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This isn’t to say that The Night Way Home isn’t a worthwhile experience, of course. In “game” terms, it’s one of Chilla’s Art’s more satisfying titles, despite a few little bugs here and there — and, like all their more recent titles, some replay value is added through a collectible sticker element, with each sticker representing one of the duo’s Patreon backers. Just go into this one expecting an interesting horror game rather than an interactive short horror story and you’ll doubtless have a good time for an hour or so.
If you enjoy your shoot ’em ups, Gynoug should absolutely be part of your collection, without question. Here’s hoping it gets suitably honoured with a physical release down the road — it certainly deserves it.
If you’ve been following Chilla’s Art’s work from the beginning and want more, The Radio Station is a good addition to your collection.
Panorama Cotton is a great game and, like the other recent modern releases in the series, it’s a delight to finally see it freely available to western audiences. Like with Cotton 100%, Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang, it’s a shame that these rereleases don’t come with English translations for the story sequences like Cotton Reboot! does, but solid shoot ’em up gameplay transcends all national boundaries and is universally appealing. So if you’ve spent years lusting after the Mega Drive original — which was supposedly only produced in extremely limited numbers — now’s a great time to finally see what Sega’s little 16-bit wonderbox was really capable of in the right hands.
Blue Reflection: Second Light is an absolute triumph. And the sad thing is, if the first game is anything to go by, it’s likely to be all but ignored by a good 90% of the game-playing public and media alike.
There’s the basis for a really solid storytelling platform here — it just remains to be seen if that is part of the long-term plan for the game, or if it was always intended to be completely self-contained. Still, in the meantime we have a satisfying, enjoyable, beautifully presented, enormously atmospheric and delightfully unconventional RPG to enjoy — so if you like the idea of virtual tabletop fun, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars should absolutely be part of your collection.
Still, this is a relatively small nitpick when the game as a whole is so enjoyable to play. It may not be as visually spectacular as Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang, nor as delightfully fast-paced and chaotic as Cotton Reboot!’s Arrange mode, but it certainly is a good example of a well-crafted 16-bit cute ’em up — and a great entry point to the series if you’ve been unsure where to start.
Ultimately, though, the majority of the game’s value and impact comes from the three or so hours it will take you to play through for the first time, and for some people, what’s here is not going to be quite enough to leave you feeling completely satiated. For some, this will be a matter of the depressingly ever-present “monetary value versus amount of content on offer” question; for me, though, it was more about a sense of the game’s more artistic, narrative elements simply not quite feeling like they resolved in a completely satisfactory manner.
As it stands, Pretty Girls Panic Plus is probably the strongest entry in this subseries of Zoo and eastasiasoft’s collaborative affairs — and indeed one of the strongest games in the lineup outright. It’s a game that is challenging enough to keep you busy for a while — and between the companion character metagame and the Arcade mode, it’s likely to keep you coming back for more for gameplay reasons, as well as the opportunity to admire Pretty Girls in their native habitat.
It’s perhaps questionable as to whether or not you really need to own both Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang, since they’re both variations on the same theme — but they’re perhaps best thought of as the alternate modes seen in other console shoot ’em ups we’ve seen in the past, only as separate releases. The Cotton equivalent of something like Dodonpachi Resurrection’s “Black Label” or “Arrange” modes, in other words.
Speaking of variety, Cotton Boomerang is best thought of as something of a “companion piece” to Cotton 2 in that rather than being an entirely new game, it is instead something of a remix of Cotton 2. It’s quite a bit harder, too, thanks to some tweaks to the mechanics that make quite a difference to the overall feel of what is going on.
Cupid Parasite is super entertaining, and it is a breath of fresh air for the genre in the west. I’m hoping and praying for even more games of this calibre to be localised in the future, because now it’s all over, I wish I could play Cupid Parasite blind once more.
Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is a truly wonderful horror game, and it’s a delight to see it finally available to a broader audience. Here’s hoping it does as well as it deserves this time around — perhaps well enough that we see at the very least a remaster of the earlier games in the series, and maybe even a new one sometime soon.
I really liked My Big Sister; it was an enjoyable, thought-provoking, short-form game that really hit the spot when I was in the mood for something a bit different from the other games I’ve been tackling. It has a distinctive atmosphere, a lovely aesthetic, some wonderful writing and characterisation and a really pleasant blend of horror and light-heartedness. And I suspect if you try it for yourself you, like me, will find yourself very interested in exploring the rest of Stranga’s catalogue!
More than anything, though, this is a thoroughly charming, well-crafted game that those who enjoy hack and slash action RPGs will get a lot out of. It may be relatively brief, it may follow the Neptunia trend of heavily reusing environments and enemies with palette swaps — but while it lasts, you’ll have a great time with Neptunia x Senran Kagura.
Fact is, Raiden IV x MIKADO Remix is one of the finest shoot ’em ups you’ll ever play. It’s a great introduction to the fundamentals of the genre for newcomers, but provides plenty of long-term challenge for grizzled veterans. And however you choose to play, you can do so accompanied by a fine, fine soundtrack that is just begging you to crank up the volume and rock out. Just watch out for that bu– oh, you’re dead again. Never mind. Continue?
Ultimately it’s a small issue, though; The Coma is a fascinating horror game that, on a surface level, offers an atmospheric and spooky “escape from a killer” scenario while simultaneously having a lot of much deeper, more meaningful and scathingly critical things to say about modern society. It’s a great example of intelligent horror — and a great addition to your library if you’re looking for something spooky to enjoy.
Before long, you’ll be nimbly dodging in and out of terrifying bullet curtains without a second thought — and you’ll be ready to take those skills over into a shoot ’em up with less abstract presentation. Well, maybe, anyway; with those 160 levels to blast through, rRootage will certainly keep you plenty busy in its own right, and for under a fiver on the Switch (and just 30MB on your SD card!) that’s pretty great value.
This is a good one, then, so long as you’re on board with the “running away from monster” gameplay. It takes the lessons learned from Aka Manto and applies them to a new setting — and the result is a game that, while recognisably similar to its spiritual predecessor, is considerably more well-executed. Thumbs up!
I praised the gameplay loop to death already, but even just moving around the map is seamless, fast-paced, and with each pass, you find something new thanks to your newfound abilities. Ultimately the game just feels like a perfectly refined, classic Metroid game — and I cannot wait for more!