Review by Matt S. Bustafellows is right up there with the best crime fiction works I’ve ever read. Not just in terms of visual novels, or broader video games. I’m talking across all media. Bustafellows is every bit the page-turner of a Conan Doyle or Christie novel. It’s as interesting…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Samurai Warriors 5 is exactly what Koei Tecmo needed to do with their venerable series. It balances out every quality that fans have come to love about the series, while restructuring it in a meaningful manner. It offers a slice of historical drama (deeper…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. To save Akihabara – nay, the whole world! – from a growing vampire threat, you’ve got to suit up, hit the streets, and rip the skirts off school girls. Okay, you’ve got to rip the pants off businessmen and the shirts off tourists too, but we…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Red White Yellow is a useful game because it highlights some realities about game design – sometimes some of the simplest elements that melt right into the background really do help a game shine. Red White Yellow is so closely inspired by Lumines, and yet not…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. It’s weird that for as long as The Legend of Zelda has been a series, we still don’t have a defined term for that game’s genre. Internet commenters frequently debate whether Zelda should be considered an RPG, and the official title of “action-adventure” is so vague…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. It’s rare that we get a JRPG that can be considered to be genuinely innovative. Cris Tales might have been inspired by the genre’s classics, but it’s a far more modern and bold game than I think even the developers realised they were making. It all…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. There’s that rare beautiful moment when playing a scrolling shooter where the speed and the tension fade away, and the player is suspended in a perfect state of flow. I get this feeling on the rare occasions that I make it past Stage 2 on Gradius,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Here we have it: the least of the Zelda series, a decade later, remastered. Of course, when I talk about “the least” of the Zelda series I am referring to a series that is arguably the most lauded and celebrated of all, and being the “least”…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Kalypso really picked the wrong time to release Port Royale 4 on Nintendo Switch. It’s been out for a fair few weeks now, but with all the JRPGs, visual novels, and other things that have been landing on the console too, I’ve only had time to…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. “The people in noir fiction are dark and doomed—they are losers, they are pessimistic, they are hopeless. If you have a private eye, the private eye is a hero; and he’s going to solve the crime and the bad guy will be caught. That’s a happy…
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