As someone who decidedly prefers mini golf to the real thing, I’ve always been drawn more to goofy or arcade-like golf video games than realistic simulations. And What The Golf? (Switch, PC, Apple Arcade) may just be the goofiest arcade-like golf game I’ve ever played. Which is also why it’s the most fun I’ve had on the links, virtual or otherwise, in years.
At a time when we shouldn’t be going to be the beach for other reasons, there’s a perverse and reverse pleasure to playing Maneater (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Switch), a new action game in which you get to be the original beach deterrent: a shark. It’s just too bad that the pleasure doesn’t last a lot longer.
Thanks to the success of such games as Super Meat Boy and the Demon Souls / Dark Souls series, there’s been a lot of interest lately in video games that are intentionally hard. But there’s a big difference between challenging and infuriating. And it’s on the wrong side of things that we find Overpass (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Switch), an off-road racing game that’s decidedly more frustrating than fun.
Facing defeat at the end of World War II, Hitler made a last-ditch attempt at victory by raising his dead soldiers from the grave. But while this led to his own death at the end of Zombie Army Trilogy, the new Zombie Army 4: Dead War (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) shows that the war against the living impaired is still being waged. And while it may not be going well for those hoping to stay alive and free, those hoping to shoot lots of Nazi zombies from the third-person perspective will mostly enjoy this frantic shooter. Mostly.
Long before the Avengers movies got heroes from multiple movies to join forces, Kevin Smith pulled it off, and almost as well, with 2001’s Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, in which the titular two-some were joined by characters from such previous Smith films as Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Mallrats. And now he’s doing it again with the indirect sequel Jay And Silent Bob Reboot. But while it’s good to see the guys again, it’s hard not to wish both the film and the Blu-ray and DVD collections for it were a little better.
While I may not believe that time travel is scientifically possible, part of me hopes that it is…if only so I can one day go back in time to make sure the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital combo pack, 4K Ultra HD/ Blu-ray/Digital combo pack, and DVD versions of the action-packed sci-movie Terminator: Dark Fate are as good as the movie itself. Because as it stands now, all three come up short, especially the last one.
Forty-two years after the image of a Star Destroyer flying overhead blew my nine-year-old mind, the Star Wars saga is finally coming to an end. Again. But not really. But while Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker may not feel like the end of a space fantasy saga four decades in the making, and it’s surely not the last time we’ll visit that galaxy far, far away, it is an epic and exceptionally exciting sci-fi space opera.
One of the more difficult parts of video game design is finding the sweet spot of difficulty where it’s not too tough and not too easy but does get steadily more challenging as the game progresses.
It’s an issue that undermines Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), a realistic first-person stealth-action sniper game that shooter fans will either find engaging or punishing….and maybe both.
Along with expansive anniversary boxed sets, the most welcome recent trend in album reissues is to reconfigure live albums so they present the concert whole, uncut, as they happened.
Which is what fans of Jimi Hendrix’s 1970 concert collection Band Of Gypsys are getting with Songs For Groovy Children: The Fillmore East, a four-CD, 8-LP, 43-track digital collection that presents both that legendary show and three others uncut for the first time.