Hideo Kojima is the video game industry’s big auteur. The Stanley Kubrick of games. The guy who somehow gets a big budget to make his strange experiments, even when they defy the industry best practice, and as we all know, the games industry is very best practice orientated. It’s all well and good to say these things, but ultimately, they…
Hideo Kojima is the video game industry’s big auteur. The Stanley Kubrick of games. The guy who somehow gets a big budget to make his strange experiments, even when they defy the industry best practice, and as we all know, the games industry is very best practice orientated. It’s all…
Read MoreWhen a series is known for being as surrealistic as the Yakuza series is, keeping it fresh over the long term is all the more challenging. After all, the oddball stops being oddball when it becomes mundane. Thankfully, to date the developers at Ryu Ga Gotoku have been able to…
Read MoreThe original Kingdom Come Deliverance was in some ways unfortunate. For reasons that would be annoying and exhausting to revisit, it got caught up in the whole GamerGate thing from a decade ago, and this tainted many people’s perceptions of it. On top of that, the game itself did several…
Read MoreI hate that I love so much about Infinity Nikki. There’s such a warming wholesomeness in abundance that the experience feels almost transformative and subversive. It’s like the developers saw all the combat loops that dominate all the other big-budget open world games and were determined to show that there…
Read MoreIt turns out that I’m not the only person who took one look at Promise Mascot Agency’s announcement two months ago to find I was both baffled and immediately emotionally invested. Today, Kaizen Game Works released a gameplay deep dive video for the world’s first open world mascot management crime…
Read MoreIt is over 30 degrees where I live (it feels like 37 at this moment, to be precise) so living in a world stuck in an eternal deep freeze sounds downright lovely right now – but the gameplay teaser trailer for Permafrost has reminded me that a frozen world might…
Read MoreFarming sims are great: you can be one with nature without ever having to step foot outside. That may sound lazy to some but as someone who is super sensitive to the sun and heat, farming sims give me an experience I wouldn’t otherwise actually enjoy. I’m always on the…
Read MorePromise Mascot Agency has the most curious genre description I’ve seen in quite some time: open world mascot management crime drama. Management, crime, and drama are all great (and common) genres. But mascot management? What the heck?! That’s so cool it should already be a thing! I love when developers…
Read MoreEndless Ocean Luminous is a rare treat. We live in a world where the games industry is steadfastly committed to speed. Often it’s done through violence and combat, but not always. Even puzzle game developers are on the hunt for ways to make their ideas flow as snappily as possible.…
Read MoreI cannot think of a worse possible time to release Outward Definitive Edition on Nintendo Switch than right now. Just weeks after the almost shockingly similar-themed Dragon’s Dogma 2. One’s an JRPG, the other is a survival-style RPG, but they both want to be the same thing, and the former…
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