To start this review with something very personal: My father passed away last week. It’s been difficult, to put it mildly. The reason I bring it up is that Dad absolutely loved Ten-Pin Bowling. Had his own ball, ball bag (I had no idea they made bowling ball bags), shoes, the works. He competed in social leagues all over the…
“If a little is good, more must be better.” That’s how the saying goes, right? That certainly seems to be the approach that the developers have taken with Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S+, in that they’ve taken the previous quality take on the Picross formula (itself an already big game),…
Read MoreI am a little surprised that there aren’t more “Monster Hunter-like” games out there. Dark Souls spawned an entire genre that just about everyone else seems committed to aping. Meanwhile, Capcom’s uber-challenging monster battler has only really inspired Koei Tecmo, which first produced the two Toukiden games, which were excellent,…
Read MoreThis month we discuss a massive wave of censorship that is affecting the entire games industry and even forcing us to re-write chunks of our own game, The Last Waltz. Then we go on to discuss older games – particularly JRPGs – and some of the mechanics that we’re glad…
Read MoreGolden Tee Arcade Classics is a fascinating package. As far as I can tell, it is the first time that Golden Tee has been released on console. I’m sure someone’s going to correct me on that, but I’m a fair golf fan, extending right back to the Microsoft Windows Golf…
Read MoreSuper Mario Party Jamboree was an impressive return to form for the Nintendo digital board game/minigame multiplayer mania series. After years of pointless experiments and some uninspired maps and minigame collections, the creative energy that went into Jamboree, combined with some fun side-distractions, help get it back to the top…
Read MoreIn The Wandering Village, you build a small community for survivors of an apocalypse to live on. The world has been ravaged and left effectively uninhabitable, but there is a giant dinosaur-like beast that has enough room and resources on its back to sustain some people. Your goal is to…
Read MoreI never thought I’d use curse words on this website, but this warrants it. Last week, the puritanical SWERF, TERF, anti-women’s autonomy, and anti-LGBT extremist hate group, Collective Shout, was successful in getting Steam to remove hundreds of games that offended its members. It achieved that by putting pressure on…
Read MoreThe third in the now-trilogy that started with AI: The Somnium Files is the first that Kotaro Uchikoshi took a back seat to. He still had a supervisory role, but it’s one of Uchikoshi’s mentees, Kazuya Yamada, who gets the creative credit for this one. The good news is that…
Read MoreFrom the period where BioWare (free from EA influence and able to make good games) released Baldur’s Gate (1998) to the release of Obsidian’s Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006), we have what could be called the “golden age” for digital Dungeons & Dragons adaptations. Before that, the bulk of D&D work…
Read MoreOver the last couple of years, payment processors such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal have been steadily ramping up efforts to control what people can purchase. Several Japanese stores have been targeted in this way. For example, Melonbooks, a website that specialises in independently published manga, was forced to stop…
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