I think I blinked and missed out on the announcement of Crymachina, which is a bummer because it looks quite good and I would have liked to write about it sooner! The “serenely dark” action RPG is about mechanical girls trying to survive a post-apocalyptic world and become “Real Humans.” That begs the question: what does it mean to be…
It’s very rare that I get to write this, but the Nobunaga’s Ambition series is hitting 40 this year. That’s 40 years of Kou Shibusawa’s historical simulation franchise. 40! Very few game series that are still running are older than me, so that’s downright impressive. It’s also completely understandable, as…
Omen of Sorrow is something that 18-year-old me would have found so…
Sorry folks, I know I’m a bit late on this news –…
It’s difficult to write within the fantasy genre in 2022. On the one hand, it’s painfully easy to write something so self-serious and overwrought that it comes across as a desperate and doomed effort to channel Tolkien. Writing fantasy that people will take seriously is monumentally difficult because fantasy by…
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Rabbits are the best pets. They’re fluffy and funny and it’s only when you have them as pets that you realise they’ve got big personalities that fill the home with their energy. We don’t get anywhere near enough games that make rabbits the focus, and many of those that do…
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Remember Rampage? If we asked you to think of a video game with a gargantuan creature rampaging through a city and annihilating everything in its path, you’re probably going to come up with some game from that series. For most of us, it was this loud and obnoxious PS2 entry,…
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Square Enix has decided today is a great time to release what feels like all of its information on Tactics Ogre: Reborn. And when I say there’s a lot, I mean it. There’s information on the reimagined unit development, new item charms, new battle party screen features, seven major battle-related…
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It’s difficult to review fandiscs, because they’re a step beyond a sequel in terms of their reliance on the base material. Generally it’s fine to review sequels. You can go in-depth with like the Trails of Cold Steel series, or the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, because players can still play…
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It’s really disappointing that Square Enix would dump the third Voice of Cards release in the middle of such a jam-packed schedule. Even from Square itself. The company has released DioField Chronicle, NieR Automata on Switch, and Valkyrie Elysium in the span of just a few weeks and it has…
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White Day: A Labyrinth Named School has proven to be quite the enduring horror property. Remakes and remasters of this thing have been appearing on consoles, phones and PCs since its original release way back in 2001. And now it’s on Nintendo Switch. Perhaps the best platform for it of…
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Penko Park is simultaneously one of the most original games you’ll ever play, and also something so shamelessly derivative that it’s hard not to wish it could have been more ambitious. Thankfully, the creative bits are the ones that matter to the overall quality of the game. Related reading: We…
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While a triple-A studio will brute-force open world games and FPSers onto the market with massive development budgets, indies usually need to target a more modest genre. The classic platformer roguelite, for example. That’s what developers, PolyCrunch Games, are doing with FALLING OUT. FALLING OUT will be published by Firestroke,…
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A deluge of Harvest Moon/Rune Factory/Stardew Valley-likes have come out of nowhere, but there really has been a lot of them in recent months. Perhaps it is something cultural. Perhaps developers are observing an increasingly tired and agitated community around them as the ongoing terrors of climate change, pandemics and…
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