Justin Grandfield

1 week ago | gamecritics.com | Justin Grandfield

HIGH A great balance between cozy and challenging, plus frogs with hats. LOW A few visual glitches and some awkward tools. WTF I’m afraid we’ll need to use… math. One of the best things about videogame simulation is how vast the genre is. Some will let players build vast cities, others will have them flying planes. Mudborne, however, had me breeding frogs. It’s not just a management sim, though. I’d also argue that it’s a puzzler on top of that.

2 weeks ago | rorenado.wordpress.com | Justin Grandfield

Recently, Microsoft decided to put out a generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) version of the first-person shooter (FPS) classic Quake II, dubbed the “Copilot Gaming Experience”. As expected, it was riddled with problems: enemies vanished if you looked away from them, the camera would look down at the floor at certain spots, textures and graphics look really smudged, artifacts appear everywhere, and generally playing it was a bit of a nightmare.

3 weeks ago | gamecritics.com | Justin Grandfield

The Worst Gated Community EverHIGH An intriguing tale that features some interesting twists. LOW Game performance issues and stilted voice acting mar the experience. WTF You don’t want to turn 57 years old in HaustVille…One of the big themes in post-apocalyptic storyteling is the desire to find a community to live and thrive in, despite the dangers of trying to find them in the first place. In Once Alive, this theme is turned on its head, and the promised safe haven is not what it seems.

3 weeks ago | rorenado.wordpress.com | Justin Grandfield

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been playing through a large number of older Call of Duty campaigns. I had never played really any of them before 2025. I had played a little bit of Black Ops II‘s multiplayer in college, but that was the limit of my experience before this year. I wanted, however, to experience the stories of the campaigns, more than anything.

2 months ago | rorenado.wordpress.com | Justin Grandfield

Over the past couple of decades, we seen more companies push to have their beloved classics re-released and ported to newer consoles. Often, however, handheld games are left out of these preservation efforts. Sure, a few companies, like Nintendo or Konami will make some of these games available for current consoles and PC, but more often these games are just left to rot in the dark. Why shouldn’t these games get a second chance to be played again?