Being the huge gremlin that I am, the first thing I did after firing up the Alienware m15 R7 was install Final Fantasy XIV. Not the most graphically demanding game to test a laptop that’ll run you a cool four grand, I know, but it’s also where I spend most …
Saints Row isn’t entirely devoid of merit. The vehicular gameplay is awesome. The visuals are splendid. The narrative is infinitely more grounded compared to its immediate predecessors. But for all of its strengths, the experience is brought down exponentially by tiresome side content and a mediocre cast who fail to …
Sound quality and comfort—skip past all the buzzwords and tech jargon, and that’s really what matters in a wireless headset. A quick and easy setup is useful, too, and battery life matters in a wireless set, but what it ultimately comes down to is: does it sound good, and is …
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 …
It’s probably a little weird to be writing a review of the Retroid Pocket 2+ a few days out from the release of the Pocket 3, but here I am. Such is the price of indecision, I guess—I’ve been eyeing up retro handhelds for a while, but with so many …
There’s a fundamental mismatch at the heart of Super Bullet Break. On one hand, it’s a roguelike, a genre defined by impermanence; on the other, it’s a (microtransaction-less) gacha game, a genre defined by permanence. In a roguelike, the transient nature of everything you pick up, and the situations that …
The tension of a roguelike and quiet charm of a cozy life sim might seem at odds, but Cult of the Lamb finds magic in that juxtaposition. There’s nothing quite like a quiet, cozy life sim. The old Animal Crossing vibe; hanging out with a quaint little woodland community of …
You could be forgiven for looking at screenshots from Train Valley and expecting a railway management sim a la Railroad Tycoon; it certainly looks the part in screenshots. And while it does have some light simulation elements, in truth, it’s more of a puzzle game—and a rather unique one at …
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 …
A decent soundtrack and precise input recognition are all you really need to make a good rhythm game. The musical style, presentation, narrative framing, and method of interaction are all important details, too, but it’s those first two that will make or break any music game. It’s easy to get …
