Search found 54 matches

by ashman86
February 22nd, 2024, 6:06 pm
Forum: Volume 13
Topic: 641: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Replies: 1
Views: 16258

Re: 641: Dragon Age: Inquisition

There aren't many games in my past that I have waited on more impatiently than I did for Dragon Age: Origins, which BioWare originally billed as a spiritual successor to their Baldur's Gate games. That game, for the most part, lived up to the promise they had set and felt like it trailed a path forw...
by ashman86
January 23rd, 2024, 10:28 pm
Forum: Volume 13
Topic: 642: Perfect Dark Zero
Replies: 3
Views: 15811

Re: 642: Perfect Dark Zero

Perfect Dark Zero was, if I remember correctly, the only launch title I initially picked up with my Xbox 360. I had never owned a Nintendo 64, but I had played enough of Perfect Dark and Goldeneye at friends' houses to have reason to be excited about a successor, and I didn't know better as far as t...
by ashman86
January 22nd, 2024, 11:39 pm
Forum: Volume 13
Topic: 632: Fable
Replies: 1
Views: 15342

Re: 632: Fable

Fable is a good game that I would think back on more fondly if I were ever able to divorce the game we got from the broken promises Peter Molyneux made in the lead up to its release. At the time preview coverage for Fable first started rolling out, my friends and I had recently fallen in love with M...
by ashman86
January 22nd, 2024, 11:07 pm
Forum: Volume 13
Topic: 636: Vampire Survivors
Replies: 11
Views: 4107

Re: 636: Vampire Survivors

Vampire Survivors is a cool game with some lovely art and music and a ton of secrets to unlock over time. It's also the kind of game I play for 4-5 hours before setting it down and never picking it up again. I think it's an interesting exploration of just how simple you can make a game's controls wh...
by ashman86
August 9th, 2023, 3:29 am
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Sonic CD
Replies: 8
Views: 31182

Re: 584: Sonic CD

I was lucky enough to have a Sega CD as a kid, and Sonic CD was among my favorite games for the weird console add-on. I played it well after Sonic 2 and also Sonic 3, so Sonic CD felt like a strange regression in some ways even though it was only a year older. I can remember thinking that the game l...
by ashman86
August 9th, 2023, 1:46 am
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
Replies: 3
Views: 7178

Re: 586: Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge

Back in the days when the Official Xbox Magazine was my source for monthly game demos and previews, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Crimson Skies, which was a game that had flown (no apologies for the pun) under my radar until then. It was the rare demo I played over and over, often as a pala...
by ashman86
January 24th, 2023, 12:13 am
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Replies: 10
Views: 5696

Re: 572: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Every once in a while, I get the itch to play a specific kind of Star Wars game that can only be satisfied by replaying KOTOR from start to finish. The last time that occurred was in the lead up to the release of the The Rise of Skywalker when my personal hype levels for Star Wars was as high as it ...
by ashman86
January 23rd, 2023, 11:54 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Fighters Megamix
Replies: 2
Views: 2120

Re: 564: Fighters Megamix

I was a Sega diehard growing up, which meant, of course, that while my friends were falling in love with Tekken, I was all about Virtua Fighter as my preferred 3D fighter. I was never very good at that game, but I loved it nonetheless, so much that I wrote off Fighting Vipers as a knockoff one day w...
by ashman86
January 19th, 2023, 5:48 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Dragon's Lair and Space Ace
Replies: 3
Views: 1578

Re: 569: Dragon's Lair and Space Ace

I have some very vague memories of seeing Dragon's Lair in arcades and being wowed by the animation. As a young child at the time, I was naturally drawn to the Disney-like presentation, and I remember comparing it to the console games I played at home in my mind in disbelief. How could a game look l...
by ashman86
January 19th, 2023, 5:36 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Deathloop
Replies: 11
Views: 13748

Re: 580: Deathloop

Deathloop was the first Arkane game I played that I actually stuck with through to the end. And, while I don't mean that as a knock against their past works or as glowing praise for Deathloop itself, I think it's important context for how I feel about the game today. I fell in love with Deathloop al...
by ashman86
January 19th, 2023, 5:26 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Unreal
Replies: 3
Views: 1514

Re: 565: Unreal

I only played Unreal after having spent a good deal of time in Unreal Tournament, playing with and against my dad. He was the Unreal fan in the family, and I was more interested in games like Half-Life at the time. What I remember most about the game is thinking how very similar the series was to Qu...
by ashman86
January 19th, 2023, 5:21 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Replies: 10
Views: 5276

Re: 568: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

As a lifelong Star Wars fan as well as a fan of Respawn, I was over the moon when the studio announced they were working on Fallen Order. Add to that the fact that Chris Avellone, who had written KOTOR 2, was set to work on the game, and my expectations were sky-high. Of course, this was before he h...
by ashman86
January 10th, 2023, 6:41 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Demon's Souls (2020)
Replies: 9
Views: 31729

Re: 600: Demon's Souls (2020)

When it first launched back in 2009, Demon's Souls was easily the game I wanted to play most, but never could. I was newly married and trying to balance a new full-time job with school, and I was doing all of it on an extremely limited income. We couldn't so much as afford an internet connection in ...
by ashman86
June 28th, 2022, 11:10 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Final Fantasy Tactics / The War of the Lions
Replies: 8
Views: 10957

Re: 550: Final Fantasy Tactics / The War of the Lions

Watching a friend play Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my earliest memories of the series. The game's story of political intrigue told by cute, noseless characters completely defied the expectations I'd formed from seeing ads and posters for Final Fantasy VII. Where was the guy with the comically hu...
by ashman86
June 28th, 2022, 10:05 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Hades
Replies: 19
Views: 8178

Re: 532: Hades

I've played a lot of games in my time, and I've liked most, loved many, and hated few. But I know a game's special when it dominants my thoughts so completely that every second of free time I have to spare goes immediately towards it without hesitation. Hades is such a game for me. Like many, I've b...
by ashman86
June 28th, 2022, 9:44 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Replies: 15
Views: 6329

Re: 541: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Sonic 2's a game that's for so long been a part of my history that I can't remember when or how I first played it. What I *can* remember is being 6 years old and going into a game shop with my dad to watch the employees demonstrating some of the newer game consoles. We had an NES at home, so I was n...
by ashman86
February 18th, 2022, 11:04 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: The Outer Worlds
Replies: 4
Views: 2472

Re: 517: The Outer Worlds

In the lead up to the launch of The Outer Worlds, I was as guilty as anyone for expecting it to be a spiritual successor to Fallout 2 and/or New Vegas. In some ways, I think it lives up to that, but The Outer Worlds' scope is significantly narrower. Obsidian's one of my favorite studios out there no...
by ashman86
February 4th, 2022, 6:05 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Hollow Knight
Replies: 17
Views: 7227

Re: Our next podcast recording (5.2.22) - 505: Hollow Knight

I had a friend who raved about Hollow Knight on Twitter shortly after the game launched, so when the game hit Switch, I decided it was high time to give it a go. Shortly after, I traveled to South Africa for work, which amounted to something like 48 hours of time spent on an airplane. I was looking ...
by ashman86
March 15th, 2021, 4:30 pm
Forum: Videogame Music (VGM)
Topic: The videogame music thread
Replies: 1260
Views: 1575628

Re: The Sound of Play submission thread

nWhYTa-Uj2Y I've listened to the soundtrack to Haven a ton since the game launched, despite having only just barely started the game. The soundtrack's gold from start to finish, and my current obsession is the track "Nothing but Rust." Listen all the way through to the last minute or so o...
by ashman86
February 4th, 2021, 10:30 pm
Forum: Videogame Discussion
Topic: Tomb Raider (1996)
Replies: 12
Views: 10450

Re: 491 - Tomb Raider (1996)

I was 11, maybe 12, when I first played Tomb Raider on my Sega Saturn. Games in 3D were still positively mind blowing to me, and Tomb Raider felt like a window into the future of the medium. Also, to this day, I still like to tell people (half-joking) that it's the scariest game I've ever played. I ...