My favourite Serious Sam title to date is the PlayStation 2/GameCube spinoff, Next Encounter. As much as I enjoy Croteam’s work with the series proper, Climax Solent’s take on the formula had a better rhythm and energy to the action. Or it might have just been that it was my first Serious Sam, so I immediately latched on to it…
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…
Star Wars Zero Company is an excellent tactics game in the XCOM…
Look, the Nippon Professional Baseball league – the NPB – is just…
It’s unclear to me what audience LEGO 2K Drive is intended for. It’s very capable at what it does, but it also seems to be an effort to shove a whole lot of best practice big game stuff into a package, and in doing so comes across as a little…
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As a baseball simulator, MLB The Show 23 is barely different to last year’s iteration. Even by the standards of annual sporting franchises, this one comes across as having the lightest of touches to improve the experience. The commentary cut in with the same comments at the same moments that…
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Annual sports game refreshes all tend to get a little stale over time, but few have had such a fall from grace as we saw out of 2K Games’ WWE line of games back with WWE2K20. The shift from Japanese developer, Yukes, to US Studio, Visual Concepts, led to one…
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If you haven’t played Resident Evil 4 before, the game follows Raccoon City disaster survivor turned government agent, Leon S. Kennedy, on his mission to [undisclosed Spanish-speaking European country] to rescue Ashley Graham, the daughter of the US President, who has been kidnapped. Leon explores a village, a castle, and…
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We don’t hear as much about the Eastern Front during World War 2. This is, of course, largely because the heroes of the piece were Soviets. Anything that could be perceived as lionising the heroics of Soviets doesn’t play well with the West’s official propaganda line on what happened during…
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Catan’s trajectory has been incredible, given that it’s only 28 years old. Initially, it was something of a disruptor, helping the “Eurogame” become a dominant approach to board games. From there it became a Monopoly-like thing – a game that absolutely everyone owns a copy of and is aware of…
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Koei Tecmo is no stranger to the classic Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The entire Dynasty Warriors series is, of course, based on that classic text. In many ways, it’s what makes Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty such a captivating game, because it’s such a different creative take on…
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I am, in many ways, the worst possible person to review a Raiden game. It’s not because I hate the series, or can’t appreciate the beauty of a vertical shmup. Quite the reverse. I’ve loved Raiden ever since the first time I lined up a 20c piece against a grubby…
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There are three things I look forward to in a Yakuza game: Exceptional writing and storytelling, a vibrant and interesting open world (rare, given how dull and bloated most open worlds are), and an authentic setting that makes me homesick for Japan. Like A Dragon: Ishin! might not have “Yakuza”…
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The “Golden Age of Piracy” will never cease to fascinate historians and amateur enthusiasts alike. While the caricatures of peg legs, eye patches, and parrots on the shoulder might not fascinate the imagination long past childhood, the political environment that allowed piracy to flourish, the role it played in the…
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