Throwback Thursday - Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Welcome to another Throwback Thursday, our weekly look into my Top 100 games and general nostalgia.  This week's headliner: The game with small comical sidekicks that is Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.

Released in the US on December 3rd, 2001, Jak and Daxter was a new game series to follow Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot series.  It features a teenage boy named Jak as your silent protagonist,  partnered with an obnoxious and humorous friend, Daxter, whom is transformed into a strange otter / weasel-like animal at the start of the game.  Together, they travel across various fantasy / sci-fi inspired landscapes to collect power cells and precursor eggs, and ultimately thwart the plans of certain villainous characters to unleash Dark Eco upon the world.

Tabletop Tuesday - Boss Monster

Welcome to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday - Your weekly exploration into games of dice, cards, luck and more of the Tabletop world.

This week's game...the game of pitfalls and fireballs that is Boss Monster.

Players: 2-4
Time: 20-40 minutes
Genre: Strategy Card Game

Shooting for the Stars

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Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap Review

Genre: Side-Scrolling, Action-Adventure
Players: 1
Playtime: 5 hours (Includes beating the game and finding 3 of 6 hidden charm stones on Normal Mode.  Also tried Easy Mode for comparison -- Did not have will to try Hard Mode)

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a remake of the 1989 game Wonder Boy III, originally released on the Master System.  For being based off a game that is 28 years old, the core design of this game holds some strikingly good bones and structure to it.  That isn't to say it doesn't fall prey to some pitfalls of older, frustrating game mechanics, but I can see why the good folks of Lizardcube and DotEmu wanted to revisit this retro classic adventure.

Throwback Thursday - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Welcome to another Throwback Thursday, our weekly look into my Top 100 games and general nostalgia.  In this week's forecast: The game of motion-controlled swords and beetles that is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Released in the US on November 20th, 2011, Skyward Sword was the first Zelda title built from the ground-up for the Nintendo Wii.  Designed to make use of the Wii MotionPlus, much of the combat and Link's arsenal require a variety of creative and precise motion controls.  This was met with mixed reception from players.  On the one hand, it made every enemy a more interesting puzzle to defeat, finding the appropriate angles to strike and recognizing patterns they use to block.  But then this also made combat much more drawn out, with repeated encounters with enemies become tiring affairs, especially when requiring the precise nature of motion controls which weren't always so cooperative.  Still, the game is commended for making use of the Wii hardware and making a unique Zelda experience.

Tabletop Tuesday - Spot It

Welcome to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday - Your weekly exploration into games of dice, cards, luck and more of the Tabletop world.

This week's game...the game of red balloons and yellow moons that is Spot It.

Players: 1-8
Time: 5-10 minutes per round
Genre: Casual Family Game

Tips for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Double Items

It's safe to say that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a fantastic game as it takes all the components of the stellar Wii-U version and then adds even more to it.  I'll post a review highlighting its strengths and weaknesses once I've had more time with the multiplayer and new battle mode components, but in the meantime, I thought I'd discuss one of this game's new features and offer some tips and tricks for such: The Double Items.

This small change to Mario Kart 8's mechanics drastically affects the dynamics of races, creating twice as much commotion and twice as many opportunities to defend.  The meta of racing now involves many more choices to be made: When to use items?  When to go for double-item boxes vs shorter routes?  What to anticipate with opponents equipped with twice as many items as before?  All these questions are constantly on the player's mind when racing around at high speeds.  So here are some strategies I've developed while playing with this new intricate system: