The original Denpa Men game was a charming, if somewhat shallow dungeon crawler with a cute AR gimmick for acquiring the weird men-things that would do the fighting and adventuring on your behalf. Ultimately it was charming, but lacked the all-important sensation of context to make the adventuring really stand…
Read MoreThere is an intensity to Soul Sacrifice that makes its minimalist plot and single-note theme feel more compelling than it has any right to be. I’m not sure if that intensity was a consequence of the developers being clever with a limited budget (Vita games don’t justify AAA-grade budgets, even…
Read MoreLet’s talk about why Code of Princess exists for a moment. Here is a game that is close to a first for the Nintendo 3DS; a full-priced retail game that was sold exclusively over the eShop in some parts of the world. Why not release it at retail? That’s easy,…
Read MoreI was wondering when XSeed would take its first steps into iPad publishing. As specialists in publishing Japanese games, there are surely plenty of opportunities to localise Japan-developed iOS titles emerging as the App Store is now hitting a critical mass over there that has seen so many western developers…
Read MoreIt initially struck me as a little strange that the first PlayStation Vita port of GUST’s superb Arland trilogy in the Atelier series is the second one. Atelier Rorona came first and yet Totori is what we’re now taking with us on commutes around the world. Once I started playing…
Read MorePandora’s Tower is a game that I, a humble Aussie, has had access to for some time. Well over a year, in fact. Given that it’s about to be released, finally, in the US, we felt it was a good time to review it as the Nintendo Wii’s swan song…
Read MoreOver the course of the first two Hyperdimension Neptunia games, Compile Heart found itself with a very niche hit franchise. While Activision isn’t about to dump Call of Duty to develop a knock-off of this series as its new yearly release, Compile Heart and American publisher, Nippon Ichi Software America,…
Read MoreOf all the JRPGs that I have played in this generation, the Atelier games by the tiny development outfit, GUST, have been the ones that I have enjoyed the most. I realise that they’re not awe-inspiring works of art, deep-and-meaningful philosophical treatises into the meaning of life and other questions…
Read MoreThere is something very Tim Burtonesque running behind Persona 4. On the one hand players experience the banality of life in a small Japanese village. Children watch TV. Incessant rain boxes people indoors. Families complain that a big shopping mall is driving the local businesses out of town. And then…
Read MoreLast year, I was deeply disappointed by Kingdoms of Amalur. It was a good game, even a great one, but it fell short on the potential that a game developed by the minds of game developer Ken Rolston, storyteller R.A Salvatore, and artist Todd McFarlane. Bringing those three nerd-cool hero…
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