Review by Harvard L. Tokyo Xanadu is being released in the West at a somewhat unfortunate time. It trails Persona 5 and The Caligula Effect, when its 2015 Japanese release date puts it more in the ballpark of Conception 2 or Mind:Zero. It’s developed by Falcom, arguably the inventor of…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. One of the quickest tells for what a developer intended with a game, even if it doesn’t quite succeed at that intention, is if the game pays homage to Shakespeare on a meaningful level. If you’re dropping names from his plays, repeating famous quotes verbatim, and…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Generally when people think about the Vikings, they think about incredible warriors with fearsome reputations raping and pillaging their way through the territories of others. Occasionally people’s knowledge of the Norse will extend as far as their religion (or, at least, the military warrior-Gods like Thor…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The opening line of dialogue in NieR: Automata could have been pulled directly from Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, if those men were militant androids about to go to war with an army of genocidal robots. Related reading: On why NieR: Automata’s predecessor was the best game of…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Horizon: Zero Dawn reflects all the strengths of Guerrilla Games as a developer, but also its limitations. It’s a game that offers a grand vision, compelling ideology, and technical brilliance, but it’s also one that can’t quite shake a certain blandness, as it’s let down by…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. For all its success, very few developers have attempted to emulate From Software’s “Souls” franchise (Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne); perhaps because developers realise what a monumental task these games are. It’s easy to chalk them up as just super-challenging action RPGs, but in reality it’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Ever since Dark Souls landed on the scene, people have loved calling any game with a high difficulty curve that demanded patience and practice “the Dark Souls of XXXX”. The “Dark Souls of shooters”, the “Dark Souls of rhythm games,” and so on and so forth;…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. You know how children think it’s funny to take something good, and then put something ridiculous over the top? Or take something serious, and then apply hyperbole or sarcasm to the point where it’s ridiculous, and they then think it’s funny? Most people grow out of…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Touhou is a franchise known chiefly for its genre-defining bullet-hell insanity. Team Shanghai Alice’s wholehearted embracement of fan-made games (“doujin” more accurately), though, has led to a bustling, open-ended franchise where creativity is bread and butter. Its characters have gone on to star in everything from…
Read MorePreview by Matthew C. As a rule, I don’t really like roguelike games all that much. Sure, there are plenty that I’ve played and enjoyed, but that enjoyment is usually in spite of the things that make the genre tick – permadeath, high difficulty curves, lots of randomisation and so…
Read More