Rice Digital
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The characters are loveable, the mechanics are solid, the visual design is distinctive and immediately recognisable, the music is inordinately catchy and, most of all, the game comes across as having been designed with real, genuine love and affection for both the player and each and every one of its characters. There are no “generic enemies” in Gal*Gun Double Peace; every single character has their own name, personality and sense of identity, and gradually getting to know them all is a real pleasure.
At heart, Wife Quest isn’t doing anything especially new or remarkable — but what it does provide is a really solidly implemented Wonder Boy-style platformer. For those in the mood for that sort of thing, it’s definitely a worthy investment — particularly if you have a thing for angry flat-chested heroines and/or monster girls. Because this game has both of those things in absolute abundance.
It’s more accessible than the hardcore racing sims available on PC, but offers more depth, complexity and realism than your average arcade racer. And, more than anything, it serves as a potent reminder that when Sony lets its Japanese teams actually make games, they most certainly come up with the goods. It’s just a shame that doesn’t seem to happen all that often these days…
Demonizer really is a wonderful game. It looks great, sounds lovely and plays wonderfully with some simple to understand but tricky to master mechanics. Its emphasis on conflict between humanoid-sized opponents makes for a pleasingly different feel to many other shoot ’em ups out there, and the feeling of gathering allies to fight alongside you as you progress is consistently enjoyable and satisfying. Plus the range of difficulty levels makes it as accessible or challenging as you want it to be.
I’d say give this one a miss for now, then — and here’s hoping that any other developers hoping to successfully make the jump from free-to-play mobile game to paid standalone game learn from the lessons that this title has to teach!
To say too much more about Potato Flowers in Full Bloom would be to spoil the joy of discovery that you’ll constantly feel while exploring its labyrinths, so we’ll leave it at that. Suffice to say for now, though, that if you’re a fan of the dungeon crawler genre and want to try a game that does things quite markedly differently from the norm, Potato Flowers in Full Bloom should absolutely be in your collection. It really is a remarkable game — and I worry that as a digital-only title released not long after some of the biggest games of the year, it will be completely overlooked. And that would be absolutely criminal.
It takes a while to reach that true ending — my playtime was just shy of 3 hours by the time I’d seen pretty much every possible conclusion and event in the game, including the optional ones — but when it’s all over you won’t be sorry you spent that time helping out Lily. She really is a good girl.
This idiosyncrasy aside — it’s something you’ll just have to adjust to — Gley Lancer is a fantastic shoot ’em up, and Ratalaika Games have done an exemplary job with this port. Not only is it a fantastic, authentic-feeling way to enjoy a Mega Drive classic, but it’s also a thoroughly accessible means to do so, with its optional modernisations feeling fresh and well-implemented, but remaining optional for those who prefer to enjoy it how they knew it back in the day.
On the whole, Pretty Girls Breakers is an enjoyable game, despite the minor issues described — and it’s a good sign that Zoo Corporation is happy to take the series beyond just card and tabletop games or line-drawing affairs. I’d be happy to see more adaptations of classic arcade games given the Pretty Girls twist — and in the meantime this will be sitting happily on my Switch alongside the other games in the series for when I’m in the mood for some mildly ecchi casual fun!
Simple it may be by modern standards, but I’ve found Star Force to be a thoroughly compelling and addictive game — and one I keep coming back to time after time, keen to push my highest score ever onwards and upwards through those online leaderboards. And with its Arcade Archives release on Switch, I can indulge that desire pretty much any time I want. Which is, y’know, nice.
It’s simple, straightforward, and most importantly, damned fun — so if that’s what you’re after from your games, this is absolutely a worthwhile pickup.
About the only thing the game has going for it, as noted in the introduction, is that the sprite art is all quite nice and well animated. But aside from that, this is absolutely not eastasiasoft’s finest hour.
In many ways, Variable Barricade can be seen as a bit hit and miss. It does a few things refreshingly different for the genre, such as making Hibari truly her own character and with her own development, but manages to slip up when it comes to completely embracing its premise; it has some bizarre diversions that could possibly make or break the game for some players.
Atelier Sophie 2, unsurprisingly for the newest installment at the time of writing, feels like one of the most refined, polished entries in the series to date. It gets underway quickly, it allows experienced players to get right into the meaty stuff without scaring new players away, its characters are likeable and interesting and its mechanics are solid. Plus it looks lovely, sounds great and is just generally satisfying to play. It’s a game that wants you to enjoy it — and it makes a point of placing minimal barriers in the way of that enjoyment, right from the moment you fire it up for the first time.
It’s all too real, and seeing a video game as ruthlessly unforgiving as this depict it in such a surprisingly nuanced and delicate way is ground-breaking. In a doomed world, no amount of escapism will save us — and that’s a fascinating concept to explore, even if it’s pain inducing and frequently starts up the waterworks.
Of course, these days we recognise that this is because the hardware of the period was eminently suited to this sort of game — plus developers were excited about the continual refinement process of making their own twists on a genre of gaming that had been a thing since the very beginning. Dangerous Seed certainly fits into that context nicely; while it may not strictly speaking be innovative, its exact combination of different elements makes it stand out as a distinctive work worth exploring — and taken purely on its own merits, it’s a well-presented, attractive shoot ’em up that is worthy of your time and attention.
Moto Roader MC’s appeal for the solo player is undoubtedly fairly limited; there’s nothing to unlock and no real incentive to replay beyond trying to set better times in the game’s Records menu. Sometimes you don’t need an incentive, of course, particularly when the core gameplay is as straightforwardly fun as it is here — but it’s clear that Moto Roader MC is designed to be best enjoyed with friends. And if you get the right group of people together for a full five-player match, you will have an absolute blast with this.
I don’t want to sound like I’m being too harsh on Beat Souls here, because it really is an excellent, compelling and highly addictive game that is very much worth your time, attention and money. And if it does well, perhaps we’ll see Zoo take the opportunity to try again with another similar game — after all, their past track record has certainly shown they are definitely not afraid to iterate on a formula!
Frustrations aside, though — and I’ll emphasise that your tolerance for such frustrations will likely be largely dependent on if you grew up with PS1 and PS2-era racing games in particular — Hotshot Racing is a fine addition to today’s lineup of modern arcade racers. It’s not so long ago that the arcade racer was considered to be a completely dead genre — but between a variety of very different takes on it that we’ve seen over the last few years, including this, Slipstream, Cruis’n Blast, Horizon Chase Turbo and Inertial Drift, it’s clear that it’s not just alive and well, but thriving.
To sum it up then, Grapple Dog is a great game, albeit one with more than a few elements which give me a certain amount of pause in recommending it unreservedly. For some, these issues won’t matter at all — in which case I encourage you to pick Grapple Dog up right away. For others, though, you’ll need to weigh up whether the promise of an extremely solidly designed platformer is enough to make up for a few potentially significant annoyances along the way.