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14 hours ago
Feature: I swear it's not Fire Emblem.
Look, do you like Fire Emblem? If so, do you believe the series peaked with the release of Thracia 776, twenty years ago? Well, if that's you, then great. You're gonna adore Vestaria Saga I: War of the Scions. On the other hand, if you've never played a tactical RPG of this broad type (think Disgaea or Banner Saga) before, it might be wiser to…
2 days ago
Feature: Wattave I just played?
There's a certain degree of weirdness you'd expect from a Keita Takahashi game. Whether it's creating planets by rolling up the world's detritus (with the occasional screeching human and puzzled animal in tow) in Katamari Damacy, or using an LED controller to get naked while brushing your teeth in Tenya Wanya Teens, Takahashi's games have always baffled and bemused me in equal measure. They also…
4 days ago
Feature: The machine stumbles
"I have ninety minutes to stop a nuclear bomb from going off, so I've given up on arresting and just started throwing people off buildings," I told the RPS hivemind. This was a half truth. I'd been trying to figure out how to throw people off buildings all day. That is the problem with MiniLAW: Ministry of Law, the hectic dystopian action game from Lasso…
Feature: Hot as hell
Let’s take another look at Hades, the rogue-ish-action-hack-n-slash-n-chat-em-up by Supergiant Games, developers of Bastion and Transistor, in which you play Zagreus, the immortal son of the lord of the underworld on a quest to repeatedly run away from home. Home, in this case, is a giant-ass castle in helltown where the tortured souls of the deceased languish while they await processing, like an infernal waiting…
1 week ago
Feature: It's the court that counts
Dennis Brawl was crap at tennis. She could barely tell her flats from her tennis elbow, which she had not played nearly enough to develop, but nevertheless felt afflicted by on a deeper, more spiritual level. Shots sailed passed her unwitting eyeballs. Lobs confused her, spin perplexed. Nobody would explain what an Inside Out was. I wish I could tell you she got better. That…
Feature: Get out of my dreams, get onto my cool motorbike
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a sort of rhythm action arcade game, and as I played I kept getting flavours of different things. In terms of video games I felt Thumper, then (less obviously) Fe, plus SuperHot and Persona 5. Oh, and that mine cart level in the first Harry Potter game. But Sayonara wild hearts is also the drag race scene in Grease, the "Get…
2 weeks ago
Feature: Mourning wood
January. Hell month. My powerful brain – usually a throbbing, high-performance organ capable of doing several sums per minute – has atrophied to a wet walnut, a sodden grey scrap of cauterised flesh that ricochets around inside my skull like a horrible slug. The excesses of the holiday season have left my wretched body brittle and hollow. My eyes are sunken into my cadaverous face,…
Feature: Bestest Beasts
First things first: you need to be Hunter Rank 16 to access Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, which basically means you need to have beaten the base game’s final story boss before you pick it up. I know this is an incredibly dry way to start, but I asked myself what the first thing I’d hope to learn from an Iceborne review would be, and that…
Feature: Keep Hope alive
It's probably difficult to know exactly how to do a Vampire: The Masquerade game. What proportion of your audience will come from the original tabletop game? How many are only familiar with Bloodlines? What if people only picked it up for the genre? On top of this, Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York is a visual novel too, so who even knows what…
1 month ago
Feature: We have our reservations
Hickory Resource Manager 2019, more popularly known as This Land Is My Land, is an open world stealth game set in the 19th century (cowboy times) in which you play a Native American chief re-establishing his lost tribe by settling new camps, picking flowers and murdering (or just frightening) the invading colonisers. It is Red Dead Redemption turned on its stetson, ass up and spurs…
Feature: "Go go gadget QTE!"
The most fun reviews to write are the ones where you either have loads of good things to say about a game, or loads of bad things. Anywhere in between, and you have to start introducing nuance - and who has the time or inclination for nuance in this workaday world? Not me. So let's review Detroit: Become Human! Part adventure game, part sweeping morality…
Feature: That's him! He's the Detective!
Usually while playing a game for review, if a particular feeling or opinion grows large enough, I snip it off at the stem like a ripe courgette, and chuck it into the back of my head for safekeeping. As I continue, part of my brain keeps rifling through the growing pile of observation-veg, noting which ones stay fresh even as I see more of the…
Feature: I'm glad you're happy
A grimly cheerful dystopia is one of the most popular game settings there is, beaten only by densely populated desert wastelands. (This is why grimly cheerful dystopias in densely populated desert wastelands are a sub-genre all on their own.) It's not hard to see the appeal for developers: it’s loads of fun to write, it allows for levity in an otherwise thoroughly grimdark scenario, and…
Feature: Dandy Glumgeons
Not liking a cute puzzler like Dandy Dungeon: Legend Of Brave Yamada is a bit like staring at a puppy with cold indifference. Puppies are great, conceptually. There is no other way to buy unconditional love. But puppies are flawed. Liking them means looking past their annoyances, finding their embarrassments endearing, and putting in a lot of hard work. I find DD's dungeons more dreary…
Feature: Know your boundaries
The year is something beginning with a three or maybe even a four. Brands have become omniscient beings of pure malevolent energy coursing through the planet’s fibre optic nervous system like a bad thought. Free speech is dead. Entertainment is king. Human flesh wars, as we primitive 21st centurions know them, have ended, replaced instead with proxy battles between sexy day-glo robots with narrow waists…
Feature: I'm a maniacal mech
I was not sold at first. The opening two hours of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries are, well, they're fine. Standard tutorials, taking you through the controls and basic concepts, plus some entirely standard "oh no the baddies killed the man, grr" plot business. I was wary, fearing it would be a forgettable linear fairground ride about Corporal Jack Magnum (I honestly can't remember my character's name)…
Feature: We've come to the end of the road
Alice Bee: I have performed the summoning ritual (the ritual is: sending an email) and called errant skate boy Brendy back for one last job before retirement. It is, after all, time for the last episode of Life Is Strange 2, a harrowing road trip game about two brothers trying to make it from Washington state to Mexico. And since we started the journey together,…
Feature: The Cowboy(s from hell) Game
Howdy pardner! Git yerself a mighty glug of moonshine and meet me down at Dysentery Dan’s place, ‘cause we’ve got ourselves a roundup to… oh. Wait. Wrong game. It’s the horses that threw me off, you see. I always associate them with cowboys, now. But this is not the Cowboy Game. This is Darksiders Genesis. Nevertheless, while this prequel spin-off to the hack-and-slash series is…
Feature: Needs a stool
I'm bad at liking old shooters, because I struggle to see through the ways they've been surpassed. Modern games look better. They feel better. They have bumslides. They are generally obliged to develop their protagonists into something more than a number and a helmet. These are all problems for the nine-year-old Halo: Reach, but I've ultimately enjoyed myself despite them. There is wisdom in the…
2 months ago
Feature: Creature creep
Please stay in your seats if, at times during this review, you notice a presence in the shadows. Don’t be alarmed, in fact, should you notice a silhouette wearing a suit and tie - he’s just here to make his influence known. And if he seems familiar, there's a good reason: the council of XCOM looms over Phoenix Point, and they won’t let you forget…
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