While there’s a universality to horror, there’s also a district cultural component as well. After visiting a obake yashiki (or ‘ghost house’) in Japan, known as the Daiba Haunted School, I quickly realized that fright ...

Whether it’s Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4’s Social Links or Hyperdimension Neptunia’s Link Rank system, representations of camaraderie are common in gaming. With the release of Winged Cloud’s Sakura Nova, these interpersonal bonds become the ...

It’s seems like just yesterday, when we received the original Just Dance and suffered through its spotty movement recognition and its unsightly Day-Glo character models. Little did we know the title would become a smash ...

Gaming’s early era was dominated by the shooter. It was a time when pioneering titles like Space Invaders and Galaga didn’t just establish the tenets of the genre, but they helped catapult the entire medium ...

You’d be hard-pressed to find a Japanese role-playing franchise as prolific as the Neptunia series. Beyond a quartet of core entries, a trio of remakes, developers Idea Factory and Compile Heart have also sanctioned a ...

Like most mainstream media, the primary goal of interactive entertainment is escapism. When the collective weight of work, bills, and relationships congeals into a burdensome load, we have the ability to retreat into meticulously detailed, ...

Customary for the release of new hardware, it’s a time for excitement as well as depleted bank accounts. This week, Sony releases its PS VR system, which is available in a $399.99 core system, or ...

2000’s Valkyrie Profile is considered to be one of the PlayStation One’s best role-playing games. Exploration adopted light platforming mechanics, as players navigated two-dimension environments, using an ice shot to solve puzzles and shun any ...

If you’re an ardent role-playing aficionado, you’ve probably liberated dozens of lands and exterminated dozens of humanity-threatening enemies. Tales of epic heroism are ubiquitous in interactive entertainment. Developer Nippon Ichi Software understands this, and with ...

2011’s Hyperdimension Neptunia offered an allegorical battle between four anthropomorphized consoles, who fought to become the reigning goddess of a realm called Gamindustri. The franchise mushroomed in popularity, spurring a secession of sequels, remakes, and ...