Have you heard of Myst? Because you shouldn’t play that game; it’s bad. But there’s a reason to bring it up here when talking about The Talos Principle: Reawakened, and it’s because of a very basic idea. Myst was originally a big seller for two reasons. The first is that it was a game built
It might feel a little bit weird to consider that Granblue Fantasy has been running for nearly as long as the relaunched version of Final Fantasy XIV, but it’s true. Not only did the mobile game launch in 2014 and just celebrate its 11-year anniversary, the title has already had numerous spinoffs including Granblue Fantasy
There’s an oddity going on with the Assassin’s Creed series, and it’s something that I noted back in my review of Mirage when that came out in 2023. Basically, the series went into becoming a full-on action RPG with a fully customizable protagonist who could, if you so desired, do very little assassination in the
So as so often happens, it’s time for a confession first: I have never been a huge fan of the Trails series. I have been aware of it for a long time and I am glad that it has generally gotten more awareness in North America over the years, because it’s a big long-running franchise
Many years ago, in 2012, there was a little-noticed game released titled Defender’s Quest. I certainly never would have noticed it myself if not for a confluence of events that wound up with me randomly playing the demo, but the fact that I did play the demo meant I absolutely fell head-over-heels in love with
It’s weird to me how often I wind up reviewing not just visual novels, but visual novels that are specifically based on the idea of how technology interacts with people. This was never something I intended to have happen, but it has now become a running theme. Why? I don’t know. Sometimes things just happen.
Sometimes, it’s hard for me to know which parts of a game that don’t totally land in a preview are a result of the game still being in an early state and which parts are just conceptual issues. There are a lot of games that go into early access when they are more or less
I’m not going to front. This should actually be kind of the easiest review I’ve ever written or will write, because I should be able to just point to my preview of Metal Slug Tactics and note that the full game allows you to play as Leona Heidern. If these two facts placed adjacent to
Inti Creates and I have a complicated relationship as a studio. I’ve mentioned before that the studio can do a lot with a little or a little with a lot, which gives you some idea of how wildly it feels the overall output can swing from one end to the other. They’ve made games I
This is not the first time that I have done a full review for a game that I already previewed, but The Plucky Squire feels a bit different. It turns out that there was actually more momentum behind this title than I had previously thought, which is something I’m glad to see! This is a
Back in the long long ago, there was a thing called Flash. Flash was a really useful tool for making games on the internet, and it led to the rise of a certain sort of game that was easy to get into, play for a while, and then hop out of when you got a
It’s kind of a well-worn trope at this point to have a game that is set inside of a storybook of some sort. Lots of games have done it now, usually with the best of intentions. That doesn’t make it bad, but it does mean that you kind of need to do more than just
First of all, I have to say something, and I believe everyone will understand: It is almost criminal that the third installment in this series has come now, and it doesn’t have a subtitle. Cat Quest and Cat Quest II can get away without them, but Cat Quest III really deserves a subtitle, especially as
There’s a lot of stuff you can do with a game when you explore the space between players and character, but not a lot of games are really interested in doing that. And to be fair, it’s complicated to do in a narrative in the first place. It’s a remarkably short hop between remembering that
There’s no way to write about Metal Slug as a franchise without acknowledging that it’s a really weird one. You can really forget that the series kicked off in 1996, because its core gameplay – run, jump, and shoot, with one hit killing your character – very much feels like a relic of a longstanding
If you think about it, cyberpunk is a weird genre. It’s not weird because it has something of a wide-open structure, although that’s definitely part of it; it’s more weird because it’s a genre that has a core concept that’s remarkably dark but can also be retooled to be fairly light-hearted by playing the same
All right, kiddos, let’s establish something that’s not going to come as a surprise for much of anyone here: I like robots. I think there is loads and loads of storytelling potential for working with robots, and I especially like things that ask big philosophical questions about robotics as a concept. I also like when
You know what I love? A convoluted backstory of development. And boy howdy, does Phantom Fury deliver on that front. Back in 2016, a game was released titled Bombshell, which had originally been a Duke Nukem game but was retooled to be about Shelley “Bombshell” Harrison who had originally been a supporting character in the
Am I allowed to be… like… kind of tired of roguelikes at this point? Don’t get me wrong, that is a rhetorical question; I’m allowed to be tired of anything that I am authentically tired of and I don’t really need to ask permission. But it feels like people have reached a point with roguelikes
When we first saw Pepper Grinder trailers in our work chat, I immediately responded with a tongue-in-cheek nod to a classic movie joke: “This summer, Dig Dug is back, and this time it’s personal!” Which is easily the first mood you can get out of the promotional trailers. This is a game in which you