Review by Matt S. Pokémon is a hard thing to “clone.” Think about it – you’ve got to balance out hundreds (and hundreds) of collectible critters, and make sure there’s a steady flow of them to collect throughout a full-length JRPG. Then you’ve also got to make sure they’re all…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. In the grand scheme of things, you’re not going to remember Giraffe and Annika. It doesn’t do anything particularly eye-opening with its design and gameplay, and it’s not a substantial contribution to any particular kind of discourse. What it is, however, is blissfully sweet and good-natured,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Dear game developers and publishers: if you’ve got a visual novel that needs localisation, you really need to consider the process of finding a quality localiser to be an essential step in the publishing process. Your game exists exclusively for that story, and if you can’t…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Woah. Woah. Woah. What the hell did they do to Project Cars? That brutally hardcore and rather dry racing simulator that turned heads and got people to break out their driving wheels over the last few years has somehow been replaced with… Real Racing 3. That’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket Like the lost catacombs of Egypt, Only God knows where we stuck it hieroglyphics Let me be Pacific, I want to be down in your South Seas But I got this notion that the motion…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. I’m all for cultural games and that means I’ll naturally have a positive slant towards titles like Road to Guangdong. This game, penned by writer Yen Ooi and published by Excalibur Games, sees the player taking the role of Sunny, a recent art graduate in mid-90’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The appeal of golf is that, unlike most other sports, the competition is almost entirely internal. Sure, you’re trying to land at the top of a leaderboard, but to do that you’re testing your own powers of concentration and precision, rather than trying to directly out-perform…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. “Why are all the girls wearing such short skirts when they’re using technology that lets them fly through the air, with all the disadvantages that would bring to wearing a skirt?” This was, quite genuinely, my first thought as I settled into Aokana. It’s not like…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Chinese Parents looked like a harmless enough life sim. What harm could it do, with its colourful, cutesy art-style and the premise of tracing a young Chinese child from birth to their eventual undertaking of the Gaokao (the university entrance exam)? As I now know, it…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Through the Darkest of Times is a critically important game that is so relevant and poignant today and we should all play it (and then be terrified by its implications). It’s the kind of game that belongs in schools and museums because the points its making…
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