GamerEscape

In a couple of past articles I’ve written, I’ve mentioned the genre of games known as the visual novel. Actually, the term “game” is a difficult one to apply. The amount of interactivity between games in the genre varies, but all of them boil down to one thing: lots and lots of reading. There’s a

Final Fantasy Type-0, as of the moment of writing, remains one of the very few modern Final Fantasy games to have not been officially released outside of Japan. Interviews with the game’s team and Square-Enix over the past few years have strongly hinted that it might get a Western release, but no plans have come to

Just a day shy of its release date in North America, Amazon decided to hype up the release of South Park: The Stick of Truth with a new trailer. Released through the Amazon Video Games Facebook page, the new trailer gives a quick rundown of the game’s synopsis and characters. There’s not much new in the

Nearly a year after ending DLC support for the Rock Band series, Harmonix has been relatively quiet. The company announced one of their next projects, Fantasia: Music Evolved, at last year’s E3, but not much other news has come out of their offices. That is, until today. Earlier this morning, Harmonix released a debut trailer for a

Earlier today, Kotaro Uchikoshi, writer for the Zero Escape series (9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward) created an English Twitter page to share some news with Western fans of the series. The focus was on the development of the third installment of the Zero Escape series. Across a long series of Twitter posts,

A game’s aesthetic can make or break it. A game could be made that has absolutely everything that a gamer might be looking for and more – perfect engine, fun and engaging gameplay, involved story, etc – but put all that into a graphical style that people don’t find appealing, and many wouldn’t bother to

Back to Basics The First Person Shooter genre is probably the most popular genre of video games in current times. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that, as you are likely aware of that already. The FPS genre dominates sales charts and the big names (Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc) command high

Left Behind Until recently, the Tales series has had a spotty history of Western localization. On average, one in three Tales games has yet to reach American shores, and even less for European regions. Namco Bandai is starting to change this, with two Western Tales releases scheduled for 2014, and a simultaneous worldwide release for

In recent years, the gaming industry has seen the revival of a once-thought-long-dead genre: the adventure game. Originally popular in the early days of gaming, back when a game was lucky to even have some kind of graphics attached to it, the adventure game was the most popular way to present a story heavy game.

[NOTE: It is difficult to discuss the story of Ys II without mentioning plot points of the first game. This review will have spoilers for the end of Ys I] Halves of a Whole Direct story continuation across video games sequels is relatively uncommon. After all, most game creators want to be able to attract a

The Obscure Third In the 1980s, there were three big names in the JRPG genre. Two of them are well-known to just about every gamer in the West: Square, the company that rose to prominence with the release of Final Fantasy, and Enix, whose Dragon Quest series exploded in popularity in the East. The third pillar, while

The North American Square Enix Member’s YouTube page posted an unboxing of the Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII collector’s edition earlier today. A very hyped up Mat Kishimoto, product manager on the game, sits down with the package to show its contents to the audience. Alongside a copy of the game, the collector’s edition includes

Earlier today, Atlus USA released a new trailer for upcoming survival horror game Daylight. Unlike the trailer released at E3 2013, this one shows off the gameplay and some voice acting of the upcoming game. According to the game’s official website, Daylight’s major selling point is its procedurally generated levels. It creates a new world to explore with

In a bit of news that flew under the radar from Western fans, a new piece of the Final Fantasy X series was recently released in Japan. A novella, Final Fantasy X-2.5 has been causing some controversy among fans of the series in Japan. Various posts and accounts from readers of X-2.5 across the internet

The Next Big Genre Following the release and rave reviews of Final Fantasy VII in 1997, publishers went on a race to bring over as many JRPGs as they could to the West. Just about anything with an anime aesthetic and hit points was up for grabs. After all, JRPGs were becoming the “next big

A couple of weeks ago, Namco Bandai posted a teaser page counting down what appeared to be an announcement for a new Tales Of game. Earlier this morning, that announcement was confirmed. On an official stream on Japanese video website NicoNico, Namco Bandai announced the next game in the Tales Of series, titled Tales of Zestiria.

Back in September, Xseed Games announced that The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC (Second Chapter) will be released in the West in 2014 on PSN and Steam. The teaser trailer for the announcement also mentioned that the original Trails in the Sky would receive a re-release on Steam in Winter 2013. Unfortunately, it

The visual novel is a fairly niche genre of gaming in the West. In the past, releases of games from this genre were rare, mostly due to the sheer amount of translation involved and the fact that many games of the genre don’t have “gameplay” in the typical sense of the word. The genre began

Namco Bandai recently announced through their Twitter page that a new Ridge Racer game is set to be released this month. The game, titled “Ridge Racer Slipstream,” will be iOS and Android exclusive. Few details have been released at this time, although the launch trailer mentions features such as full-HD gameplay and extensive choices for vehicle