Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament is actually an older title, being an Xbox One and PC release from around six years ago. It’s getting a second lease on life on the PlayStation now, and I’m glad it is because it has given me the excuse to play it after missing it last time. It’s very good, despite having the…
I hate that I love so much about Infinity Nikki. There’s such a warming wholesomeness in abundance that the experience feels almost transformative and subversive. It’s like the developers saw all the combat loops that dominate all the other big-budget open world games and were determined to show that there…
I want to get this out of the way upfront – it…
Planet Coaster 2 is good. But then Planet Coaster was good, and…
Let’s all remember for a moment here that Sony basically gutted its Japanese game development operation, and the developer behind Astro Bot, Team Asobi, was the only one that survived. Even then it was diminished. Then consider that it created this game, with its abundant creativity and warmth. Where all…
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At the risk of irritating a certain group of fans to the point that I need to lock down the comments box for my own sanity: I have an issue with how a lot of games handle the Warhammer 40K license. Not that I want to get into this debate…
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Visions of Mana is Secret of Mana, 20 years later. I said as much in my preview, and the deeper I played the more the game seems exclusively interested in tapping into my nostalgia for that SNES classic. Given that the Mana series has been otherwise highly experimental in recent…
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Tennis is a difficult sport to bring into video game form. It’s not because the sport itself is mechanically challenging. Compared to the likes of football it is limited both in terms of the number of players competing and the expansive flow of the game. And compared to something like…
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Schools are excellent locations for horror. They’re a shared experience for most of us, so developers benefit from the familiarity and can play on that to set up unease. Attending school is also a highly emotional experience that covers the full gamut thanks to a combination of societal pressure and…
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I am absolutely terrible at SHMUPs, bullet hells, and other such action game experiences. For this reason, I don’t generally play them. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, it’s just that my progress through them is so slow – on account of my own lack of skills – that…
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Every time Starship Troopers pops up as a topic, we get to “enjoy” the most surreal arguments on the Internet as a bunch of people argue that the film is not a satire of fascism, and that the book is not an argument for fascism. These are some of the…
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Shin Megami Tensei V was already a good game. SMT V: Vengeance adds an entirely different narrative route that, while similar enough in the early stages, diverges drastically deeper into the game. The core is still a battle between angels and demons in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo that your protagonist is…
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On the one hand, the extended Hyperdimension Neptunia property, which has been kicking around since 2010 and the PlayStation 3, has become a familiar comfort. With more than one game released every year (some are remakes, yes, but this is release #26 bearing the Neptunia name), you will by now…
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Square Enix recently announced that it was cancelling some $150 million worth of games that had previously been greenlit as it shifts to more proven quantities and a strategy of being more selective in what it develops and publishes. What that means is that you should all enjoy SaGa Emerald…
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