I’m not the world’s biggest fan of first-person shooters, but People Can Fly’s Painkiller is one of the exceptions to that rule, thanks to its grim, gothic theme, great monster design, and furious pacing. It was like the developers blended Hexen (another of my small list of beloved shooters) and Serious Sam (that would be the other one). It was…
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of first-person shooters, but People Can Fly’s Painkiller is one of the exceptions to that rule, thanks to its grim, gothic theme, great monster design, and furious pacing. It was like the developers blended Hexen (another of my small list of beloved shooters) and…
Read MorePublisher ININ has announced that it is bringing Japanese indie game publisher/developer Studio SiestA’s bullet hell game Trouble Witches FINAL! Episode 01 Daughters of Amalgam to the West sometime this summer (for us Northern folk, anyway) for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. It will be available digitally and physically. This…
Read MoreThe Western launch of sci-fi roguelite shooter Scar-Lead Salvation is two weeks away. The game’s story begins with a familiar trope: a woman wakes up with no memories in an unfamiliar place. There is an AI that seemingly wants to help, but can it even be trusted? Each floor features…
Read MoreAs a rule of thumb, it’s a good thing when developers and publishers bring older games onto modern hardware. We’re used to the bigger budget games being remade and remastered endlessly at this point, but it’s even better when it’s the more obscure games that are saved from disappearing and…
Read MoreI am absolutely terrible at SHMUPs, bullet hells, and other such action game experiences. For this reason, I don’t generally play them. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, it’s just that my progress through them is so slow – on account of my own lack of skills – that…
Read MoreEvery time Starship Troopers pops up as a topic, we get to “enjoy” the most surreal arguments on the Internet as a bunch of people argue that the film is not a satire of fascism, and that the book is not an argument for fascism. These are some of the…
Read MoreI do not understand Sker Ritual. At all. It seems that at every opportunity the developers took what was great about Maid of Sker and do the exact opposite to it, and so now, across just two games in the “Sker” property, we’ve got a confused mess across the “franchise”…
Read MoreIn hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have played ArcRunner. While it looks the part of a cyberpunk dystopia, the game itself was clearly only ever going to be a roguelike shooter drenched in neon. While it’s easy to say that you shouldn’t criticise a game for not being something it never…
Read MoreWith shooters, you would expect bullets to be constantly flying. But Children of the Sun turns this concept on its head: the player can only fire a single bullet per level. One! I really love this idea. The game is a visually-striking psychedelic revenge road trip with a blend of…
Read MoreRemember that time Sony’s head suit, Jim Ryan, got up and said “…the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?” The Metal Gear Solid Collection shows just how genuinely shallow and unintelligent that statement was. You should want to play the Metal Gear…
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