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Explainer: What makes a JRPG great? It’s not the gameplay

August 5, 2016

DDNet Premium/Dragon Age/Explainer/JRPG/mass effect/Nier/Persona 4/Shiren the Wanderer/Skyrim

Explainer by Matt S. Last week I took a look at three of the key defining features that I felt characterised a good rhythm game. Perhaps surprisingly, none of those features was the music itself. I’m going to do something similar this week in looking at the JRPG genre, because…

Review: The Quest HD (Apple iPad)

August 4, 2016

Apple iPad/dungeon crawl/iPad/iPad Review/Reviews/RPG/The Quest/The Quest HD

Review by Matt S. One of the first games that I played on iPhone – way back at version 3, or whatever it was – was a humble little dungeon crawler called The Quest. Inspired heavily by the likes of Might & Magic and Wizardry, it was a very traditional,…

Review: Overcooked (Sony PlayStation 4)

August 4, 2016

casual games/cooking game/Ghost Town Games/Overcooked/party game/PlayStation 4/PS4 Review/Reviews/simulation/Team 17/time management

Review by Matt S. Overcooked is Team 17’s latest attempt to prove that as a publisher it has a lot more to offer to the world that one iteration of Worms after the last. Developed by Ghost Town Games, Overcooked is a fairly simple time management game, but it gets…

Can we please stop focusing on how “big” a game is?

August 4, 2016

DDNet Premium/game length/No Man's Sky/Opinion

Opinion by Matt C. Welcome to 2016, a year with more amazing game releases than anybody could possibly play, and a year in which people are losing their minds because a highly-anticipated game might be “only” 30 hours long. Someone who allegedly obtained a copy pre-release shared some details about…

It’s always a good day when there’s a new Hatsune Miku trailer

August 3, 2016

Hatsune Miku/Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X/News/Sega/trailer/Trailers

News by Matt S. SEGA has today released a new trailer for the upcoming PlayStation 4/ PlayStation Vita rhythm game, Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X. We’ve had the Vita version of the game for some months as an import from Japan, but after realising how well Miku turns out on…

Review: Hyper Light Drifter (Sony PlayStation 4)

August 3, 2016

Hyper Light Drifter/Indie/JRPG/PlayStation 4/PS4 Review/Reviews/Zelda clone

Review by Harvard L. It’s no faint praise for a game to be compared to the early Legend of Zelda titles, but there is no easier way to express the feel and mechanics of Heart Machine’s indie masterpiece Hyper Light Drifter. This is a top down action RPG which values…

preview-we-happy-few-microsoft-xbox-one

August 3, 2016

Compulsion Games/Preview/Survival/We Happy Few/Xbox One/Xbox One Preview

Preview by Lindsay M. It’s the misty morning of October 11, 1964. I’m in what is labelled as the Wellington Underground, but appears to be a bunker of sorts. There are construction chests scattered about; they each contain a handful of scrap parts. There’s a television set to a live…

review-kerbal-space-program-sony

August 3, 2016

Indie/Kerbal Space Program/PlayStation 4/PS4 Review/Reviews/simulation

Review by Mikhail M. Kerbal Space Program is one of the few Early Access games that I bought on Steam to actually release and impress me throughout the development cycle. I was elated at the thought of it coming to PlayStation 4, as it would help more people to experience…

Retro reflections: On the impact that Final Fantasy had on all JRPGs

August 2, 2016

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Retro reflections by Matt S. I’m going to talk about Final Fantasy in my retro reflections this week, because Final Fantasy is a game that is slowly slipping out of people’s thoughts. It’s almost never listed among people’s favourite games of the series any longer, and very few talk about…

ten-asian-films-that-didnt-need-white

August 2, 2016

film/film review/list/Top 10

List by Matt S. In the fall out from the quite horrible trailer for The Great Wall, in which a film about a Chinese cultural icon is instead led by Matt Damon, a guy with no Asian blood in him at all, there’s been quite a lot of debate around…

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