A compelling art style can do a lot for a game. Cuddle Monster Games’ Lone Ruin is a modest game from a small development team that doesn’t do anything to shake up the twin-stick roguelike formula, but the moody atmosphere conjured up by murky neon colours is enough to pull …
As far as video games are concerned, there is one attribute that I appreciate more than any other: entertainment value. And there aren’t many affairs more entertaining than an exceptional action game, something I haven’t had the opportunity to experience since Capcom’s brilliant Devil May Cry 5. Luckily for me, …
A good metroidvania always hits the spot. It doesn’t need to be groundbreaking, or to reinvent the wheel; just the right balance of mobility, intertwining level design, and upgrades that change how you move around and interact with the game space. Get those fundamentals just right—easier said than done, admittedly—and …
It’s hard to overstate the impact of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It took an excellent but comparatively niche franchise and threw it into the mainstream, and did so without diluting any part of what made the series special to begin with. (Heartthrob characters and tea dates are the perfect gateway …
The revamped PlayStation Plus subscription service is here, bringing with it a library of a few hundred games (for the Extra and Deluxe tiers, at any rate). The value is clear—it takes playing just a few games from the list for the subscription to work out cheaper than buying the …
Bright Memory: Infinite is a conceptually fascinating, technologically impressive game: an intense sci-fi FPS with a hefty dose of Chinese mythology, playing out across some truly gorgeous sets based on real-world locations. But for all that promise, it also feels incomplete, like a prototype for something much more grandiose—a very …
Wonder Boy has a bit of an odd history. It sits alongside Alex Kidd as one of Sega’s more iconic second-string platformers (behind Sonic the Hedgehog, of course), yet inconsistencies with naming conventions, numbering, localisations gave the series a bit of a disjointed canon. Spotty appearances in other Sega compilations …
It’s coming close to five years since Bayonetta 3 was first revealed, and just shy of a year since the announcement of a 2022 launch window. The lack of new details since then—despite numerous summoning circles on Twitter before every Nintendo Direct—has caused some skepticism about whether we’d actually see …
After OlliOlli World introduced the world its wonderfully outlandish skate-themed fantasy world, it seems only fitting that the first DLC, Void Riders, should revolve around an alien invasion. So when a UFO crashes into Burntrock and a bunch of odd-looking creatures come out in search of the raddest skaters to …
One of the best things about the wide net Koei Tecmo casts with licensed Warriors games is seeing the clever ways the Musou formula can be twisted. From Zelda-style items and puzzle bosses in Hyrule Warriors, to Dragon Quest Heroes and Persona 5 Strikers being a full-fledged JRPGs, the influence …
