Sacred 2 Remaster is such a hot mess of a hot mess of a game. To be very clear: I love it so, so much. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel was released back in 2008. Remember those days? We all had PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s. Physical retail for games was still a thing, and subscription services weren’t ruining everything. The…
Of all the empires in all of history, the Roman Empire seems to have a unique ability to captivate. Perhaps because it was the first large-scale European empire – the one that “tamed Europe” as such, and so people look to it as the genesis of “Western civilisation.” It’s certainly…
The best way to think of Tormented Souls 2 is as an…
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of first-person shooters, but People Can…
Persona 3 occupies an interesting role within the broader Persona series. Unlike Personas 4 and 5, there is less of an emphasis on the “J-Pop” bubbly quality that significantly lightened the mood of those two titles (however serious the underlying message of each was). Unlike Persona 1 and 2, Persona…
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Every time it seems like the extended Yakuza franchise might be pushing its luck just a little too far, the development team at Ryu ga Gotoku find some way of reminding us all why it’s such a fine series. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth shouldn’t have worked. Pulling Kazuma Kiryu…
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It was deeply funny to me to load up Tekken 8 and see that the big philosophical theme around this game is “aggression.” A fighting game promising a new “aggressive combat system,” is surely redundant, I thought to myself, since what is any fighting game if it is not “aggressive?”…
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I’m going to be very lazy with this review of The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered, and copy/paste most of my original review of The Last Of Us 2. I’m doing this for three reasons: It was the easy decision for Sony to “remaster” a game that is already…
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To this day, one of my favourite RTS titles is The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring. With that game (and its sequel) EA (yes, EA!) achieved something truly special: a streamlined, authentic RTS that perfectly captured the aesthetics and drama of the source material, and allowed you…
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Surfing is a messy sport, and not just because you’ll get sand in places where the sun doesn’t shine. Where most sports are defined by the nice, neat rules that humans set down and agree to compete together under, the defining characteristic of surfing is that it’s a battle with…
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Persona 5 Tactica takes far too long to get to the point. However, once it gets there it shows itself to be a far more brilliant addition to the overall Persona 5 collection than many will give it credit for. At first, it seems like it’ll be irreverent fan service,…
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The last Train Sim World I played was the original, and I thought it was a magnificent experience. Train Sim World 4 doesn’t feel much different from my memory of that game (admittedly four years ago now), but it didn’t need to play or look differently in the first place.…
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It was inevitable that Yakuza 6 would not be the end of Kazuma Kiryu. It should have been, since it finished the series in spectacular fashion. However, this is the video game industry, and when you’ve got a bankable star, you keep returning to that well until enough people get…
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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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