Square Enix is a company that has many decades of history, and over that time has built a business filled with competitive advantages. It is a company rich with products, services and IP that are unique to it and continue to underpin its value. Perhaps its greatest single advantage of…
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The people at Bandai Namco have a good problem with their Taiko no Tatsujin series of rhythm games. They’ve created something that is mechanically perfect. Their cute drum mascot is immediately recognisable and endlessly versatile, and whilst other rhythm games require abstraction and concentration, Taiko is easily understandable and a…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I actually think – and the existence of Alone Musc backs this up – that rhythm games are the most difficult things for independent developers to create. In theory, they should be quite easy, right? It’s not like the genre is known for AAA-budget graphics or…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Lyrica is one of the better rhythm games available on the Nintendo Switch. It might not be as well-known as the Taiko the Drum titles, or Hatsune Miku’s Switch outing (of course), but Lyrica had something different and compelling going for it: it offered culture. The sequel…
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 Matt S. We’ve seen quite a few free-to-play mobile rhythm games be re-packaged up as premium experiences and released on Nintendo Switch. Deemo, Cytus, Voez, Musynx, Lanota, and probably some others that I’m missing. As a fan of the genre, I’ve enjoyed all of these, and I enjoy…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Rhythm Fighter suffers from excess. In trying to be so many mechanical and structural elments, and then backing it up with so much happening on screen at once, it loses any sense of balance that it might otherwise have had. While it’s a noble and even…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Let me start by saying I really like Taiko. Drum ‘n’ Fun is one of my most played games on Switch, both in its rhythm-game and party-game modes. I was curious to see Taiko being converted into a JRPG in Rhythmic Adventure, and cautiously optimistic –…
Read MoreInterview by Matt S. We didn’t get a chance to review it (because it released right in the middle of so much else being dropped on us), but Mad Rat Dead is a game worth looking at (and we’ve got it on our Christmas backlogs), because it comes to us…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. As a property, I have so many issues with Kingdom Hearts, and a lot of it stems from being something that should have been so easy for Square Enix. Take Disney, and Final Fantasy, and mash them together. Let Donald Duck summon those great monstrosities of…
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