Pint-sized indie upstarts frequently attempt to tackle the kind of ambitious projects produced by sizable teams of veteran developers. And as anyone who has witnessed the final state of a crowdsourced game knows, a limited ...
Read More »Dead in Vinland review
From Don’t Starve, Ark: Survival Evolved, and two-thirdsof the Risen franchise, being stranded on a remote island is a popular premise for games, typically tasking players with keeping their cool during a set of increasingly ...
Read More »Extinction review
Since 2008, Chicago-based Iron Galaxy has largely shirked the limelight, performing contract work for other studios and quietly porting code onto other consoles. But the developer’s own efforts haven’t garnered much attention, with titles like ...
Read More »Dark Rose Valkyrie (PC) review
Sporadically, a team of renowned developers unite, and the results are splendidly synergistic. Largely, that’s the case with Dark Rose Valkyrie, a game was released last June on the PlayStation 4, and has now made ...
Read More »Maidens of a Hollow Dream review
Any respectable shoot-‘em-up has a gameplay element that endows the game with distinction. The recent Steam release of Maidens of a Hollow Dream/Kyomu no Otome, originally published at Comiket 88 in the Summer of 2015, ...
Read More »Fatal Twelve review
Portrayals of teen deathmatches resonate with the public across a multitude of mediums. Both Koushun Takami’s Battle Royal and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games started as books, before being transformed into films, while the Danganronpa ...
Read More »Atelier Lydie & Suelle ~The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings~ review
Japanese role-playing games are often criticized for following formula too closely. But all too often, the person making this claim hasn’t played an entry in Gust’s Atelier series. After nineteen iterations across a twenty-year span, ...
Read More »The 25th Ward: The Silver Case review
In film, auteur theory contends that the director is the primary ‘author’ of a motion picture, responsible for overseeing and uniting the entirety of a movie’s aural and visual elements. As such, a film symbolizes ...
Read More »Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms review
Although the conflict only lasted for four days, the Battle of Toba-Fushimi was a pivotal moment in Japanese history. Following the forced opening of the Hakodate and Shimoda ports by Commodore Matthew C. Parry, tensions ...
Read More »Acceleration of Suguri 2 review
It would take years before the impact of Psychic Force (Saikikku Fōsu) was truly understood. Released in Japanese arcades in 1995, the Taito-developed title offered a remarkable take on the conventional combat mechanics, putting a ...
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