Justin Nation Avatar Image

Justin Nation

Windsor, PA
The Nindersect
Nindersect

Favorite Games:
  • Rocket League
  • Neon Abyss
  • Wreckfest

4398 games reviewed
70.7 average score
71 median score
43.4% of games recommended

Justin Nation's Reviews

Strangely enough this isn't my first rodeo, back in the day I wrote for the N64HQ as well as a few other outlets on freelance gigs but then when the HQ closed I decided to step it up and started The 64 Source. As the first word of a follow-up system to the N64 began to swirl I then decided to venture out into completely new territory and started OperatioN2000, where I had very little regular reputable news to share. With no other options I decided create my own content focused on profiling key developers and their current relationship with Nintendo or "dream games" where I saw opportunities for Nintendo to dust off classics or recently-made games and do something new with them on improved hardware. This was all going pretty well until my wife and I decided to have our first child and I then decided that it was time to hang it up and focus on my family. As I closed down both sites I did decide to partner with Billy Berghammer, another former N64HQ writer, who had created his own site, PlanetN2000. We agreed to move over the relevant content from the older sites to his and on top of that I had taken a grad school class in programming in ColdFusion and decided to offer to code the front-end and back-end for a new version of his site. Through these efforts the newer and more complete Planet GameCube was born! While I would occasionally contribute to that site, helping do things like working out Louie the Cat doing rumors and other odd things, I eventually decided to stop as my family obligations grew. While I had continued to follow Nintendo through both the Wii and Wii U eras my TV time was limited enough that I began playing more PC games again. It is in the PC space that I began to play a number of independent games and they started to be the games I enjoyed the most. Between their lower price, their often less traditional gameplay and approach, and their great variety I was hooked! With the launch of the Nintendo Switch I was already excited by the possibilities. The portability factor alone meant that I would have far more options and places I could play away from the TV, and games like Breath of the Wild looked impressive. With my oldest daughter poised to start her senior year in high school and my youngest finishing out junior high I started to see an opportunity to get back into amateur games journalism once again with what is now Nintendo World Report as well but I'd initially just thought about writing some editorials periodically. Then, right before the launch of the system, Nintendo had their Nindie-focused presentation and I saw my two most beloved gaming worlds colliding. The games I had been playing on my PC could now be played in a portable way and on Nintendo hardware! Being the type who tends to work against the normal current the concept behind Nindie Spotlight was born!
6.3 / 10.0 - SkateBIRD
Sep 16, 2021

With the exception of the Tony Hawk redux that came to the system earlier this year, the skating scene on Switch has been on the slim side...

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Sep 15, 2021

There’s something to be said for games that know what they want to be, even if not necessarily revolutionary in any particular way, and are then executed with a high degree of care and quality...

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Sep 15, 2021

I will admit that I have been pretty impressed by this series of titles as they do reasonably approximate the sorts of eclectic challenges you'll typically find in a real escape room... it's just missing the social component of noisy and dumb people taking you down rabbit holes...

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8.8 / 10.0 - Cruis'n Blast
Sep 14, 2021

When it comes to over-the-top, crazy, and almost excessively arcade-style racing I'm not sure anything out there can quite match the classic Cruis'n series...

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9 / 10.0 - Lost in Random
Sep 10, 2021

Full disclosure, up front I’ll admit that I’ve always tended to be fond of games from the Zoink crew, in particular finding their off-beat sense of humor to be great fun...

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7.6 / 10.0 - Knights & Guns
Sep 10, 2021

Back in the arcades, Pang (or Buster Bros) was one of the more interesting shooters out there that did things its own way and layered puzzling sensibilities into the mix...

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5.8 / 10.0 - LoveChoice
Sep 10, 2021

I'm typically pretty indifferent to lightly interactive visual novels but there's definitely a divide between those that make an honest effort to build a rich and robust narrative and those that don't...

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7.5 / 10.0 - Ultra Age
Sep 9, 2021

Especially given the continued “unknown date” status of Bayonetta 3, Switch fans looking to beat or slash things up with some intense combat may be feeling a little twitchy...

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Sep 9, 2021

Having roughly followed the long and usually pretty torturous movie and gaming "career" of this leather-clad vamp I'll admit I was intrigued to see if she could finally turn things around this time...

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6.4 / 10.0 - Dice Legacy
Sep 9, 2021

One problem many solid PC strategy games have had on the Switch has been trying to take what are often intuitive controls and screens from the mouse and keyboard world and trying to map them to a controller...

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There's something both exciting and sometimes heart-breaking when you get to play early versions of games and get filled in on what they want to be and then see them finally released some time later...

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6.3 / 10.0 - Residual
Sep 9, 2021

While they got off to a bit of a slow start on the Switch, over the years survival games have become more common and some excellent examples of the genre have made their way to the system...

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5.8 / 10.0 - Boulder Dash Deluxe
Sep 9, 2021

As a "veteran" gamer it has been neat to see some truly old school classics stand the test of time and continue to get modern incarnations...

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While the Switch has finally managed to get some fighting games rolling in the more recent years, sports titles in general have been woefully few and far between...

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Sep 3, 2021

This is one of those titles where the name of the game may lead you astray, though I will admit that it is generally accurate...

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6.8 / 10.0 - Virtuous Western
Sep 3, 2021

At first glance I was really hoping this would somehow be something cool like a simplified budget game in the vein of Sunset Riders, but alas, it is merely a pretty simple puzzle game at the end of the day...

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Sep 3, 2021

This is one of those titles you run into periodically that's simply hard to wrap your head around...

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8 / 10.0 - Kitaria Fables
Sep 2, 2021

Family-friendly action adventure titles have a fair amount of representation on the system, but with its cute characters and pretty basic overall controls, Kitaria Fables manages to pretty easily establish itself as a great option...

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Sep 2, 2021

Polished budget puzzlers that come over from the mobile space are always a bit hard to judge critically and fairly when they arrive on Switch...

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7 / 10.0 - Cosmic Express
Sep 2, 2021

Budget puzzlers that, at their core, feel quite familiar in some way are a bit difficult to score...

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