Toronto Thumbs

I Play What I Want!*
Temple Run and Tiny Tower

Hi everybody! It has been a hot minute -or a million- since my last I Play What I Want column. I apologize; but, well, as referenced in the footnotes, I had a baby. Talk about a never-ending, ever-increasingly-different game play experience. I have clocked over ten thousand hours of baby-game play and I don’t think I’ll finish before I die. Oh well. No refunds.

Anyways, I have been playing loads of fun little games on my iPhone while the little guy sleeps in my arms or tries to fall asleep (or during any of the millions of boring moments of being a parent), so I have managed to keep on truckin’. My two current obsessions are Temple Run and Tiny Tower (free apps across platforms! Android too!).

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Posted in Android, Byte-Size Reviews, iOS | No Comments »

Review
Prototype 2

As I was playing Radical Entertainment’s Prototype 2, I kept thinking back to a line of dialogue from the Street Fighter movie. While anything that Van Damme’s Colonel Guile says during the flick is indeed memorable, the line that I think fits this game to a “T” is a quote from M. Bison (as portrayed by the late Raul Julia): “Something wrong, Colonel? You come here prepared to fight a madman, and instead you found…a God!”

Now, Prototype 2’s James Heller* might not be as charismatic as Julia’s Bison was, but you can’t deny the fact that he means business – and being infected with biological superpowers certainly makes things a lot easier on the poor guy.

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Posted in PC, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

Gadgets
Xbox 360 Chrome Series

Shiny.

I like when controllers come in different flavours. Having different-looking controllers may seem like a silly thing to non-gamers; but to those of use in the brotherhood and sisterhood of the video-game, controllers are a way of expressing one’s personality. Stock controllers are usually fairly plain (they are default hardware after all), and it’s usually a good idea to have a second controller on hand for local multi-player games (and also to have a spare in case you lose track of time and kill your batteries). If you’re going to get a second controller, why not get a cool-looking one that is functional?

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Posted in Gadgets, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

Review
Fable Heroes

Writing a review about Fable Heroes is something of a daunting proposition, given that the only thing going through my head as I played it was thoughts of all the better things I could be doing with my time.

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Posted in LIVE, Reviews, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

Review
Trials Evolution

When I was a kid, there were a few games for my Intellivision that were easy enough to play, but had a very small margin of error if you really wanted to do well. I would spend a lot of time trying to master these games, and felt a rush of absolute glee when I finally nailed each level. RedLynx’s Trials Evolution (published by Ubisoft) rekindled that feeling within me, thanks to its challenging levels and larger-than-life physics.

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First Impressions
Resistance: Burning Skies

Summertime brings warm weather and great times outdoors; but there is usually a severe drought of games around the same time. Later this month, the Playstation Vita will receive a game that’s shaping up to be a very refreshing, tall drink of water. Nihilistic Studios’ first-person-shooter, Resistance: Burning Skies will be out on May 29th; and I had a chance to go hands-on with it. With the Vita being the first mobile device with a dual analogue set-up, I was very curious to see how the game controls function – I’m happy to report that they perform pretty damn well.

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Posted in Events, First Impressions | No Comments »

First Impressions
Little Big Planet Karting

Would you say that Sackboy is Playstation’s Mario? I can see where people would draw similarities; but Sackboy is way more open-minded and down for experimenting – unlike that square with a moustache. Enter Little Big Planet Karting: a kart game with some small similarities to the Nintendo favourite, with a lot of interesting differences. In my brief time with LBP Karting at the Sony Playstation Spring Preview Event, I had a chance to play around with the really big features of the game, and had some of my fears about karting klones put to rest.

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Posted in Events, First Impressions, PlayStation 3 | No Comments »