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 were other ways to do things. Infinity Nikki is in…
I want to get this out of the way upfront – it is genuinely silly that Farming Simulator has become an annualised franchise. It makes sense to have annual sports games because teams change from one year to the next, and having an authentic roster matters when you’re playing while…
Planet Coaster 2 is good. But then Planet Coaster was good, and…
First and foremost, Dragon Age: The Veilguard isn’t a Dragon Age game.…
I just know that people are going to make comparisons between Rise of the Ronin and Ghost of Tsushima, and that’s really quite unfair to Team Ninja’s latest. Already in previews I’ve seen nonsense like “while not a graphical stunner like Ghost of Tsushima”. Where Ghost of Tsushima was trying…
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Given the almost fearsome reputation that Dragon’s Dogma has as a cult favourite (that actually sold better than most people realise), it’s easy to forget that the game wasn’t all that well received at first, and that its Metacritic rating is “only” 78/100. It was a fair analysis however, for…
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Contra: Operation Galuga was a mistake. It’s not that everyone involved didn’t try, mind you. As much as a certain kind of gamer loves to swipe at Konami, Konami did the right thing here to give this project every chance of success. The publisher recruited WayForward – veterans and legends…
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King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is simultaneously a very fun game to play, and also one of the most irritating things I have ever had to review. Game developers really need to learn that source texts – be that history, literature, or legend, should not be seen as content to use…
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If the promise of JRPG-style hijinks across a painstakingly-recreated Shibuya sounds good to you, then you’ll want to pay close attention to Reynatis, the latest FuRyu special that NISA will publish out west. FuRyu continues to be the Japanese studio for creative ideas. If The Caligula Effect and Monark struck…
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Don’t Nod has, traditionally, done storytelling well, but struggled to pair it up with gameplay that people could love. Life Is Strange was the breakout title for the company, and it worked well enough because it was a point-and-click adventure that wasn’t testing the player’s button-pressing skills, but Vampyr, on…
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Granblue Fantasy turns ten this year – yes, time really does fly – and it is one of the all-time most successful mobile games. It has soared to over 25 million downloads in its home country alone – and that means about one in five Japanese people have played this…
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Persona 3 occupies an interesting role within the broader Persona series. Unlike Personas 4 and 5, there is less of an emphasis on the “J-Pop” bubbly quality that significantly lightened the mood of those two titles (however serious the underlying message of each was). Unlike Persona 1 and 2, Persona…
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I’m going to be very lazy with this review of The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered, and copy/paste most of my original review of The Last Of Us 2. I’m doing this for three reasons: It was the easy decision for Sony to “remaster” a game that is already…
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Surfing is a messy sport, and not just because you’ll get sand in places where the sun doesn’t shine. Where most sports are defined by the nice, neat rules that humans set down and agree to compete together under, the defining characteristic of surfing is that it’s a battle with…
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