Five years ago, Mimimi Games breathed welcome new life into the tactical stealth genre with the excellent Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Following in the footsteps of games like Commandos and Desperados, it reminded the world how captivating a finely-tuned blend of squad-based tactics and stealth can be, especially …
I appreciate where Memories of East Coast is coming from. I’ll always admire the DIY spirit it takes to just get stuck in as a solo developer, and I welcome, on principle, any effort to earnestly explore questions of guilt and grief. But actually delivering is another challenge entirely, and …
Earlier this year, Taito threw its hat into the mini-console ring with the announcement of the Taito Egret II mini, a miniature version of one of Taito’s most popular arcade cabinets. At that time, only a Japanese release was on the cards, but it’s now confirmed for North America and …
Last month, The Pokemon Company continued its tradition of remaking earlier Pokemon games with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Fifteen years after their original release, these remakes of Pokemon’s fourth generation seek to catch the zoomer nostalgia wave and re-establish the Sinnoh region ahead of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. But do …
As brain training games go, Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain is rather playful. The likes of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training treat everything like a workout: a structured daily routine, with a focus on tracking progress and measuring those gains; Big Brain Academy is more an assortment of brain training-style …
Playing Monster Rancher in 2021 is a surreal experience, to say the least. On one hand, it’s a ’90s game through and through, when CDs were still the standard music format and the relative novelty of a disc-based game console made a fun gimmick out of putting your music into …
Before going into detailed thoughts about my experience, allow me to get this out of the way: Death Stranding: Director’s Cut looks stunning on the PlayStation 5. Admittedly, this isn’t a feature exclusive to the PS5 as even on weaker machines like the base PS4, the game’s terrain, models and …
The Kids We Were was a hard game for me to get through. Not because of any tricky puzzles or skill demands—it’s a “walking sim”, at heart—but because of something far more challenging: its raw, unflinching honesty. It’s a game that deals with some heavy themes, handled with care but …
Even among Experience Inc’s impressive stable of dungeon RPGs, Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi is a game that truly stands out. If the stunning promotional artwork for it above doesn’t immediately grab your attention, consider the setting: a dystopian ‘70s Tokyo in which a mysterious structure suddenly appeared out of nowhere …
I write a lot about game preservation when reviewing re-releases, remasters, and the like. I’d say that’s arguably more important than the nostalgia or simple entertainment value—in an industry that’s so bad at preserving its own history, these kinds of releases are one of the better options we have for …
