Bravely Default II does a great job of scratching that classic JRPG itch, while also quietly, cleverly subverting genre tropes and conventions. When it comes to JRPGs, few things are as familiar and timeless as a story about fated heroes, chosen by destiny and foretold in prophecy to appear right …
Progear. There’s a lot to like about Capcom Arcade Stadium, and I’ll get to those in a moment, but first we need to talk about Progear. Originally released for arcades in 2001, this game is an important part of the legacy of the danmaku masters at Cave. It was their …
Marchen Forest: Mylne and the Forest Gift starts out as the rather innocent, if a little surreal, story of a young apprentice alchemist. Living and training with her grandfather, her life is a mostly carefree one; gathering ingredients for potion-mixing is about the extent of her responsibilities, which mostly involves …
Astrologaster is one of the funniest games I’ve played in a long time. The real-life story of Simon Forman is bizarre and comical enough on its own, but when you tell it through a Blackadder-style historical sitcom complete with plenty of Shakespearean innuendo and earnest choral renditions of some truly …
There’s a lot going on in Project Starship X. Even by shoot-’em-up standards, it’s a game of sensory overload, full of bright colours and flashing lights, overwhelming attack patterns, and eccentric character designs. In contrast to the precision and mastery that a finely-crafted bullet hell demands, this is a game …
You know those light reflection puzzles that often crop up in action adventure games, where you have to move and rotate mirrors in order to reflect a beam of light? Solas 128 takes that concept and expands it out to a whole game, with a dose of colour theory, interlocking …
The trend of repackaging old games for folks to discover (or re-discover) on modern platforms has been around as long as console hardware iteration has been, and it’s not going away any time soon. It’s an effective, if not always elegant, solution to the problem of game preservation—a way of …
Destruction AllStars is built around a neat idea: what if we took the hero shooter concept and swapped out the “shooter” part for “vehicular destruction in the vein of Destruction Derby?”. It’s a solid idea that seems like a shoo-in for some hectic, exciting multiplayer mayhem. When all the stars …
The original Super Mario 3D World was one of the most acclaimed games on Wii U, and with good reason. It’s easily one of the high points of the whole Mario series, drawing inspiration from both its 2D and 3D incarnations to create something wholly unique and wonderful to play. …
As much as I loved the original Nioh, one particular memory is always first to mind when I think back on it: the hours I spent frustratedly bashing my head against Hino-Enma, the third boss in the game. Learning her moveset and figuring out optimal ways of dealing with each …
