My impatience for, well, anything is well-documented at this point. Waiting five years for a game seemed completely unfeasible but I have done it! I have waited half a decade for Read Only Memories: Neurodiver (ROM: Neurodiver), the sequel to 2015’s 2064: Read Only Memories. When I was offered a chance to preview the game for PC last month, I…
So, as it turns out, if you take the raging, rancid, unapologetic nationalism, historical revisionism, and military hero worship out of an FPS, and instead drop in a really pretty girl with a bikini costume option and pink gun skin, then I go from hating the genre to loving it.…
Read MoreThere are a lot of big, world-shattering things that go on in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and yet the best parts of it are the interactions between the small, close-knit group of characters that form the core of the story. This was much the same with the two immediate predecessors, but…
Read MoreIn most cases, I play JRPGs for the narrative. I want to be lost in the characters, setting, plot and world. I like when it’s supported by quality gameplay mechanics, of course, but the frameworks and structures that support that narrative are less of a focus for me than that…
Read MorePascal’s wager, the philosophical concept, is an excellent thought exercise that considers that humans play a simple game, not unlike the Prisoner’s Dilemma, on whether we should believe God exists. It breaks down like this: If God does not exist, then whether you believe in him or not is irrelevant…
Read MoreOne of the challenges I have with Koei Tecmo’s Warriors franchise is determining the pecking order of the various games within the series. If you asked me to rank the Final Fantasy series, for example, there’s a clear upper echelon (Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VIII), but…
Read MoreWe rarely see indie developers tackle the rhythm genre, and for understandable reasons. It’s not a genre with mass market appeal, but it’s also one filled with established franchises backed by more budget and polish than an indie studio could muster. And with simple mechanics that aren’t easily innovated upon,…
Read MoreFor the entire prelaunch hype cycle behing Stray, if you mentioned “the cat game”, people knew exactly what game you were talking about. It seemed like the perfect mix of cute & cuddly, since it was about a furrball, and a contrasting cyberpunk dystopian aesthetic, complete with funky (and also…
Read MoreThere are a few genres that simply don’t age well. A good JRPG is timeless, as are platformers, brawlers, fighting games and SHMUPs or side-scrolling shooters. Sports games and FPSers, however, don’t. With FPSers, if you strip the nostalgia out of even the mighty Doom or Duke Nukem, I would…
Read MoreTake Game Of Thrones. Take Princess Maker. Mash them together (after taking the sex out of both), turn the result into a spreadsheet simulation, and you’ve got Long Live The Queen. This ultra indie game is not without its delights and offers players a decent challenge on their way to…
Read MoreI’ve yet to lose a match in Matchpoint Tennis, and that’s the game’s one substantial flaw. Unfortunately, that one issue effectively ruins it. What’s the point of a sports game that is so lacking in difficulty that there’s no risk of a loss? The entire genre is meant to be…
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