True story: It was just the other day that I saw the entire Where’s Wally (I know it’s called “Where’s Waldo” elsewhere, but it’s Wally here) collection on sale. They must have done a reprint. I bought the lot of them. I have fond memories of spending hour upon hour scouring through those books. Not just to play the “can…
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is nothing if not ambitious, with multiple stories that converge and diverge in support of an almost breathtakingly epic-in-scope narrative. Meanwhile, the game works hard to connect you to a huge range of characters while throwing system after system at you. You’ve got Atelier-like map exploration…
When you think about the most influential games of all time, your…
You know how the saying goes: When it rains, it pours. Somehow,…
Square Enix is a company that has many decades of history, and over that time has built a business filled with competitive advantages. It is a company rich with products, services and IP that are unique to it and continue to underpin its value. Perhaps its greatest single advantage of…
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WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros isn’t quite what I was hoping for out of Konami. For the longest time, I have hoped against hope that the company would start localising its excellent baseball games again. I wasn’t fussed which! Either the serious simulations or the eBaseball bobbleheads arcade titles would have…
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Brave’s Rage is fine. It’s a new entry in a very over-saturated genre, and doesn’t do nearly enough to stand out, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the game itself. It’s just disappointing that there seems to be a shrinking pool of gameplay structures that indies work with, at a…
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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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I feel so naughty. Risen is banned here in Australia. It was refused classification back in 2009, for predictably nonsense reasons (it features drug use, which the Australian Classification Board absolutely hates in the context of video games). It has never been re-classified, meaning that it’s still not available here…
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Wonder Boy is one of those classic gaming icons that you’ve probably encountered at some point in your gaming life, whether it’s the classic arcade game or the more recent remakes of titles such as Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. I say “recent”, and then I look it up…
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People often forget that Game Freak is more than Pokémon. Certainly, that’s where the big money is, but as a developer, the team have come up with some excellent smaller ideas too. Pocket Jockey on the Nintendo 3DS was one of the finest download-only games on that platform. Thank goodness,…
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I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. When you think of England’s iconic moors,…
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I don’t really understand why Idea Factory continues to experiment with action combat systems. Action combat systems are far more resource intensive to get right, and for a company producing JRPGs on a very small budget, it seems counterintuitive. Recent Neptunia titles, including Neptunia Virtual Stars and Cyberdimension Neptunia, have…
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On this month’s Digitally Uploaded podcast, my fellow DDNet-ers guessed what Children of Silentown will be like. Their conclusion was Little Nightmares. And I’d have to disagree. There’s no running, no action, due to the point-and-click nature of the game. Thematically, I guess it’s kind of close, but honestly, I…
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