The Dynasty Warriors franchise has fascinated me, from a gaming culture point of view. Here is a game that in its homeland of Japan consistently rates both with the critics and on the charts, and yet when it is released in the west there is always, inevitably, a vocal group…
Read MoreWhen you cross technical proficiency, a reasonable level of polish, and feature parity to AAA console releases with uninspired design, you get Sky Gamblers: Cold War. It’s impossible to claim that the game doesn’t give you enough bang for your back; $4.99 gets you a single player mode featuring survival,…
Read MoreLooking at the screenshots, Rivals at War 2084 (or RAW 2084), could have been a superb game. It looks like it has everything going for it to make for an addictive free-to-play game. It’s got collectable cards, it’s got a neat setting and the promise of team-based arena warfare is…
Read MoreI had never had the opportunity to play Earthbound before. That’s not from lack of desire to experience it, but being Australian means that I miss out on all kinds of classic RPGs (and a bunch of modern ones as well) that people rave about. However, Earthbound was an especially…
Read MoreStealth Inc: A Clone in the Dark sneaks its way onto the PlayStation Network and brings its unique mix of puzzle/platforming and stealth-based action onto both the PS3 and the Vita, packing the much beloved cross-buy and cross-save features right along with it. This is a game that stands proudly…
Read MoreDespite the fact that I never really got into the RPG genre (which deserves an article of its own), I have always loved exploring mysterious new worlds. This doesn’t happen much outside of your Elder Scrolls and Dragon Quests, but games like Super Metroid and Shadow Complex managed to combine…
Read MoreIn a weird way, I miss the days of the early-to-mid 2000s. Nostalgia plays a part, yes, but in that time period the gaming community seemed a lot more forgiving, at least in my eyes. The name-calling was less volatile, consumer hate/ distrust was not at a constant fever-pitch, and…
Read MoreShantae has a legend almost as powerful as the 1001 Arabian Nights that it draws inspiration from. The Game Boy Color game went through all kinds of development and then publisher hell and in the end the publisher, Capcom, was only able to shift copies to retailers by forcing them…
Read MoreJust as the PlayStation 3 tends to snatch up JRPGs, the Xbox 360 has been the home of the bullet-hell shooter this generation. With that in mind, it’s remarkable that the former mouthful known in Japan as Mamoru-kun wa Norowarete Shimatta!: Meikai Katsugeki Wide Han was able to make it…
Read MoreLast year’s mobile-exclusive RPG Adventure Bar Story wasn’t the finest example of the genre, but it had a charm about it, in no small part because the game’s scenario was written by Shinichi Yoshiike – a minor legend in Japan’s game industry for his work on the Atelier series, amongst…
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