Kyerannosaur Crunches Borderlands 2

Tastes like BADASSERY!

I adored the first Borderlands. The IP has a distinct flavor, a distinct style, that nothing else has emulated yet. It satisfies a craving that nothing else quite can. It tastes like Diablo made from different meat, giving you a difference in the core flavor: a humor and action style that comes from a different team and a different genre.

Borderlands 2 does perfectly what I feel every primal action game should do: make the player feel awesome. Through art, writing, mechanics, enemy design, and even their marketing campaign, the game tells you you're a badass and no one should mess with you -- or face the consequences. You're here to rock faces and claim loot. You are the alpha predator (something I can relate to).

Kyerannosaur Crunches The Last Story

Tastes like EXPERIMENTATION!

Playing The Last Story feels like catching the JRPG genre in puberty. From my taste-test, the game doesn't seem to quite know where it fits. Is it traditional or new age? Is it last gen or current gen? It's as though Mistwalker knew the classic JRPG equation needed to change but wasn't quite sure of all the ways to change it. Evolution is happening, but this game came out somewhere in the middle of that.

For this reason, I went through a lot of mixed feelings during my crunching, and actually spent a fair bit of time confused. Let's enumerate.

Kyerannosaur Crunches Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy

Tastes like FANSERVICE!

I want to get something very important out of the way before I say anything else: fanservice is not a bad thing. It is not a derogatory statement and it does not mean that your production is void of all things that are good and pure and lovely and tasteful. Super Smash Bros. is fanservice. Every new Pokémon release is fanservice. Actually, just about everything that Nintendo, and Square Enix, and Capcom, and Kojima Productions, and almost every other major studio does includes fanservice. We clear? Good. On with the crunchinating.

Kyerannosaur Crunches Rayman: Origins

Tastes like PERSONALITY!

The Rayman team has always been good about creating character in (and for) their games. I mean, they came up with a character with no arms, legs, or neck and made him fun and wacky. Better yet, they built mechanics around his design, such as being able to throw his hands for long-range combat. Rayman: Origins is no exception to the rule. In fact, it may set a new standard.

From the get-go, Origins blasts you with colorful whimsy: here's a bunch of funky looking characters, zonked out on a tree branch, making music with their snoring and munching. Beautiful. Catchy. Fun. Oh, I'm sorry, did you not want whimsy and child-like euphoric fun-times? Wrong game. You're out of luck here.