There are some creators where one just knows exactly what kind of game they’re going to get from them. Kenichiro Takaki is one of those creators. If Takaki’s name is attached to a project, one can typically expect…well, lots of fanservice. Fanservice that crosses so far over the line of “offensive” that it wraps right
Video games are finally becoming an accepted format to tell involved, intimate, and personal stories. At least, it seems that way to me. What was once the exclusive realm of film and literature appears to finally be normalized in the gaming medium, which has long been questioned on artistic merit (and whether it has any).
THQ Nordic has made a name for itself in recent times for reviving and remaking cult classic games and franchises. From reviving the Darksiders franchise to working on remakes of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, this studio seems determined to bring oft long forgotten titles back into the modern
The Rock of Ages franchise is already a pretty creative mashup. Blending Super Monkey Ball-esque action and tower defense, it’s hard not to use the work “unique” when describing it.
Have you ever watched a horror movie and found yourself rooting for the murderer/stalker/creature killing all of the main characters? Perhaps the characters you’re “supposed” to cheer on are all unlikable…or maybe you just enjoy watching buckets of blood being poured on your screen. Well then boy howdy do I have the game for you!
When you think about the places games are created and developed, how soon does Australia come to mind? My wild guess for many is that it wouldn’t quite crack your top five list. Japan and the United States are usually the first the come to mind. Perhaps France and Canada next, followed up by Germany
There just seems to be something about the farming profession that lends itself to video games. Not just games, but popular games. From Harvest Moon to Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley to the infamous FarmVille, gamers just can’t seem to get enough crop harvesting in their lives. German developer Goodgame Studios has made its name
The XBox series of consoles is typically seen as starved of Japanese-developed releases, and it appears bullet hell shoot-em-ups are no exception. Luckily, for fans of the genre, one developer is taking the time to port a recent title over to the XBox One. Alfa System, developers of classic bullet hell series Castle of Shikigami
Rock is dead. Nobody listens to that stuff anymore. It’s all about the electronic music nowadays! EDM! EDM! At least, that’s the core conflict in the game No Straight Roads, developed by Metronomik and planned for release later this year. We had the opportunity to try out a new preview build on PC (via Epic
When crafting a puzzle game, there’s generally two ways a developer can go about it. The first is the simplest: put puzzles in front of the player and let them have at it. Little-to-no frills, nothing fancy, just good old-fashioned puzzle solving. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this; Picross DS is still one of
We live in the age of digital media. No longer are we required to keep physical collections of music, movies, and games on shelves, taking up space. Now, it’s very much possible to keep one’s entire collection of media on a hard drive the size of a pack of cards, if not smaller.
Disintegration is a game with a high-profile pedigree that seems to have mostly flown under the radar. The game was crated by V1 Interactive, a studio founded by Halo co-creator and former Bungie Creative Director Marcus Lehto, and this appears to be his first game since his work at Bungie. However, it feels like there
One of the trailers that wowed me the most at last year’s E3 was for Cris Tales, an RPG with a stunning artstyle that immediately caught my eye. No release date was announced aside from “2020,” but a demo was released that helped tide me over.
It’s become a bit of a running joke amongst some in how often indie developers and teams opt for pixel-style art in their games. It’s reached the point where whenever a new game with this aesthetic is announced, there’s some group that will complain, “Oh, look, another indie dev using pixels again, how original.”
I’ve been a fan of the Project Diva series of rhythm games for nearly a decade now, ever since I picked up the PS3 release of Project Diva F back in 2013. I’d never even heard of Vocaloid or Hatsune Miku at that point, picking the game up on a whim as I wanted another
When playing a game, there are certain functions that the player just plain expects to work functionally. In a shooter, one would expect their gun to fire every time they pulled the trigger (assuming it’s loaded, of course). With rhythm games, inputs need to function each and every time, lest the game be deemed “broken.”
Alfred Hitchcock – one of the most famous film and TV directors of all time, whose influence on media can still be felt to this day, despite recent revelations of his history casting him in a controversial light. Despite his most famous works being produced in the 50s and 60s, people to this day still
Lengthy story-based games, like JRPGs and visual novels, are typically the kinds of games I’ll never replay. Between the fact that my time for games is limited and the shear amount of new titles out there I still need to play, I find little reason to go back and re-experience a story I’ve already played
Shoot-em-ups and bullet hells are really one of the most basic kinds of games one can make. Give the player something that shoots bullets, throw a bunch of enemies on screen that attack back, bing bang boom, you have yourself a shoot-em-up. Hell, one of the first programming classes I took back in college had
When I say “romantic comedy” or “romcom,” what do you think of? Movies about goofy guys trying to pick up a woman way out of their league? Maybe an overly serious dude being taught how to enjoy life by a free-spirited girl who drifted into his life?
