I’m a sucker for a good narrative adventure game, especially if it has a compelling story to tell. However, not all games within this genre are created equal, and titles like South of the Circle make this quite clear. That isn’t to say I had a bad experience during my playthrough, but suffice it to
Twenty years ago (holy crap has it really been that long?), the development studio Inti Creates got their start working on the Mega Man franchise with the much-beloved Mega Man Zero series. After producing a number of games in various different subseries in the franchise, Mega Man went into its famous content drought. But that
For better or for worse – probably worse – the late 80s into the early 90s were a real time that actually happened. Some of us lived through them. And there was a time, perhaps not so long ago in memory, when there was a real sense of a sun-drenched lush paradise ruled over by
More and more, I feel like the most important thing in a game’s genre is how it decides to defy it. The way developers take the broad strokes and general idea of the genre and present you with something that feels fresh and new, or at the very least hasn’t been seen in a while.
Santo Ileso was brought to life in Las Vegas last week as select media was invited to experience Saints Row – the reboot from developer Volition being released next month on August 23. Saints Row comes nine years after the last release in this series, and more than fifteen years after the original – so what
Both low concepts and high concepts abound in the wide world of video games. Some games have premises that could be the basis of full dissertations, and others can be immediately understood in a single, tantalizing sentence. Endling – Extinction is Forever, developed by Herobeat Studios and published by HandyGames, is thoroughly a part of
As you may well know, Monster Hunter Rise was one of our top games of 2021, earning one of our coveted 10/10s. Many Monster Hunter titles get followed up with an improved “G” (for “guild,” in Japan) or “Ultimate” (in the US), and with the advent of the ease of patching that comes with modern
I do not, to this day, remember how I first learned about Recettear. But it remains, years later, one of my favorite games and an absolute delight to play through front-to-back. Sure, most of the characters were broad archetypes rather than being well-developed individuals with rich inner lives, and it was clearly a small title
It’s not often that I love a game at first glance, but I’ve always been a fan of that “dark cute” aesthetic. Of taking absolutely cute and saccharine critters and putting them in a situation that’s more than a little bit messed up. That contrast of something that wouldn’t look out of place in a
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you added ghosts to a game like Stardew Valley? More specifically, if you used a backdrop like the one found in the movie Spirited Away (the whole bathhouse for ghosts part) and coupled it with typical life sim elements? This just about sums up Spirittea, a new
If there was any sort of competition for the most re-releases in popular media in comparison to the original Star Wars trilogy, the Genesis-era Sonic games are definitely up there. Hell, the fact that there have been multiple compilations since then signals to most gamers and even passing fans that SEGA knows how timeless the
Despite what it may seem like, I am actually not an enormous Fire Emblem fan. I am, however, an absolutely unreserved massive fan of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This isn’t to say that I traditionally have disliked Nintendo’s long-running second-party series of strategy RPGs, just that they have rarely risen above “well, that was fun
Despite their tried and true persistence as a popular genre, horror video games can sometimes feel a bit polarizing: you either love them or you hate them. Moreover, they have the tendency to feel somewhat insular as well, with many horror releases iterating and expanding upon the staples established by the genre’s most popular titles.
The last time I wrote a review for an otome game, I couldn’t help but point out how childish the genre’s usual tropes felt from the perspective of an older player. The satisfaction I craved from that particular story never came because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t the intended audience. This never
You really had to be a certain age to fully understand the absolutely monstrous chokehold that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had on younger kids at the time. Since then, to a certain extent, many other IPs popular with their target audience have had a hard time replicating at the height of its popularity. Save
If you’re a regular here, you may remember the review we did a while back on Nacon’s Pro Compact controller for Xbox systems and Windows 10/11, and what we have here today can fairly be described as its big brother: the Revolution X. Billed as “competition grade,” it does pack in some additional features and
Square Enix used this season of game announcements to hold a special 25th anniversary stream for Final Fantasy VII. The roughly 15 minute long stream was packed with announcements. We’ve summarized everything you need to know down below, with trailers for each announcement. If you want to watch the full show, you can do so
First and foremost, I think it’s important to look at Power Chord as it presents itself compared to what Power Chord actually is. Because I believe that it’s easy to get swept up in the game’s presentation in such a way that you lose sight of the fact that the game itself is actually simpler
There are several matters of debate when it comes to the character action game, with discourse of the categorization often ranging from defining the term in the first place to establishing which title incepted the genre as we know it. And yet whether you think the genre began with the 2001 release of Onimusha: Warlords
Ysbryd Games, publishers of WORLD OF HORROR and VA-11 HALL-A, revealed their new game during the PC Showcase for the Summer Game Fest 2022. Developed by Necrosoft, the makers of Hyper Gunsport and Gunhouse, the new game mixes elements of school-life games like the Persona series with Italian horror cinema. Set to release some time
