PixlBit

The latest and greatest in dance pads is "Tough" indeed.

It’s been a while since I’ve pulled out the old Konami dance pad and played some DDR on the original Xbox. The long sessions and practice I put into the game in college got me pretty good at the game, and before long I was an expert DDR player. Performing the songs at that level really put a beating on the pre-packaged pad, and it slowly started to wear and lose accuracy as time went on. Hyperkin recently released a more durable version of the classic peripheral, which they have named the Tough Pad, and it certainly lives up to the name.

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A potentially great game destroyed by a complete lack of usability and focus on excessive grinding.

Playing Castlevania: Harmony of Despair is a lot like what I imagine living with an alcoholic stepfather would be like. You find yourself in a situation with no guidance or information on what to do besides the general desire not to screw up and every time you think you have figured out the correct way to behave, you find yourself beaten for thinking you can do better and being “uppity”. By description, an up-to-six player co-op game where you can choose from the A team of the Castlevania universe, Harmony of Despair sounded like it could have been one of the best Xbox Live Arcade games to grace the system. Sadly, this is not the case, and what’s worse is that the game in itself is not a bad experience.

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There's dragons, lots of quests, and warriors. I'd say the game lived up to its name.

When I sat down to play Dragon Quest IX, I just about knew what to expect. At least, I thought I knew what to expect. See, I've played Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest IV, and Dragon Quest V, and as both fans and those familiar with the franchise understand, the mainline Dragon Quest titles have many, many similarities and traditions. While there have been eight games in the series up until now, very few changes have been made to the formula.

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If you go down in the woods today, you're in for a big disappointment.

I'll be really honest here, usually I try to begin my reviews with some sort of back story pertaining to the game I'm about to review, or the concept in general. But my absolute disappointment with Naughty Bear has obliterated my ability to do that this time around. There are no words I can think of, or way that I can twist what I have experienced, into a nice introduction for possibly one of the worst games I have ever played.

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