He came in like a wrecking ball...
Welcome back to Backloggers! We're waist deep in Asura's wrath in this episode. Before listening you should have played up to the end of episode 9. Come join Julian, Angelo, and special guest Erika Szabo as we talk all about Asura.
Is it back?
Happy New Year! I suppose that's a little late of a thing to say, but it's been a while, hasn't it? PB & Jason returns today with a bonus-length episode to make up for time lost. This week's PB & Jason covers Pokémon, Super Mario 3D World, the newer video game consoles, and asrealasitgets's blog post. When will the next PB & Jason be? No one knows for sure... Tune in! Leave a comment! Send an email! Suggest more ways to end sentences with exclamation points! Listen! Click through!
Our staff's best games of 2013!
Video games had an exceptional year in 2013, with tiny indie teams getting attention for their creativity, and the usual budget behemoths stealing national headlines for their record-breaking sales. Two new consoles also hit the scene right at the end with a few titles that did their best to break into our top five.
Take these jobs and... discuss them.
A downloadable demo for the highly anticipated 3DS RPG, Bravely Default, hit the eShop last week and Travis, JD, and Julian put some hours into it before convening to discuss what they thought. Find out how we felt about the demo and what we now expect out of the full game in our roundtable discussion.
Stay cool, bird boy!
It's 2014, and the Pantsless Ones are back! Well, Angelo and Patrick had to wear layers for this recording, as they were smack dab in the middle of BLIZZARD 2014(tm)!
A perfectly fan-serviceable, but mindless brawler.
Despite the variety of games classified as brawlers, they typically fall into one of two camps: Those that have deep, complex mechanics and require thoughtful, strategic combat decisions and memorization of enemy tactics, and those that are simple, fun, and generally don’t require a whole lot of thought. These are games like Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Musou games like Dynasty Warriors. Senran Kagura Burst falls squarely into this second camp, but that doesn't mean it’s not a unique experience. Senran Kagura Burst is probably the most Japanese game I've ever played, and that’s really saying quite a lot.
Warning: otaku crossing ahead!
Hey there, Julian here. Yeah, I'm not your usual Backloggers Anonymous host, but we're tackling a game that I have a really huge soft spot for: Asura's Wrath.
A collision of great concepts that just works.
Why in the world I keep getting suckered into buying retro-styled arcade game mash-ups is beyond me, but Nimble Quest is just going to encourage me to do it more. Mixing together the basic idea of Snake or Tron’s Light Cycles, adding a combat element, and layering on a leveling-up mechanic got me pretty hooked on this little game originally designed for mobile devices. Nimble Quest fares well in its transition from mobile to PC (unlike a lot of titles) and it’s well worth the low price to have something on your desktop for an occasional attempt at a new high score.
The PS4 has its Geometry Wars.
Any game where you fly a spaceship and blast aliens has my interest. Factor in the added tension of rescuing humans, though, and I’m pretty much guaranteed to hate it. I’ve tried to play Defender and its ilk for decades, but could never “get it.” From the mind boggling button layout of the original Defender arcade machine to every reimagining and sequel that followed, the execution just didn’t hit me right until Resogun tweaked it all just enough to enable the concept to achieve its full potential.
