C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 28

Control: Ultimate Edition (2020) review

    "It will happen again in a town called Ordinary." 

    These were words spoken in reverse in the theme song of AMERICAN NIGHTMARE, the semi-official sequel to ALAN WAKE. It was meant to set up Alan Wake 2, which would take place in a town called Ordinary. Unfortunately, the disappointing sales of Alan Wake combined with other matters prevented us from ever discovering what was going to happen in Ordinary--until now.

    CONTROL is a stealth sequel to Alan Wake where you take the role of Jesse ...

Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition review

    HORIZON: ZERO DAWN is a game that has already been talked about extensively and has deservedly received many accolades. It's a video game with an inherently fun premise: what if you were a cute redheaded bow-wielding girl who fought robot dinosaurs? Turok: Dinosaur Hunter plus Brave. It's a pretty hard to screw up formula and one that seems like would be a can't miss. It wasn't either, I finished the game as well as its DLC after all, but it did have some flaws.

    The premise is Aloy (Ashly...

The Evil Within 2 (2017) review

 

    THE EVIL WITHIN 2 (2017) is the sequel to, unsurprisingly, THE EVIL WITHIN (2014) and a game I picked up immediately after finishing the first game. I probably should have played the DLC for the first game before I played this but I'm not a big fan of stealth in video games and those are the primary mechanic of the original expansion. So, what did I think of The Evil Within 2? A game that was following up to a game with a lot of ups and downs? Well, it is a lot more consistent experience bu...

Ringworld (1971) by Larry Niven review

 
    A chain reactions of millions of tightly condensed stars in the Core of the galaxy have explored and are sending out a massive wave of radiation that will eventually wipe out all of the life in the Known Universe!

    "WHEN!?"
    "Twenty-thousand years!"
    "Oh. Well, nevermind then."
    "You fool!"

    The Puppeteers take this threat very seriously and start investigating ways to move their millions of year-old society to someplace safe in the dwarf galaxy above the Spiral. However, this is ...

The Evil Within (2014) review

Warning - this review will contain spoilers for an almost decade-old game.

    THE EVIL WITHIN is a game from 2014 and despite being eight years old, is still one one the most stunningly lovely games I have ever played in my life. Resident Evil IV is getting a remake and I think this game deserves one as well. Not because it is as universally loved and acclaimed as the Resident Evil games but because it is a great game that makes several missteps that could be rather easily corrected. Sadly, Ghos...

Space Academy Rejects is now available!

Hey folks,

SPACE ACADEMY REJECTS is now available for purchase on Kindle and Audiobook! It is the sequel to Space Academy Dropouts and I think to be one of my funniest creations yet.

"Where no one has been dumb enough to have gone before."

Vance Turbo, HERO OF SPACE, has spent most of his hard-won officer's career helping refugees. This ends when a star gets blown up and he accidentally ends up saving everyone. Now the captain of the E.S.S Ares, he is on a goodwill mission to Contested Space....

Against All Odds (Grimm's War #1) by Jeffrey Haskell review

    AGAINST ALL ODDS by Jeffrey Haskell is a military science fiction/space opera story that I absolutely loved. There’s a huge amount of science fiction available on Kindle Unlimited but I’ll be the first to admit that quite a bit of it isn’t great. As the old saying goes, everyone can be an author but only a few people can be a good author. Well, Jeffrey Haskell manages to slide into the latter category and this is a really good first time effort (though he has a lot of experience as a ...

My Star Trek time travel theory

    I admit I am a huge Star Trek fan, no duh, but I also am a huge fan of continuity. So I did this interesting little write-up for my Star Trek Adventures campaign where the player characters were time cops who were trying to figure out what had happened to the timeline. They came up with this information that explained away inconsistencies in the shows, which didn't NEED to be explained, but I was amused to do anyway.

The Original Series 

    Historically, the original timeline of humanity was...

Star Trek: Picard season 2 review

    STAR TREK: PICARD Season Two is something that I was deeply looking forward to from the moment it was announced as I was a huge fan of Season One. My impression of that season was that it had an extremely strong start but stumbled due to episode length. We didn't get enough follow up on events and were left with more mysteries than answers. Basically, I wished they had done THE LAST BEST HOPE by Una McCormick as a two parter to open it and added an epilogue to follow up on what happened afte...

Halo: Infinite review

    HALO: INFINITE is a game that I was extremely reluctant to get into. HALO 5 was not just a disappointing game to me but I felt it derailed the entirety of my investment into the Halo franchise. Which is a shame because I'd played and beaten every other Halo game as well as read a bunch of its novels. It wasn't my favorite sci-fi franchise (Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon Five, and Mass Effect all beat it) but it was in the top five.

    Basically, I'm willing to overlook a lot of gameplay issue...