CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 has walked quite the rocky path. Following a launch burdened by myriad technical issues and negative player reception, the game has nevertheless soldiered on and steadily improved. I was lucky enough to miss out on a lot of egregious technical issues in my initial playthrough, and thus enjoyed my time
In 2019, Remnant: From The Ashes showed up on the scene with an interesting fusion of third-person cooperative shooting gameplay and the challenging, more exploratory emphasis of Soulslike games. While a novel blend in its own right, the first game’s rougher edges prevented it from really sinking its claws in me as much as I’d
I can hardly remember a time that an upcoming game has had simultaneously as much hype and hesitancy amongst its fanbase than Final Fantasy XVI. On one hand, we have the first mainline release in the series in over five years, being helmed by the oft lauded producers and designers behind Final Fantasy XIV. A
I found myself with a fair number of feelings when it came to Hammerwatch II. None of them were perhaps the ones the developers wanted, but as I’ve said many times, what is far more important than what I think about a game personally is what the game is trying to be. And in no
Throwback games are nearly always a risky business. There’s certainly much to be gained by taking notes from the classics that came before, but a lack of innovation on tried and true concepts can just as readily cause a game to feel like a drop in the bucket for a genre rather than a proper
Today, management at Guerrilla announced that their Studio Director of 20 years, Angie Smets, is moving onto a Head of Development Strategy role at PlayStation Studios. This statement, which was released alongside their announcement for management restructuring, could have some big implications: “We have full confidence in our new leadership as they steer Guerrilla towards
So here’s a statement that might surprise people who read this because it’s kind of considered verboten among anyone who plays a lot of video games: I actually really like mobile games. No, really. Don’t get me wrong; a lot of mobile games are shallow, lightweight experiences that barely qualify as games and I would
It feels like we really have already passed the point wherein we should be getting dozens of deeply felt YouTube videos about what makes a good roguelite game, or else we already have been getting them and I just happen to have somehow missed them over the past several years. The thought was on my
At least as far as pre-release reception is concerned, Forspoken has something of a hill to climb with its release. Despite flashes of an expansive open world and impressive-looking magical combat, the marketing focus highlighting protagonist Frey’s reactions to the world around her occupied a majority of discourse surrounding the game. Now, after being the
The Star Ocean series is a storied one that has been going through somewhat of a rough patch recently. Typically releasing a game once per console generation, the series has gone from unknown (the previously Japanese only Star Ocean for Super Famicom) to cult favorite (Second Story and Til the End of Time) to generally
One of the recurring problems that has plagued the Soulslike genre basically since the beginning is that there isn’t a very good pipeline for getting into the games. Even if you’re someone who absolutely adores these titles, you had to get into it by just finding a game that really clicked for you and then
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
While I tend to lean more towards fantasy over science fiction in video games, there has been the odd franchise or two with the latter type of setting that I’ve gotten into. The Metroid series comes to mind here, along with some sci-fi based shooters. Bearing in mind the relatively neutral perspective I have on
Few games have been as much of a roller coaster for me as Weird West. What first caught my attention was the developer, Wolfeye Studios, being made of former Arkane Studios developers. Weird West is also an immersive sim just like Arkane’s previous titles Dishonored and Prey, but this time departing from the usual first-person
At the tail end of last September, I had the opportunity to check out the demo for Young Souls, a previously Stadia-exclusive beat ‘em up developed by 1P2P and published by The Arcade Crew. By and large, the general takeaway from my several hours with it was an exceedingly positive one, and I found myself
I swear to whatever deities you care to name, there was a time when “action RPG” did not mean that you were making a game specifically to take on Dark Souls. And I’m going to be honest here when I say that the flood of these particular titles is starting to wear on me. Now,
In October of 2017, German developer Piranha Bytes asked a question: “What would an open-world RPG that mixed worldbuilding elements of both fantasy and science fiction look like?” The provided answer to this question was ELEX, an acronym representing the words Eclectic, Lavish, Exhilarating, and Xenial.
There’s nothing quite like a good beat ’em up. Tricks of the trade guarantee things like fast-paced action, in-depth combat, and side-scrolling mayhem, with aesthetic flourish typically being the cherry on top. When a developer can successfully integrate all four of these elements into a cohesive whole, it’s easy to find yourself with a pretty
It’s hard to review major DLC for the Assassin’s Creed games. I noted this back when I was reviewing the first piece of major post-launch DLC for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, since on a simple level you have the fundamental problem of taking a very big game and giving you more stuff to do in it.
So here it is, the sequel. It’s not exactly a mystery that The World Ends With You became a cult hit on its release, and with good cause. It wasn’t just that it had a very different setting than normal, setting itself in the beating heart of a stylized version of Shibuya with a cast
