Review by Matt S. On the grand scale of disappointments in video games, I do think that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Remastered Edition will rank highly. The original, released way back on the GameCube, was a delightful little game. It was a homage to everything people loved about Final Fantasy,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Let me tell you a story. A story about Ravenloft. Ravenloft was a big influence on me from a very early age (in retrospect, probably a little too early to be into gothic horror). It was a Dungeons & Dragons setting in which an otherworldy “continent”…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. The survival genre is interesting to write about critically, since many design choices which would feel grating or exhausting in any other genre are, instead, the survival game’s calling card. Things like permadeath, repetition, disempowerment, unsatisfying combat, even at times tedium – normally we don’t value…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Pokémon is a hard thing to “clone.” Think about it – you’ve got to balance out hundreds (and hundreds) of collectible critters, and make sure there’s a steady flow of them to collect throughout a full-length JRPG. Then you’ve also got to make sure they’re all…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. In the grand scheme of things, you’re not going to remember Giraffe and Annika. It doesn’t do anything particularly eye-opening with its design and gameplay, and it’s not a substantial contribution to any particular kind of discourse. What it is, however, is blissfully sweet and good-natured,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Dear game developers and publishers: if you’ve got a visual novel that needs localisation, you really need to consider the process of finding a quality localiser to be an essential step in the publishing process. Your game exists exclusively for that story, and if you can’t…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Woah. Woah. Woah. What the hell did they do to Project Cars? That brutally hardcore and rather dry racing simulator that turned heads and got people to break out their driving wheels over the last few years has somehow been replaced with… Real Racing 3. That’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket Like the lost catacombs of Egypt, Only God knows where we stuck it hieroglyphics Let me be Pacific, I want to be down in your South Seas But I got this notion that the motion…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. I’m all for cultural games and that means I’ll naturally have a positive slant towards titles like Road to Guangdong. This game, penned by writer Yen Ooi and published by Excalibur Games, sees the player taking the role of Sunny, a recent art graduate in mid-90’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The appeal of golf is that, unlike most other sports, the competition is almost entirely internal. Sure, you’re trying to land at the top of a leaderboard, but to do that you’re testing your own powers of concentration and precision, rather than trying to directly out-perform…
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