I’ve given open world survival games a red-hot go in the past. I’ve played Funcom’s own previous effort in the genre, Conan Exiles, and gave it every chance to impress me. I’ve yet to find one that has left me with an impression other than that this is just a horrible genre that is fundamentally at odds with any type…
The Blood of Dawnwalker is the latest proof that Polish RPGs should now be seen as a genre in their own right, like JRPGs are. There’s a distinct approach to the genre that comes out of studios like CD Projekt Red, Questline, Reality Pump and now Rebel Wolves, that have…
I was very hesitant to review Ghost of Yotei, as my experience…
Hideo Kojima is the video game industry’s big auteur. The Stanley Kubrick…
Promise 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…
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Endless 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.…
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I 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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I just know that people are going to make comparisons between Rise of the Ronin and Ghost of Tsushima, and that’s really quite unfair to Team Ninja’s latest. Already in previews I’ve seen nonsense like “while not a graphical stunner like Ghost of Tsushima”. Where Ghost of Tsushima was trying…
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I’ve had the opportunity to get some hands-on time with Koei Tecmo’s upcoming historical epic, Rise of the Ronin. Supposedly this has been in development from as far back as the original Nioh, and I was a little shocked when I went in expecting something like Nioh, Wo Long, or…
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There is a moment in the original Final Fantasy VII where, after hours of scrapping around an ugly, horrible city, the party breaks out into the wider world, and it’s one of the defining moments of the game. Suddenly, an adventure that seemed narrow in scope became huge and expansive:…
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My Time at Sandrock is a very entertaining game that should never have been released on the Nintendo Switch. Or, I should say, the problems with the game better be exclusive to the Switch and a consequence of the hardware and not, simply, poor development, because otherwise the game should…
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There’s a certain end of the video game industry that mistakes emotional manipulation for quality narrative. The goal is to find the right voice actors, get the players invested enough in the world that they spend a lot of time in it, and then make sure those key scenes are…
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Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is what all Assassin’s Creed games should be: Uncomplicated. As I’ve regularly repeated over the years, Assassin’s Creed is my one blockbuster vice, and I love the series despite it being increasingly representative of so much of what I dislike about AAA games. But this one brings…
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Rain is a common motif in noir. Whether it be the grim, dank, and hostile urban decay of Se7en, or the neon-drenched dystopia of Blade Runner, water is so common to noir that there is, to quote Paul Schrader in his book Notes on Film Noir “an almost Freudian attachment…
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