If you were to ask me what genres I think developers should take a very long break from, most days I would respond “Metroidvania” or “Roguelike.” It’s not that I have an inherent distaste for either, but did you know that overexposure to something can result in you acquiring an allergy to it? Right. Ariana and the Elder Codex is……
Resident Evil has always been a tale of placing corporate profit over human rights. From Resident Evil 1’s human experimentation, to Resident Evil 2’s company town, all the way to Resident Evil Village’s superpowered feudal lords, Resident Evil has always worn its ideology on its sleeve. Greedy, corrupt politicians wielding…
Goichi Suda and his team at Grasshopper Manufacture have carved out a…
Having not played the original Code Vein, I have no idea whether…
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is simultaneously a very fun game to play, and also one of the most irritating things I have ever had to review. Game developers really need to learn that source texts – be that history, literature, or legend, should not be seen as content to use…
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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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Don’t Nod has, traditionally, done storytelling well, but struggled to pair it up with gameplay that people could love. Life Is Strange was the breakout title for the company, and it worked well enough because it was a point-and-click adventure that wasn’t testing the player’s button-pressing skills, but Vampyr, on…
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Granblue Fantasy turns ten this year – yes, time really does fly – and it is one of the all-time most successful mobile games. It has soared to over 25 million downloads in its home country alone – and that means about one in five Japanese people have played this…
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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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