Few games establish a sense of flow quite like OlliOlli. The combination gnarly skate tricks, wild combos, high-speed traversal, and platformer level design—Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater by way of Rayman Origins, if you want to get reductive—is a rush that only ramps up as you master its intricacies. This is …
A young woman wakes up in a strange place, her long, braided red hair flailing in the wind despite the numerous ribbons that bind it. Broken eggshells, large enough to house a person, lie scattered around, and an even larger sword towers over her. “Am I free? No. Still inside. …
Ghostrunner’s blend of free-running and action is refreshing because the latter is incorporated into the former. It’s a platformer first and foremost but the action itself remains exciting due to two reasons: most enemies die from a slash of your sword and ALL enemies kill you in one hit. By …
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 …
I don’t envy anyone tasked with making a new Metroid game in 2021. Reviving a series that’s so fiercely beloved comes with a heavy burden of expectations that often contradict: to recapture everything that we loved about those classics 20 years ago, but also to carry the series forward into …
There’s nothing quite like El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. Sure, a stylish action game that goes heavy on the religious imagery makes the likes of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta an obvious point of reference—indeed, director Sawaki Takeyasu worked on the original Devil May Cry as a character designer—but …
Psychonauts 2, the long-awaited sequel to the 2005 cult hit Psychonauts, is a game I can only describe as “mental”. It’s apt, as the game is “mental” in the way it is written and designed by the idiosyncratic mind of Tim Schafer and the Double Fine team, and in the …
The original Save me Mr Tako was a great game. A passion project created mostly by a solo developer, Christophe Galati, it was a throwback to the Game Boy classics of old, and a decidedly charming one at that. But what sounds like a fraught relationship with publisher Nicalis—who apparently …
SEGA is never shy about re-releasing Sonic the Hedgehog and Shinobi games on every new console under the sun, but is oddly conservative when it comes to Wonder Boy / Monster World (different names due to localisation history, but the same series). With more focus on adventure and exploration and …
Last week, ININ Games announced the western release date for Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, and it’s not far away: May 28, 2021. Asha in Monster World is a remake of Monster World IV, which originally came out for Sega Mega Drive in Japan in 1994. That version never …
