PixlBit

This fowl adventure has more in common with Rambo than Chicken Run.

Hard Boiled Chicken sure is badass.  He’s the kind of bird that walks quietly and carries a big stick, stoically raining deadly lead down upon his flightless penguin oppressors.  He has a jetpack and has sent more of our winged friends to the great bird bath in the sky than Colonel Sanders.  Did I mention that he has a freakin’ jetpack?!  Yeah, he’s a pretty awesome chicken, which is why it’s a shame that his game never quite gets him to the levels that his sweet jet pack does.

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All 4 One, and one for dull.

It's been a long nine days since we started running our Ratchet & Clank recap feature, but it has served as a great refresher on all of the games in the series. Having played them all individually over a number of years, it was easy to miss many of the trends the series has exhibited over time. For one, roughly half of the games in the series are actually side quests that only exhibit some of the traits of the core titles. Two, Insomniac is and has always been willing to utilize the series as a testing ground for all sorts of different ideas. All 4 One, being a co-operative four player title, is their latest test. The title sacrifices much of what makes the core series great in an effort to appeal to those looking for a co-op experience with friends. Like Ratchet: Deadlocked (Insomniac's other testing ground), All 4 One both succeeds and fails in different ways, but doesn't even begin to approach the bar set by A Crack in Time.

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Why so serious?

What is Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2? Is it Pokémon? Is it Dragon Quest? Is it Monster Hunter? Is it Monster Rancher? As I'd never played a Dragon Quest Monsters game before, I began to discover it has elements of all the monster-related games above, believe it or not. The variety of Pokémon, the skill-set making and monsters of Dragon Quest, the attempts to defeat giants who can maul a team of hunters, and the careful balance and planning of crafting and synthesizing a quality monster.

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