Christopher Byrd


157 games reviewed
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Unscored - Bayonetta 2
Oct 21, 2014

As a friend and fellow writer advised me when he heard that I would be reviewing this game, we should take the creators of Bayonetta at their word when they tout the game's "Climax Action." This game is all about smothering players in a cloud of lust. If such a gambit falls outside of your tastes, "Bayonetta 2" will irk you.

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Nov 18, 2014

In sum, "Dragon Age: Inquisition" feels like a game in which the writers were set free to craft a story for contemporary adults. As I listened to the poetic diction of Cole, a character prone to alliteration and utterances such as, "The air smells like rocks," I wondered if the gaming industry might swell to provide a berth for poets as academia has.

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Unscored - Far Cry 4
Dec 2, 2014

Like jazz, open-world games promise the bliss of structured randomness. Developers load up games with multiple systems – traffic, pedestrians, wildlife, etc. – which players probe to create unique moments. Ubisoft's Far Cry series marries this open-world game design to a caricature of guerrilla warfare, the improvisational aspect of which fits well with the player's need to make the best of whatever is in his or her toolset.

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Unscored - This War of Mine
Dec 8, 2014

Though I certainly believe that video games are an art form, there are precious few games that I would hold up as works of art, which for me – in its narrative varieties at least – has something to do with extending one's capacity for empathy or adding depth to one's sense of the human condition. On both counts "This War of Mine" succeeds.

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Unscored - Never Alone
Dec 29, 2014

Measured solely as a puzzle-platformer, "Never Alone" has nothing on games such as "Braid" or "Portal," which offer far more intricate challenges. However, this is a game that transcends its gameplay. The bio of one of the game's scriptwriters, Ishmael Angaluuk Hope, mentions that in his younger days he was ashamed of his Native Alaskan heritage.

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Jan 6, 2015

If you haven't kept up with your metaphysical thinkers, you might need to play through "The Old City" more than once to master its storyline.  Personally, I find it exciting to think that video games have evolved to a point where they can sustain that level of scrutiny.

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Feb 3, 2015

Call me selective, but I wanted the comedy without the tedium which broke the cinematic effect. Perhaps this inability to fawningly linger over "Grim Fandango's" highly static environments is a product of time. Regardless, the bony truth is that our lives sometimes intersect with games at inopportune moments.

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To my immense surprise, I haven't fallen for a Zelda game like this since I played the "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" (1991).

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Unscored - The Order: 1886
Feb 23, 2015

It is an unfortunate irony that a game offering a glimpse into the future of video game graphics should be so hamstrung by its limited, conventional gameplay. This is one anachronism too many — even for a steampunk game.

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Mar 3, 2015

While playing the game, I thought of my father, who is a far better sketch artist than I am. He is one of those people who is interested in video games but professes to be allergic to dual analog stick controllers. If the game's stylus-driven mechanics can win him over, I might owe Nintendo a heartfelt tweet.

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Mar 10, 2015

As obvious as the game's criticisms are about the encroachment of the police state or the ease of character assassination in the digital age, they're worth reiterating until we, in the real world, find a way out of our predicament. That doesn't make me fault the game less for its heavy-handedness, but I give it credit for having arguments to make.

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Mar 17, 2015

"Ori and the Blind Forest" will tax the dexterity of just about anyone who doesn't eat games like "Super Meat Boy" or "I Wanna Be the Guy" for breakfast. If that disclaimer doesn't give you pause, know that this is a game that made me want to hug the developers.

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Unscored - Bloodborne
Mar 31, 2015

When I finished "Dark Souls 2," I felt utterly burnt out with the series into which I had poured over 400 hours. But "Bloodborne's" labyrinths and fantastic creature design ensnared me from the first. Whereas "Dark Souls 2" felt to me as if it was laboring under the weight of its forebears,"Bloodborne" feels like the swaggering culmination of them. From Software has, in the best possible way, brought the evil back.

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Apr 21, 2015

The game's co-op mode, which accommodates up to three players, brilliantly divvies up the ship's responsibilities.

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Unscored - Broken Age
Apr 28, 2015

Though there were plenty of puzzles with outlandish solutions that left me unimpressed by their logic, my grousing never caused me to lose sight of the fact that "Broken Age's" esprit is charming enough that I could imagine returning to it again.

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May 12, 2015

What gives the MachineGames' Wolfenstein titles their own mojo is the casual way they pair generic gameplay with silver-tongued characters who reflect on their faults, speculate on their fates, and enjoy mundane occurrences like going to a pub and cadging free drinks. In this way the game's B-movie vibe is evocative of the work of those skilled filmmakers who embrace the silly or even the self-consciously stupid.

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Unscored - Splatoon
May 27, 2015

Although it may sound like an oxymoron, "Splatoon" is a family shooter done right.

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Jun 2, 2015

What sets "The Witcher 3" apart from most of the competition is its keen sense of humanity, which is calculated to be every bit as gripping as an HBO drama. At their best, the characters with whom you chat don't seem like they live in a vacuum only to impart useful information.

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Jun 30, 2015

As an open-world game,"Arkham Knight," on consoles at least, makes fabulous use of the Unreal 3 graphics engine, rendering Gotham in romantically grungy detail. This is the first Batman game that I've played that feels adequate to the comic book's legacy.

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Jul 13, 2015

In "Red Goddess," blue and red enemies frequently overlap each other so the mechanic feels muddled. Button mashing is almost unavoidable. There is nothing elegant about this game and no reason for anyone to play it.

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