The Amiga was home to a whole host of exceptional games in its time, but not all of them earned the right to be called true classics, even if they were innovative for their time. Advancements not only in visuals but also gameplay design have left some old school retro “classics” as interesting curios to look at, but not exactly…
Puzzle Bobble is an amazing puzzle game. I use that tense specifically because it’s one of those concepts where the developers got it absolutely plumb right from the get-go, all the way back in 1996. Yes, that was a long time ago. But I’m right. Fire up a copy of…
Read MoreMonster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook could have been something special. The premise is really quite clever, but unfortunately, it ends up relying too heavily on the roguelike foundations for that premise to really take flight. Survival is meant to be the core of the thing, and in theory, it reaches…
Read MoreVery, very rarely does a game get made about the Tokugawa Shogunate. There are thousands of games about the Sengoku wars that came immediately before, and there are plenty made about the end of the Shogunate as well. The 250 years in the middle, however, are largely blank (at least,…
Read MoreIt’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…
Read MoreI joke frequently about how I’ve never made it off the tutorial plateau of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so it’s just as well that you don’t need to have played that game to get stuck into Tears of the Kingdom (though I’m sure it helps). Tears…
Read MoreI have lost track of how many Mercenaries games there have been at this point. Developer, Rideon, certainly churns them out, and the series has evolved into a comfort food experience. They look vaguely like Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, and play like a vaguely decent homage to those…
Read MoreDokapon Kingdom: Connect is a clever little attempt to take the board game format, and apply it to an RPG. Just go in with the expectation that it’s the latter that only looks like the former, and you’ll be well placed to have a good time of it. Related reading:…
Read MoreAs I do with FMV games, I’ve had my eye on Mia and the Dragon Princess since it was announced last year. This one is a pretty straightforward interactive film with branching narratives. It’s made by two of the heavy hitters in contemporary FMV gaming, Wales Interactive and Good Gate…
Read MoreAt first I was disappointed with the concept of Ash of Gods: The Way. The original Ash of Gods (subtitled Redemption) was a gritty little tactics RPG with rich, albeit dark storytelling. Clearly inspired by The Banner Saga, it never eclipsed that masterpiece, but it still stood in the same…
Read MoreI just want to start this review by saying that I love Tiara, the blue-haired secondary protagonist from the Fairy Fencer series (it’s a series now that there are two games). Like, I really, really, love Tiara. As far as anime female design goes, she’s my third favourite character ever,…
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