Grizzly Man is the fourth title in LCB Game Studio’s Pixel Pulps series, beginning a second trilogy titled “Pixel Pulps DTV Collection.” (DTV is short for direct-to-video.) It is a psychedelic slasher game about a former MIB agent who was severely injured in a mysterious attack, waking up with full amnesia. Ten years later, he is working as a field…
Game collections are all the rage these days, and are becoming increasingly something that goes beyond just the game. Retro collections aim to be museums as much as things you play, with Digital Eclipse in particular mastering the “interactive museum” format. Riki 8Bit Game Collection isn’t really a “retro collection,”…
Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament is actually an older title, being…
Koei Tecmo’s JRPG house, Gust, is a factory for the genre. It’s…
While Game Freak continues to try and innovate within the Pokémon property, and find its next hit evolution (sorry for the pun, I couldn’t resist), there is still a loud demand for the “classical” monster-collecting formula. I feel that myself – I often find myself booting up my 3DS for…
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Admittedly I wasn’t following Digimon Survive too closely in the leadup to release, however, I did know it was going to be a tactics JRPG featuring collectible monsters. That in itself was exciting given that I have fond memories of Pokémon Conquest back on the DS. What I was not…
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I’ve played a lot of restaurant sims (yes, I was obsessed with Diner Dash back in its heyday) so I was excited for the chance to play Recipe for Disaster. It’s more complex than what I’m used to: not only am I designing and running the restaurant, but I’m now…
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Forget the absolutely dismal Dark Alliance dungeon crawler that was released last year. There was a time where “Dungeons & Dragons” and “Dark Alliance” put together was something worth getting excited about. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance was a series of just two games, but they remain two of the better…
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So, as it turns out, if you take the raging, rancid, unapologetic nationalism, historical revisionism, and military hero worship out of an FPS, and instead drop in a really pretty girl with a bikini costume option and pink gun skin, then I go from hating the genre to loving it.…
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There are a lot of big, world-shattering things that go on in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and yet the best parts of it are the interactions between the small, close-knit group of characters that form the core of the story. This was much the same with the two immediate predecessors, but…
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In most cases, I play JRPGs for the narrative. I want to be lost in the characters, setting, plot and world. I like when it’s supported by quality gameplay mechanics, of course, but the frameworks and structures that support that narrative are less of a focus for me than that…
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Pascal’s wager, the philosophical concept, is an excellent thought exercise that considers that humans play a simple game, not unlike the Prisoner’s Dilemma, on whether we should believe God exists. It breaks down like this: If God does not exist, then whether you believe in him or not is irrelevant…
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One of the challenges I have with Koei Tecmo’s Warriors franchise is determining the pecking order of the various games within the series. If you asked me to rank the Final Fantasy series, for example, there’s a clear upper echelon (Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VIII), but…
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We rarely see indie developers tackle the rhythm genre, and for understandable reasons. It’s not a genre with mass market appeal, but it’s also one filled with established franchises backed by more budget and polish than an indie studio could muster. And with simple mechanics that aren’t easily innovated upon,…
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