I don’t really understand why Idea Factory continues to experiment with action combat systems. Action combat systems are far more resource intensive to get right, and for a company producing JRPGs on a very small budget, it seems counterintuitive. Recent Neptunia titles, including Neptunia Virtual Stars and Cyberdimension Neptunia, have really suffered for it. Those games were fine in their…
One Piece Odyssey is a particularly impressive game for one reason in particular: You don’t need to be a fan of One Piece to enjoy it. So often anime tie-in games consolidate the main anime plotline to an extreme degree, just so the developers can squish some form of it…
I have reached the point where I cannot stomach the Marvel cross-media…
Crisis Core is one of the better efforts to take a beloved…
I don’t really understand why Idea Factory continues to experiment with action combat systems. Action combat systems are far more resource intensive to get right, and for a company producing JRPGs on a very small budget, it seems counterintuitive. Recent Neptunia titles, including Neptunia Virtual Stars and Cyberdimension Neptunia, have…
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One Piece Odyssey is a particularly impressive game for one reason in particular: You don’t need to be a fan of One Piece to enjoy it. So often anime tie-in games consolidate the main anime plotline to an extreme degree, just so the developers can squish some form of it…
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I have reached the point where I cannot stomach the Marvel cross-media franchise’s approach to storytelling, at all. Sadly, Midnight Suns is full of it. The relentlessly juvenile and quip-based humour that Americans seem to think passes for dry, droll and/or sarcastic humour pervades every single one of these things…
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Crisis Core is one of the better efforts to take a beloved classic video game (in this case, Final Fantasy VII) and build on it. In this case, it’s a prequel. It’s a depiction of the leadup to the legendary events that feature Cloud and his team, and is so…
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Horror, at its best, is the most intense storytelling tool that is available to us. A good horror experience – whether that be literature, film, music, or video games – is inherently challenging. It makes us uncomfortable, disempowers us, taps into the primal fight-or-flight response, and, ultimately, delivers some kind…
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My favourite film of all time is The Crow. I have seen the film so many times that I can recite it from heart. “It can’t rain all the time…. I thought I’d use your front door… And I say I’m dead, and I move.” It’s a classic. One of…
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On the one hand, The Devil In Me is a good, fun, pulpy horror game. On the other hand, The Dark Pictures Anthology, which The Devil In Me belongs to, had a good concept that the developers, Supermassive Games, has never managed to deliver on. This is the final title…
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There is a moment, about 20-30 hours into Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, where you’re about to get into your first truly big battle as a commander (yes, it’s a slow build-up to that point). You’ll still remember what it was like at the start, as you led a rag-tag…
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It might be a remake of a remake, but Tactics Ogre Reborn is one of the greatest games of its genre. It effectively established the genre, many years ago, and has barely lost anything in the years since. I have to hope that Square Enix has prepared this release to…
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Polish off those game of the year trophies, because God of War: Ragnarök is almost certainly going to win a bunch of them. Whether it deserves them, though, is another matter entirely. People are going to love it because this is a massive, visually stunning, and viscerally entertaining game. However,…
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