Back in 2006, Nintendo and Tommo teamed up to create Jump Ultimate Stars, a DS-based title which assembled dozens of beloved manga protagonists for a behemoth-sized battle royal. Understandably, obtaining licenses for Naruto, Bleach, Death ...
Read More »Megadimension Neptunia VII review
Not long ago, message boards were proclaiming that the death of the Japanese role-playing game was imminent. Stagnancy seemed to be the genre’s unassailable final boss, and developers had run out of creativity-restoring potions. But ...
Read More »Atelier Escha & Logy Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky
As successful game series spawn sequels, the push toward conceptual innovation becomes stronger. But one of the tragedies born of this ambition happens when imprudent mechanics are shoe-horned in to offset stagnation. Too often, these ...
Read More »The Deadly Tower of Monsters review
Few development teams have a body of work as bold and imaginative as Santiago, Chile-based ACE Team. Formed by a trio of brothers who crafted a Doom II mod, the studio garnered mainstream attention with ...
Read More »The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel review
Only a few years ago, the console role-playing game seemed to be in peril, its existence whittled down to a few decisive hit points. Pundits predicted that a combination of escalating production prices, dwindling audiences, ...
Read More »Yakuza 5 review
There’s a curious tension about open-world games. Although the genre extends an exhilarating sense of freedom, offering virtual playgrounds filled with interactive objects, all too often titles rehash Grand Theft Auto’s tenets. For all the ...
Read More »Earth Defense Force 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair
Earth Defense Force is a series that despises subtlety; everything about the franchise is unabashedly exaggerated. Enemies range from giant ants, colossal spiders, and enormous, bipedal robots. Regardless of species, EDF fills the screen with ...
Read More »Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space
It may come as a surprise to some, but the Earth Defense Force series didn’t actually start with the Xbox 360 cult-classic, Earth Defense Force 2017. In truth, 2017 was the third main-line EDF game from ...
Read More »Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires (Vita) review
There’s a good reason why interactive interpretations of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms have been largely confined to consoles: portables struggle to deliver Dynasty Warriors’ frenzied action. While sedentary systems have the power ...
Read More »Dariusburst Chronicles Saviours review
Video game history is intrinsically entwined with the shoot-‘em-up game. While Pong and its paddle-based derivatives might have beaten the beloved shooter to arcades, titles like Space Invaders, Defender, and Xevious enlisted players in a ...
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