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Of course, Minos’ fans – and the game deserves to have a lot of them – will tell you the plot isn’t important. What is important is its creative sandbox and gleefully gory approach to what is essentially a tower defence game. And on that I would agree with them. Minos is really difficult to put down once you start finding yourself daydreaming about new ways to combine your trap arsenal together.
I wish I could share screenshots of just how silly the relationship between Dee Dee and “me” really got. Unfortunately, though perhaps wisely, Nintendo’s made it very hard to get screenshots off the Switch 2 for sharing with Tomodachi Life. Nintendo knew exactly what direction many people’s little communities of Miis were going to go. Nintendo knows us all too well.
Pragmata is Capcom at its best. As good as this company can be with its established franchises, it’s when it tries to do something different that we get the real gold. As far as “big budget” games go, Pragmata is the most different and thought-provoking game I’ve played since Death Stranding, and I love it almost as much as Kojima’s masterpiece. If only Capcom did this more often. Like they used to.
It might not be the “level up” on Scrabble, I imagine the developers went into the project aiming to make, but they certainly have come up with something that is perfect to pair up with a coffee on a Sunday morning. And I do love my Sunday morning coffee games.
Many people assume that the only point of otome is the romance, and the appeal is minimal beyond your interest in male fan service. Anyone who has played otome games realises that this is not the case, and Homura: The Crimson Warriors is a particularly strong example of this. It’s both “girl and reverse harem of pretty men” AND quality historical fiction, and that’s a combination that’s hard to put down.
A great effort, overall. Don’t let this one disappear in the swill of shovelware on the Switch’s online store.
Spiders remains the best of the B-tier European RPG developers, and that’s a compliment. Belonging outside of the big-budget blockbuster developers affords a creative freedom that Spiders has never been hesitant to embrace.
This review might sound flat on the game, but that’s only because the “DLC” that’s been added to the Switch 2 upgrade is difficult to be quite so enthusiastic about. Still, if this is your first time with Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it’s adding more to an already brilliant package, and if you already have the game, the “DLC” is only $20, which is more than reasonable as an excuse to dust it off for another whirl.
All in all, Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War sits nicely next to the EDF series as a parody of militarism in video games. EDF does it by embracing B-grade aesthetics and bonkers attitude, where Starship Troopers instead builds on the film to deliver something sharp and more pointed. It’s sad that this game is just so intensely relevant right now, but that is the world we live in. As a satire, Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War isn’t particularly funny, because it’s increasingly our reality.
I also don’t think that it’ll be something people are recommending and writing essays on a decade from now. It’s a bright, charming game made for easy consumption right now, and sometimes that’s all you need.
The “remaster” is good because the game itself is, but given some of the work we’ve seen in remakes and remasters in recent years, this one is far too pedestrian for its own good. I can’t help but wonder just how incredible Tales of Bersaria could have been if it was given a full-on remake to bring it to parity with the most recent new game in the series (Tales of Arise). That could have been something truly special.
A cast of characters with a brilliantly written and believable set of dynamics between them, a clever mystery, told well and surprising enough to keep its hooks into you, and truly gorgeous art and presentation. Aksys picked a good one to localise, and the game deserves more attention than it’s getting.
Where Animal Crossing does eventually become a series of routines that you get stuck into until eventually it becomes dull, Pokopia resists falling into the same box by simply giving you so many objectives for when you don’t feel like simply inhabiting the world. Which is just as well, because we’re all going to need a lot of this kind of calming escapism over the next few years.
It is hard to shake the feeling that Monster Hunter Stories 3 is going to slip under the radar, and that would be a real shame. This is not merely a charming sidestep for Monster Hunter fans. It is a confident, ambitious JRPG in its own right, with strong storytelling, smart systems, and a clear identity. For the first time, the spinoff feels every bit as essential as the main series.
Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake, in every other area, this remake deepens the gameplay mechanics while maintaining the incredible art direction and torturously beautiful story. That makes it the superior version of the finest horror game of all.
There is a lot that you can potentially get out of Gear.Club 3, especially if you enjoy time trial challenges, where you’ll get a lot out of the large number of tracks and online leaderboards. Collecting all the cars and then playing around with them is a lot of fun, and ideal for pick-up-and-play sessions. It might not be a must play, but it’s one of those games that you’ll likely find yourself spending more time with than you realise.
I thoroughly enjoyed each separate segment (except one) as discrete gameplay units and distinct slices of Resident Evil history. But as a coherent overall experience and statement of intent, Resident Evil Requiem is a mutated beast left to exsanguinate on the floor.
I’m so very impressed that Square Enix has seen the value of these visual novels, and happy that they’ve been such creative successes. With any luck, this one is also enough of a creative success to earn a third, because there are a lot of ghost stories right across Japan that this series could go places.
On the Game Cube app, there is Mario Strikers. That is an excellent example of a time where Nintendo and its party sports developers had a handle over the balance between capturing the basics of the sport and making it arcade fun. Now, though, they’ve lost the plot entirely. I genuinely don’t understand who this is for, but it isn’t me. Or anyone that I know who loved what Mario Tennis once was.
But given that video games around us are becoming more and more generic, “best practice” driven, and in general, everything that Romeo is a Dead Man pokes fun at, it’s nice to have the occasional game that’s willing to put some people off in pursuit of its creative vision.