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Perhaps no game better demonstrates the sheer scope of Yacht Club Games’ blue-armored hero than Shovel Knight Dig, a roguelike platformer that manages to carve out a place for itself amid a veritable sea of indie roguelikes. While taking many notes from previous Shovel Knight titles, Dig overflows with ingenuity and originality, becoming a starkly creative take on an often overwrought genre and a standout entry in an impressively ambitious series.
As I watched a melancholy hero play a beautiful melody to clean a war-torn battlefield of its fallen soldiers, I found it evident what Xenoblade Chronicles 3 would be. This is Monolith Soft’s final symphony for their acclaimed trilogy of loosely connected stories and a curtain call for the developer’s history up until this very point in time. After 15 years of creating entries in this franchise and 22 years of forging some of the industry’s finest RPGs, Monolith Soft brings their first grand era of gods and titans to a close by culminating all of their lessons thus far. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is yet another work of art from Nintendo’s all-star developer, deserving of its high praise.
The original JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle dropped on the PlayStation 3 in 2013 at the tail end of CyberConnect2’s golden era. Released just a few months after Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, All-Star Battle benefited from the wealth of arena fighting game experience CC2 had accumulated throughout the 2000s. Now almost a decade later, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R retains all of its old-school charm and heaps of content while looking better than ever before.
Soul Hackers 2 is, just like many other ATLUS JRPGs, a game of two distinct halves, and the disparity between these halves is clearer than ever. On the one hand, uninspired dungeon designs lifted straight from the mid-2000s will undoubtedly mire the experience for many fans who have seen the improvements made in this respect across other ATLUS titles in the past few years. On the other hand, however, everything else about Soul Hackers 2 shines brightly, often exceeding expectations to create a memorable and at times emotional JRPG that condenses itself into an approachable 40-50 hour playthrough without losing any of its soul.
Immortality is many things: a superb character drama, a compelling mystery, and a deconstruction of the relationship between films and their audience. It is a scathing critique of the film industry; it is a biting social commentary. It is terrifying, it is bleakly funny, it is delightfully ambiguous. A leap forward for interactive fiction, Immortality is as playful with form as it is function. Simply put: Immortality is a must-play game.
Following up this past May’s Pac-Man Museum+, Now Production is back for a second rerelease this year in Bandai Namco’s ever-expanding franchise. As the developer jumps from their arcade onslaught to a focus on the PlayStation’s 3D roots, Pac-Man World Re-Pac is yet another remaster from the yellow icon’s trove of experimental adventures fans shouldn’t miss out on even if it suffers from several issues. Like Namco’s recent Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Collection, Pac-Man World Re-Pac stands in the same line of fire as the publisher’s other remasters, as a decent-enough update does little to fix its actual content.
While K-pop groups like Blackpink and BTS are credited with popularizing idols in the West, the concept of idols and idol culture originated in Japan and continues to thrive there. Idol Manager is all about creating the next big group to top the charts and sell out arenas while navigating the cutthroat Japanese idol scene. It’s a harsh but unrelenting look at all the behind-the-scenes work that it takes to make it to the world stage, and it’s an absolutely addicting (if not soul-crushing) experience.
The Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS have been no strangers to Kirby spin-off games. Since Kirby: Triple Deluxe, HAL Laboratory has been releasing small digital supplements shortly after each major release in the franchise. Kirby’s Dream Buffet continues to roll with Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s inventive new direction for the series as Dream Land’s beloved mascot succeeds at throwing a multiplayer competition sizable enough for his insatiable appetite.
Since 1996, Pokémon has been a franchise whose success no other developer can replicate. The monster-catching phenomenon’s mainline games may stir up quite a bit of discourse nowadays due to some of Game Freak’s design decisions, but there is no denying that Pokémon’s earliest generations are timeless. In a year where more monster-tamers than ever before are trying to take a crack at the top spot, it is unsurprising that Coromon would shine amongst its competitors as it attempts to imitate the unbeatable champion by targeting its classic roots.
At long last, Live a Live has received a new lease on life for the international audience it always deserved—and most importantly, it holds up brilliantly. With a stunning new coat of high-definition pixelated paint and plenty of quality-of-life enhancements, Live a Live feels just as daring and original today as it did in ’94. While this reimagining holds onto a few frustrating idiosyncrasies from the original release, the game as a whole emerges as something far more than a historical curiosity: Live a Live is still a compelling compendium of roleplaying adventures that dazzle in their diversity and unite into a remarkable sendup of its genre, leading to an experience that RPG fans deserve to live and relive.
In any good roguelike RPG, from Hades to Dead Cells to The Binding of Isaac, death is rarely the end. Often, it is an opportunity: to re-outfit a character or revisit a build, or to take a breather, consult a codex, and plot the next run. In Cult of the Lamb, the latest from megawatt publisher Devolver Digital, players do all the things associated with the genre- with the added twist that the power of death is always lurking, not as a threat but as a tool. Cult of the Lamb tries to straddle the line between relaxing life sim and harrowing roguelike, and while it may stretch itself thin trying to serve both masters, it’s largely successful.
While we may hold plenty of fond memories from the days of fifth-generation console gaming, it is undeniable that the first era of fully realized 3D titles has not aged particularly well. Frogun does not elegantly leap onto today’s lilypad of modernized throwback platformers, but at the very least, Molegato’s title does bring a sense of adventure.
2020’s Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity showed that applying the 1 vs. 1000 Musou-style gameplay to a more narrow scope of an IP can be successful. Now Nintendo and Omega Force have revisited their other Musou spin-off with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. Like Age of Calamity, Three Hopes bears the same visuals as its progenitor and benefits from the more focused vision with a story that is in some ways better than the original Three Houses, and in some ways worse. The story supports the familiar Musou combat with some neat strategic additions, but the game ends up far overstaying its welcome.
While Salt and Sanctuary is among the pinnacle of souls-likes and metroidvanias, Salt and Sacrifice fails to live up to this pedigree.
Based on its initial trailers, Bright Memory: Infinite seemed like it could be the next big game of its genre; it’s a first-person shooter with insanely detailed graphics, an engaging combat system involving swordplay, grand setpieces, and exciting supernatural elements blended with futuristic warfare. Zeng “FYQD” Xiancheng’s efforts to create a next-generation first-person shooter as a lone developer is aspiring, but anyone who has played video games for long enough will know that the expression “looks aren’t everything” should always be taken into consideration. Bright Memory: Infinite echoes that sentiment as its occasional eye-candy visuals can never hold its poor technicalities and nonsense story together.
The Kunio-Kun series (known as River City in the West) has been through every incarnation imaginable. From its humble beginnings on the NES chronicling the adventures of delinquent high school boys to the excellent River City Girls that gave Kyoko and Misako a chance to shine last generation, the River City series has been faithfully serving beat ‘em up fans for years. Now, that same series is tackling the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms story and making it its own. What results is a cheesy but heartfelt beat ‘em up that stumbles just a bit in its execution.
Foxes are one of nature’s most incredible creatures. Playful like dogs, sleek and curious like cats, they exist as the woodland critter most likely to lift your spirits at any given moment. They tend to show up in video games frequently, often as playable characters, like in Spirit of the North. But in Endling – Extinction is Forever, the player must do their best to ensure the survival of an entire fox family. This may sound like a quaint and low-key experience, but it is, in fact, incredibly stressful and leads to some harrowing and intense moments. Beautifully animated and designed, Endling is a thought-provoking and powerful fable on the importance of preservation and environmental protection.
Ever since Stray was formally unveiled via a teaser trailer at PlayStation’s June 2020 Future of Gaming event, it became one of the most anticipated games of this generation. The appeal is easy to understand: who doesn’t want to control an adorable kitty as they explore a mysterious city? But Stray is more than just “the platforming game with the backpack cat”; it also features one of the most well-realized cyberpunk worlds of the last few years. Stunning art direction and immaculate vibes make Stray a journey worth savoring.
It is hard to know where to begin when describing the experience of playing AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES – nirvanA Initiative. It is the sequel to 2019’s AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, but requires no knowledge of the first game whatsoever and can go out of its way to hide spoilers if players have not experienced the original. The first game’s essence is still very much present in nirvanA Initiative, and there are a multitude of improvements to the puzzle-solving elements that makes for an overall superior gameplay experience. It is among the best of its genre, while also being at times completely nonsensical. It is a game of halves, while also being a game about halves.
In the case of Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, Bandai Namco is certainly not treating their dream traveler the same way as their other, yellower gaming mascot. Even in the face of two great games, the latest Klonoa remastered collection falls on the whimpering end of a celebratory spectrum. Phantasy Reverie Series hampers a big dream for what should be a triumphant icon