When a series is known for being as surrealistic as the Yakuza series is, keeping it fresh over the long term is all the more challenging. After all, the oddball stops being oddball when it becomes mundane. Thankfully, to date the developers at Ryu Ga Gotoku have been able to sidestep that, and indeed have become even more experimental and…
I’ve had the opportunity to get some hands-on time with Koei Tecmo’s upcoming historical epic, Rise of the Ronin. Supposedly this has been in development from as far back as the original Nioh, and I was a little shocked when I went in expecting something like Nioh, Wo Long, or…
Read MoreThere is a moment in the original Final Fantasy VII where, after hours of scrapping around an ugly, horrible city, the party breaks out into the wider world, and it’s one of the defining moments of the game. Suddenly, an adventure that seemed narrow in scope became huge and expansive:…
Read MoreMy Time at Sandrock is a very entertaining game that should never have been released on the Nintendo Switch. Or, I should say, the problems with the game better be exclusive to the Switch and a consequence of the hardware and not, simply, poor development, because otherwise the game should…
Read MoreThere’s a certain end of the video game industry that mistakes emotional manipulation for quality narrative. The goal is to find the right voice actors, get the players invested enough in the world that they spend a lot of time in it, and then make sure those key scenes are…
Read MoreAssassin’s Creed: Mirage is what all Assassin’s Creed games should be: Uncomplicated. As I’ve regularly repeated over the years, Assassin’s Creed is my one blockbuster vice, and I love the series despite it being increasingly representative of so much of what I dislike about AAA games. But this one brings…
Read MoreRain is a common motif in noir. Whether it be the grim, dank, and hostile urban decay of Se7en, or the neon-drenched dystopia of Blade Runner, water is so common to noir that there is, to quote Paul Schrader in his book Notes on Film Noir “an almost Freudian attachment…
Read MoreIt’s unclear to me what audience LEGO 2K Drive is intended for. It’s very capable at what it does, but it also seems to be an effort to shove a whole lot of best practice big game stuff into a package, and in doing so comes across as a little…
Read MoreI joke frequently about how I’ve never made it off the tutorial plateau of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so it’s just as well that you don’t need to have played that game to get stuck into Tears of the Kingdom (though I’m sure it helps). Tears…
Read MoreA new trailer and music video for Infinity Nikki has been released by developer, Papergames. The trailer is entitled “Nikki and the God of Beautiful Dreams,” while the music video is entitled “Bloom Up.” That song is being performed by the voice actor behind Nikki (Kana Hanazawa). For those who…
Read MoreI really never thought I would play Jesus Christ does Morrowind. There are Christian games, yes (and they’re universally terrible). There are open world games. It’s such a surreal idea to combine the two of these that I’m still struggling to parse it despite having played through the prologue. And…
Read More