Portable

Much like EA Sports’ athletic franchises, Omega Force’s Warriors titles offer an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary approach to their properties. In execution, both companies offer annual iterations of their renowned titles, maintaining core play components, ...

When NIS America published Hyperdimension Neptunia in 2011, the title was an unmistakably mixed bag. In concept, the game’s allegory of anthropomorphized gaming machines reconciling their differences to fight a common enemy was one of ...

During the late eighties, games like Renegade, Double Dragon, and Final Fight established the fundamentals of the beat-‘em-up. Each game, as well as a slew of sequels and tacit descendants, permitted players to pummel opponents ...

What is the concept? Like any good puzzler, there’s more to Ninja Usagimaru – The Gem of Blessings that a first impression might imply. On the surface, the game seems downright simple, as a succession ...

Like a juggler who keeps adding additional objects to his performance, the Skylanders’ franchise in an increasingly incredulous feat. Not only does each successive entry manage to offer compatibility with figures from past versions, but ...

On console, the Hyperdimension Neptunia series has provided a consistently engaging experience, blending amusing allegory, comical banter, and engaging play mechanics that are rooted in role-playing convention. But far more remarkable are the Console Patron ...

Helping to fill the deficiency of dungeon-crawlers on the 3DS, last February’s Excave proved to be a passable entry in the genre. While the title periodically succumbed to hack-and-slash tedium and exhibited an uneven challenge ...

For a franchise with a notable absence of antagonism, the Bokujō Monogatari/Harvest Moon franchise has found itself in an ironic junction. Originally published in 1996 by Japanese publisher/developer Pack-In-Video (creator of Die Hard, Friday the ...

In many ways, mech-based games are the quintessential conduit for wish fulfillment. Typically, players are able to pilot awe-inspiring machines, each packed with munitions and appendage-mounted weapons capable of slicing a car in half. Commonly, ...

With an existence spanning nearly forty years, the shoot ‘em up game (or shmup) has a well-deserved place in the pantheon of gaming. But its status was earned by more than just tenacious longevity. Shooters ...