The first otome visual novel that I played – in fact, the first visual novel at all – was Hakuouki, back on the PlayStation 3, when visual novels on console were a rare treat indeed. These days, we’re inundated with the genre, but Idea Factory, the publisher behind Hakuouki, have now released Homura: The Crimson Warriors, and it remains a…
Unfortunately, a trip into the Nintendo Switch’s online store is a chore to wade through endless piles of trash to try and find the occasional good game. The store is so flooded with utter crap at $10 or less that most of us would surely be at the point where…
Tales of Berseria was the moment that Bandai Namco’s long-running Tales series…
Nintendo’s decision to revive the Famicom Detective Club series seems to have…
Unfortunately for Crymachina, NieR: Automata exists, and so as a concept “post-apocalyptic world where robots ask existential questions about what it’s like to be human,” is probably a theme that should be scratched from all other developers’ brainstorming sessions. Despite that very prudent advice, the team that took on Crymachina…
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Exactly two things got me through the darkest days of the pandemic. One was my family, and a careful consideration of hygiene and risks in equal measure. The other (without exaggeration) were the Jackbox Party Pack games. Related reading: Many years ago we reviewed the very first Party Pack. Our…
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I don’t believe that games “age,” as new things come along to replace them. It’s a silly thing to suggest of an artwork. Is the Mona Lisa no longer relevant because people have Wacom tablets? Of course not. Is Shakespeare “dated” because Disney’s Marvel films are made on a bigger…
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It wasn’t so long ago that THQ Nordic dipped deep into its back catalogue of vintage PC games to release Risen on the Nintendo Switch. That Western RPG “classic” remained a fun time for its Caribbean-fantasy-with-pirates theme, despite being almost unplayable in places. Now it’s Gothic’s turn, and you’ve got…
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It’s hard to shake the feeling that with Super Bomberman R 2, Konami has finally got its groove back with its iconic mascot. This series is going to have a major audience again. And I’m not just saying that because just today I bought a pile of merchandise from a…
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You know how the saying goes: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” I do feel both very foolish and a great deal of shame for playing Taito Milestones 2. It’s not because this is a retro compilation of poor games. Far from it. The…
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Samba de Amigo is a game of pure joy and high-octane energy (with some acid surely thrown in when it was being developed). It comes across as an even more explosive explosion of colour and humour than Bandai Namco’s excellent Taiko the Drum series. In the party context that this…
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Reality is increasingly uncertain, and this is fascinating. Anonymous;Code, the latest in the series that has brought us Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes and Chaos;Head, is a play on this idea, and it, too, is fascinating. Quite possibly the most fascinating of all this series of visual novels, precisely because it is so…
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There is something fascinating about how frequently the classic JPRG genre has become something that independent game developers have decided to pastiche. It’s more than perhaps any other genre. Yes, there are plenty of modern games that channel retro shooters like Doom, and many independent developers are inspired by Mario.…
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I struggle to think of a more consistent developer than Otomate. The Idea Factory otome specialist developer produces games at such a rate that I’m convinced the only reason we don’t get all of them in the West is that the localisers simply can’t work that fast… and that’s a…
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