Beat, Heart, Beat is an action-rhythm platformer that puts a unique spin on the auto-runner, incorporating a midwest emo soundtrack and a truly bizarre cast of characters and premise. Through fifteen unique levels/songs, you’ll avoid obstacles, attack in three directions, chain combos, and try to do it all to the beat to earn the highest scores. The short quest relies heavily on replayability and high score chasing and your enjoyment will likely hinge on your affinity for the distinctive midwest emo soundtrack.
But mostly video games. I noticed "leisure arts" on a book cover just now and thought it funny. '84 is the year I became a PC gamer for the most part. Bye bye to consoles for the rest of the 80s. That stuff's for kids, or so I must've been thinking as a late teen. I'm still going to mention NES and SMS later though. Who can resist that.
My trials and tribulations as I go through my PS3 collection. I'm still in the top 100 critically on Metacritic.
Whether you asked for it or not, chances are, Generative AI is now a part of your day-to-day life. Increasingly, it’s been worked into every facet of, well, everything. If you’re like me, it’s become a huge part of your work life too, regardless of whether you asked for it. GenAI is changing our world; it’s deskilling workers, weakening labor power, increasing the surveillance power of institutions, and reducing our collective agency and intelligence.
Tomorrow, we're due to finally find out what Nintendo has been cooking up next for the Zelda franchise. There's no question that there are few games as beloved as the Ocarina of the Time, which puts Nintendo in an interesting position for this remake. As we all know, the Zelda formula has been totally shaken up with the latest entries, prioritizing emergent gameplay and sandboxes that allow players to explore and create, a total departure from the Ocarina-style that previously defined 3D Zelda.
It's taking me a long time getting through Xbox 360, and probably a while to get through PS3. I may be starting Wii next year at this rate, but I think I'll just keep on going until I get to the present and then start from the beginning again sometime next year. I really want to get through everything I have and weed out the stuff I don't like.
I played a lot of digital titles this week and stuck with almost none of them (no respawns) but enjoyed myself quite a bit. Also some disc-based ones I did stick with a little longer.
In console gaming, there is a legend known as the Third Console Curse. Most consoles are not successful enough to receive a follow-up. If they are, then a third console is still not guaranteed. It is a hard industry not only to break into, but sustain a market share in. Yet something happens with the third console every time. It fails to meet the company's initial goals. Maybe it still sells fine, maybe the console has a wonderful library of games. Even if that is the case, the company loses market share and is in a worse spot at the end of the console's life than they were going into it. It could be arrogance from success. It could be a lack of perspective from being too used to success. Maybe it's just rotten luck. But it's consistent.
Got another batch of game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
The Star Fox series has always been special to me. When I turned 8, shortly after the original game came out, my parents surprised me with it on my birthday. At the time, I remember thinking the 3D graphics were incredible and the game was extremely fun. I was addicted to blasting through space and foiling Andross' plans to dominate the universe. Years on, I remember obsessing over my Nintendo Power issues that showed Star Fox 2 - the new characters and crafts looked amazing. Unfortunately, it wouldn't officially see the light of day until I was an adult, but my Star Fox appetite would soon be satiated with Star Fox 64.
It's fun to go down the Metacritic [MC] list, so I'm doing it again for the stuff I played in 2010.
The first thing that comes to mind is changing my Xbox gamertag. I got one in 2004 when Xbox Live Arcade dropped but a mini-game on an Official Xbox Magazine demo disc was giving me trouble in '07, and I thought a new gamertag would solve it. Well, it did solve it, but I lost touch with my old gamertag over time, and now it's probably been deactivated along with the few games I bought under it. It'll be 20 years on my current gamertag next year. It could've been 23 years if I'd stuck with my original one.
This is the last of the OG Xbox games I played from my collection. It's all DS now for a while.
I might have gotten confused, frustrated and dead in many of them, but I enjoyed them all. Who says you got to finish stuff? It's the journey not the destination, I say.
This is my list in coordination with the all-time best OG Xbox games on Metacritic. I'm playing games in order of MC rating instead of release date this year.
I put away the modern consoles to focus on my retro journey. So all I have up is the GameCube and its Game Boy Player. I put the most time into Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Advance Wars 2, Metroid Zero Mission and Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, but here's everything I played.
Also played some Game Boy and a whole lot of Switch games.
Happy New Year! Let’s start it off right with game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com! Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe please post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it! OK let’s begin!
I got scores/progress on all my owned NES games and began my Genesis stuff. I also played the remaining games on my Xbox Series hard drive and stowed the deck to bring out the Switch next week. Some purchases made also and a return to Star Fleet (known as X-Bomber in Japan).
My first task in 2026 is the Atari years, 1977-1984. The system dominated the home console wars until the Famicom in '84. Arcades were king and PCs were just beginning to explore more complex experiences but for a high price. Here's a very personal breakdown of those years. I'm sure others have different ideas of what's most notable.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen an entry in the Metroid Prime series - 18 years, in fact. It was 8 years ago that Metroid Prime 4 was originally announced and its development was more than a little turbulent. Initially developed by Bandai Namco, it was later scrapped completely and development was shifted back to Retro Studios to start the project over. In the end, Retro has delivered a solid new entry in the series, but one that doesn’t totally capture what originally made the series so compelling.
An imagined library of games I would have from the best of the 2010s. In order of rank on the Metacritic list for those years.
It's sort of roughly so because in gaming it means to me the seventh gen consoles which really started in 2005, but it's more strictly so for my TV/Film and reading. So this week I set up my PS3, juiced my DSi XL and got to work.