The original Bullet Soul was a game with some neat ideas, but it didn’t execute on them as well as it could have. It was a typical bullet hell shooter in a lot of ways, but it emphasised the negation of enemy bullets as much as it did evasion and …
Gaming
I have fond memories of playing NES Golf as a kid. I knew nothing about golf and never had an interest in the real-life sport, but there was something about the way that game boiled all the complexities of golf down to simple, intuitive game systems that just hooked me. …
Mary Skelter: Nightmares is one of my favourite dungeon crawlers in a long time. Granted, I don’t play a huge number of them and I may have missed some other gems over the years, but I can’t think of any other dungeon crawler that’s captivated me as much as Mary …
I don’t understand the hate that Knack got when it launched alongside the PlayStation 4 a few years ago. It wasn’t an amazing game by any means, and it could get repetitive, but it was a fun, competent action adventure romp with a few neat ideas that it executed well. …
A couple of years ago, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita owners got introduced to The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, one of the best JRPGs in years. Sadly, the Western release came in the waning years of both those platforms, so it didn’t make as much of a …
Rabi-Ribi cleverly combines the Metroidvania and bullet hell genres, using a silly but heartfelt story and adorable pixel art to seal the deal. Two of the very finest game genres are Metroidvanias and bullet hell shoot ‘em ups. (This is a fact. Don’t @ me.) When you take two of …
I’ve seen a lot of commentary about Agents of Mayhem being, in essence, a single-player hero shooter. Indeed, it was this discussion that got me interested in a game I’d otherwise paid very little attention to. I was sold on the idea after reading just the first line of Kotaku’s …
Yukie: A Japanese Winter Fairy Tale is a haunting interactive folk tale, and another example of what can be done with RPG Maker and a bit of creativity. Despite the limitations of RPG Maker as a development tool, a lot of folks have been able to produce some fascinating games …
Matterfall is the latest example of Housemarque’s mastery of twin-stick shooters, this time combined with platformer mechanics – and it works wonders. Housemarque has earned a reputation as one of the finest developers of twin-stick shooters, and rightfully so. They’ve got this classic genre down to a fine art, making …
I have a weird relationship with tactical RPGs. I don’t dislike them as such, but most of the time when I enjoy a TRPG it’s in spite of the genre’s unique qualities, rather than because of them. I’ve played plenty and enjoyed plenty of them, but I tend to find …