My very first Warriors game was Samurai Warriors 3. I know, I came to the series late. The critics kept calling them “button mashers” in reviews and that made them sound very unappealing to me. Stupid, naïve me. I only played Samurai Warriors 3 because Nintendo decided to publish it…
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Sometimes, games don’t need to be remade. When the creative vision was already fully realised the first time around, simply making the thing available again is all that’s needed. That’s what Nintendo has done with Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and it’s as good now as it was ever. Related…
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My impatience for, well, anything is well-documented at this point. Waiting five years for a game seemed completely unfeasible but I have done it! I have waited half a decade for Read Only Memories: Neurodiver (ROM: Neurodiver), the sequel to 2015’s 2064: Read Only Memories. When I was offered a…
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Schools are creepy places, and it doesn’t seem to matter which country you’re talking about, they’re going to be one of the most common settings for horror stories. The Bridge Curse 2: The Extraction is Taiwan’s turn to haunt a place of learning (in this case, a university), and it’s…
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One of the things I’ve learned in making my own visual novel is that scope can very easily blow out. Every new scene, character, idea, and story beat that you add in means more backgrounds, CGs, character costumes and music. Then it all becomes very expensive. And so, in most…
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On the one hand, the extended Hyperdimension Neptunia property, which has been kicking around since 2010 and the PlayStation 3, has become a familiar comfort. With more than one game released every year (some are remakes, yes, but this is release #26 bearing the Neptunia name), you will by now…
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One of the finest examples that I can think of that highlight the differences between Western and Eastern game development, and some of the weaknesses that we as a collective industry have in critiquing video games, is to look at Dante’s Inferno and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron side-by-side.…
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There is massive money on the table for the first localisation outfit that can produce high-quality translations of Chinese-developed games for their Western release. Unfortunately, we don’t have that localisation infrastructure yet. It has only been in the last decade or so that games from Taiwan and/or China have started…
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Of all the ways to use the mighty Demon Slayer license I honestly did not expect a Mario Party clone to be one of the first. And yet, that’s what has happened. Following hot on the heels of the perfectly reasonable slash-em-up from from a few years ago comes Sweep…
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Square Enix recently announced that it was cancelling some $150 million worth of games that had previously been greenlit as it shifts to more proven quantities and a strategy of being more selective in what it develops and publishes. What that means is that you should all enjoy SaGa Emerald…
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