Every so often I have to admit that I get a review wrong. When I reviewed Dead or Alive 5 on the PlayStation 3, I’d plugged about 30 hours into it, and while I enjoyed it, it didn’t quite hook into me like I wanted it to. But this was…
Read MoreMatrix and Slitherine are strategy game specialists, and as such I have always been a bit disappointed that they haven’t done more with the iPad format to date. Here is a platform that is just perfect for strategy games and has really, so far, undelivered in terms of both quality…
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 MorePoisoft must be over the moon. The little Japanese development studio was founded in 2008 and just five years later it’s become a partner for Nintendo. And not just that, it’s managed to do so by developing a mobile phone game – a genre Nintendo constantly criticises. Splash or Crash…
Read MoreThe term ‘roguelike’ gets used quite a bit. My son has even heard of and used it – though he does not know what it refers to. I actually sat down and explained to him what the game Rogue was. I was pretty young myself when that title came out…
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 MoreConfession time! This is my first Gears game. I like Japanese games, and it’s really hard to think of a game more alien to the Japanese design sensibilities than this one. This series has always struck me as utterly macho as only American aesthetics can allow and about as elegant…
Read MoreGoichi Suda has always been a difficult game developer to review. Do we, as critics, reward his ambition, or focus on the inevitable gameplay flaws that work into his games? For me personally, it’s somewhere in between. With some games, such as Lollipop Chainsaw, I consider the message that the…
Read MoreWhile randomly-generated stages in a video game can offer great variety, they can also easily be exploited to make up for less work on the side of the developer. Bending pseudo-random numbers in certain ways can allow for enormous amounts of video game content to be created within a very…
Read MoreThe game’s afoot! Strange rites and gruesome murders in foggy London town lead the famous consulting detective into a world of shadow, mystery, and horror. Developer Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened actually released a few years back on the PC, but is only now making its way to iOS devices…
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