Stellar Blade very much wants to be a merger of NieR: Automata and the Soulslike formula. It’s a flashy science fiction romp through a decrepit, decaying world, and the ambience is certainly going to be familiar to NieR fans. It’s also undeniably well-made. However, for all the comparisons people have been making to the likes of NieR: Automata and Bayonetta…
This Japan trip has been a whirlwind that I just wasn’t expecting. I guess that makes sense when I haven’t been back in so many years. Nonetheless, I do have plenty of material for quite a few articles. I just need to find the time to write them. I do…
Read MoreI’m not going to lie. My nose will grow. Lies Of P infuriates me to play. Of all the ways to approach the Soulslike “hard game”, this is the least suited to my preferences. I understand that there will be an audience for it, but that’s not me, it won’t…
Read MoreNakano Broadway is not a place you want to go if you have residual concerns about large numbers of people in enclosed spaces. As amusing as it is that there are signs up all over the place recommending “social distancing,” and while the Japanese tend to be better sports about…
Read MoreIt feels good to be home. It might be sauna-hot (despite being well into Autumn now, the sticky humidity of Japan’s summers has stuck around), and I’m tired as everything having done my usual thing of taking the overnight flight and then failing to sleep at all, but I’m back…
Read MoreIt would be easy to dismiss Monochrome Mobius as being a “too-traditional” JRPG, turn-based warts and all. Indeed, that is what far too many other critics have done when covering this game, and that’s doing it a disservice. It seems that just about everyone has missed what makes this a…
Read MoreHere’s a tale of two very different sides of the games industry for you. On the one hand, I was recently given an hour-long look into The Plucky Squire, an upcoming Devolver Digital-published game about a character that can pop into and out of the “real world” from a book,…
Read MoreGot a Nintendo Switch? At some stage you’ve probably taken it out in public. After all, gaming on the go is very much the point of that thing. But would you necessarily want other people to know what you’re playing? That’s the topic for this podcast discussion: the games we…
Read MoreWe’ve all had this experience at one stage or another: We’ve been playing a game that we totally love and thing it will be one of our favourites… only for it to ultimately disappoint us. What causes that, and why? That’s the topic for this part of the September 2023…
Read MoreYou know how the saying goes: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” I do feel both very foolish and a great deal of shame for playing Taito Milestones 2. It’s not because this is a retro compilation of poor games. Far from it. The…
Read MoreSamba de Amigo is a game of pure joy and high-octane energy (with some acid surely thrown in when it was being developed). It comes across as an even more explosive explosion of colour and humour than Bandai Namco’s excellent Taiko the Drum series. In the party context that this…
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