Reviews - Game Or Die

Reviews

A collection of 212 posts

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered (2024)

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered (2024)

Remasters are a bit tricky, as they don’t really offer anything new besides a facelift on modern platforms, but the remastered collection of the first three Tomb Raider games also gave Lara not just a new coat of paint, but really captured the magic and interesting choices of what

Cruis'n USA/World/Exotica (1996)

Cruis'n USA/World/Exotica (1996)

Cruis’n USA Starting off with the first game in the series, Cruis’n USA, the game that launched a very odd but ultimately enjoyable series, it was really interesting going back and playing through the first game. I originally remember the game due to its weird and very linear

Star Fox 2 (1996/2017)

Star Fox 2 (1996/2017)

Star Fox 2 is such an interesting game not just from the perspective of the game itself, but also taking into account its bizarre release and history. Star Fox 2 never officially released on the SNES like it was supposed to back in 1996. Instead, while it was being prepped

Star Fox 64 (1997)

Star Fox 64 (1997)

The technical second game in the Star Fox series (until 217’s mind blowing release of the Super Nintendo’s Star Fox 2), Star Fox 64 blew the doors off the sucker in the way we never could have imagined. The game took everything we loved about Star Fox and

Star Fox (1993)

Star Fox (1993)

The Super Nintendo was pretty much the king of the playground back when I played it. I didn’t get the system till much later in its lifespan, but when I did I rented every game under the sun. One of my absolute favorites to rent was Star Fox. Thanks

Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010)

Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010)

The Donkey Kong Country series was halted thanks to two major factors, one being Donkey Kong 64, a truly awful game, and the second being Microsoft purchasing Rare and really doing a poor job letting that company thrive. Rare’s demise is a story for another time, but the Donkey

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown (2024)

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown (2024)

The initial reveal of Prince of Persia was not a good one, while the gameplay itself looked fairly decent, even though no one was expecting a side scrolling exploration game with gated progress (or also known as the terribly named “Metroid-vania” genre). The real issue was the tone the trailer

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble (1996)

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble (1996)

Release at the end of the Super Nintendo’s life cycle, well after the Nintendo 64 debut in North American, Donkey Kong Country 3 brings a new Kong adventure onto the system. Using more of the familiar Pre-Rendered graphics that now were starting to loose it’s appeal thanks to

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995)

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995)

Like all true great sequels, Donkey Kong Country 2 takes what worked well with the first Donkey Kong Country game, and just gave us more and bigger amounts of everything. More enemies, more worlds, more animal companions. Bigger and badder bosses, level designs and even bonus stages. To say that

Donkey Kong Country (1994)

Donkey Kong Country (1994)

Back in 1994, the Super Nintendo was in full swing, with the Nintendo 64 a few years off, Rare came out with Donkey Kong Country. What became a franchise and brought Donkey Kong back into relevance and also launched a cartoon using CGI (which was awful). But this platformer also

Close To The Sun (2022)

Close To The Sun (2022)

What might be a genre in and of itself, Close to the Sun is a narrative first person “experience” more than it is anything else. There is not much to go on with the mechanics. There is no combat. The stealth sections, and the few times you must outrun enemies

Alan Wake 2 (2023)

Alan Wake 2 (2023)

It’s rare that a game invades my dreams, causing some sort of weird split between reality and dreamscape, that causes me nearly awful night’s rest. But when that does happen, it means the game is special. Alan Wake 2 was a game I have been waiting on since

Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (2023)

Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (2023)

2023 has been the year of Yakuza for me; as I rekindle my adoration for the Yakuza franchise once again by pickup up Yakuza 5 and plowing through all of Yakuza 6 and then playing a good chunk of Like A Dragon (Yakuza 7 technically) and then playing a couple

Spider-Man 2 (2023)

Spider-Man 2 (2023)

While this is the second numbered game in the newer Spider-Man series, this is actually the third Spider-Man game. Miles Morales was the second and it came out in 2020 as a crossplay between PS4 and the new PS5 (that no one could actually get ahold of for 2+ years,

Sonic Superstars (2023)

Sonic Superstars (2023)

When Sonic Mania released in 2017, it seemed like we were on the verge of a Sonic renaissance. However, that turned out to be a one shot kind of deal with every Sonic game released after a reversion back to the misunderstanding of what makes a Sonic game enjoyable, and

Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)

Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)

Back a few years ago, in 2017, after I finished Super Mario Odyssey, I ended up writing an article about my experience instead of a review. It was titled “I’ve Outgrown Mario”, and in that article I list off how the formula for Mario games has stayed the exact

Lies Of P (2023)

Lies Of P (2023)

Ok, I’m going to get two things out of the way right now, since it needs to be stated. 1. I HATE the Souls genre of games. 2. I cheated through this whole game and I don’t regret a single moment. The reason I cheated is because the

Dead Cells (2018)

Dead Cells (2018)

Ever since I heard about Dead Cells, even in its earliest Early Access period, I remember hearing great things about it. It wasn’t until it was released in mid-2018 where I finally paid attention to it, and quickly fell off the hype train. Dead Cells is a run based

Hi-Fi Rush (2023)

Hi-Fi Rush (2023)

Hi-Fi Rush, is a game no one knew existed, and was announced and released for basically free on Gamepass the same day. I couldn’t have been happier to play this modern Dreamcast era style game thanks to the team at Tango Gameworks. Hi-Fi Rush takes place in a world

A Plague Tale: Requiem (2022)

A Plague Tale: Requiem (2022)

Requiem is the sequel to a very underrated game to come out back in 2018, about a girl and her brother surviving a plague of rats that infests a french countryside back in the fourteenth century. The continuing adventures of Amecia and her brother Hugo, who is dying from a

Trail Out (2022)

Flatout is one of my favorite racing games, and after I completed the first game in the series, I tried going to the second game, Flatout 2. But I had such a hard time getting into it since it felt so different than the original game, and I somehow came

God Of War: Ragnarok (2022)

God of War, and Kratos have been permanently solidified in gaming for a while now, but I think these last two God of War games have really elevated the series into something more than just a cool hack and slash franchise. Taking the series in a new direction with the

Stray (2022)

I’m a cat person, I always have been. My first memory of a cat was when I was around 3 and my parents got a little kitten for me, and he sadly ran out into the street and was… well… let’s just say he was gone. But as

Session (2022)

Activision kinda salted the earth with the Tony Hawk series for a while. There were many different extreme sports and even skateboarding games for a while, but once Activision started putting out yearly Tony Hawk games, no one really dared to go against it. Then when that series ended the

The Puppeteer (2013)

Too little in video games, do the games go out of their way to actually use the medium to do something tremendous and truly creative. The Puppeteer does so with gusto and vigor, as the entire game takes place as a stage play, and it keeps that theming throughout the