo of America has finally confirmed the launch lineup for the Switch for March 3, and compared to their last console launch, the quantities are slim. 1-2-Switch, Breath of the Wild, Super Bomberman R, Skylanders Imaginators and Just Dance 2017 is the entire Day One lineup. The Wii U, for comparison,... Read more...