Brave’s Rage is fine. It’s a new entry in a very over-saturated genre, and doesn’t do nearly enough to stand out, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the game itself. It’s just disappointing that there seems to be a shrinking pool of gameplay structures that indies work with, at a…
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The “Golden Age of Piracy” will never cease to fascinate historians and amateur enthusiasts alike. While the caricatures of peg legs, eye patches, and parrots on the shoulder might not fascinate the imagination long past childhood, the political environment that allowed piracy to flourish, the role it played in the…
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I feel so naughty. Risen is banned here in Australia. It was refused classification back in 2009, for predictably nonsense reasons (it features drug use, which the Australian Classification Board absolutely hates in the context of video games). It has never been re-classified, meaning that it’s still not available here…
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Wonder Boy is one of those classic gaming icons that you’ve probably encountered at some point in your gaming life, whether it’s the classic arcade game or the more recent remakes of titles such as Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. I say “recent”, and then I look it up…
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People often forget that Game Freak is more than Pokémon. Certainly, that’s where the big money is, but as a developer, the team have come up with some excellent smaller ideas too. Pocket Jockey on the Nintendo 3DS was one of the finest download-only games on that platform. Thank goodness,…
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I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. When you think of England’s iconic moors,…
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I don’t really understand why Idea Factory continues to experiment with action combat systems. Action combat systems are far more resource intensive to get right, and for a company producing JRPGs on a very small budget, it seems counterintuitive. Recent Neptunia titles, including Neptunia Virtual Stars and Cyberdimension Neptunia, have…
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On this month’s Digitally Uploaded podcast, my fellow DDNet-ers guessed what Children of Silentown will be like. Their conclusion was Little Nightmares. And I’d have to disagree. There’s no running, no action, due to the point-and-click nature of the game. Thematically, I guess it’s kind of close, but honestly, I…
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I have reviewed Persona 4 Golden twice at this point. The last time I did – the PC release – I wrote 2,000 words about it. I’ve also penned several essays about the game’s themes, and enthused about it to just about everyone that will listen for the past decade.…
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Magical rings are such a well-trodden fantasy trope that they’re now at the point of clichéd symbolism that would score you an “F” grade in your creative writing course. With rings being the focus of Fire Emblem Engage, and Engage itself being a loving homage to everything that came before…
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