Digitally Downloaded
HomepageIt's light, breezy, gorgeous, and a joy to play.
There is fan service in there, and some people will look at that and the anime trappings and not be able to move past it, but underneath this exterior lies a heart that is in many ways the precise opposite of what you might be expecting. It's almost - dare I say it - feminist in the critique it provides over the way that women are treated in this fairy tale world.
For all its faults I couldn't help but enjoy my time with Golem Gates.
Vectronom is well made and attractive. It's got a strong sense of minimalist style, and as difficult as it is, it's also entirely fair, and once you've learned its rules and behaviour, it becomes comfortable, albeit difficult, to play.
I wish more horror games were like Layers of Fear 2. It's a mature and intelligent understanding of the deeper and more meaningful elements of horror, and while I can have as much fun as anyone creeping around a Resident Evil game and shooting the ugly monsters while being startled by the jump scares, it's something like this that I end up reflecting on well after I've finished playing, and this is the kind of game that I return to when I'm looking for an actual horror experience.
It's stylish, slick production that borrows from the classical masters of the crime fiction genre, while adding some genuinely creative approaches to the visual novel that help to make it both feel fresh and hard to put down. Even when I knew what was coming because I am far too familiar with how crime fiction works, I still delighted in the way that Alternate Jake Hunter presented itself.
If Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is really the last big 3DS release, it's one smashing swan song. The game is more straightforward than its predecessor, but this change plays to the strengths of Persona’s multitudinous characters. All up, it’s an exemplary crossover game worth investing hundreds of hours before you even start playing in just to appreciate its nuance
If you’re okay with the lack of customisation options in the main game, then Project Nimbus will be a more than competent mecha game to tide you over until the release of Daemon X Machina. GameCrafterTeam have poured the entire team's love and effort into this aerial action game, and the love for the source material really shows.
I knew going in to Happy Words that it would be a Scrabble clone, and I was fine with that. As a fan of Scrabble - and board games in general - I like the idea of having it on the Switch for on-the-go play. But when the AI is about as interesting as a parrot with access to a dictionary, a UI that actively wants to stop you playing the game, and a complete absence of anyone online to play with, I was left speechless, that a developer in 2019 was somehow capable of making a worse version of Scrabble than what we had on the Game Boy back in the 90's.
I enjoyed Kotodama a great deal. It's just surprising enough to keep the narrative interesting, and the colourful humour and cheerful fan service certainly help make the game a delight to play.
Unfortunately for me Darkwood is unintelligible, and I'm genuinely sad that I wasn't able to appreciate the many merits of a game because I simply had no way of actually making sense of it.
Team Sonic Racing is a decent kart racing game.
Blood & Truth is on balance a very enjoyable, highly entertaining game, and this has the best chance that Sony has had yet to sell VR on the “AAA” community.
Observation is truly a thinking person's game... and it's a rare gem for that.
If you’re planning to play a grindy dungeon crawler in short bursts over a long period of time, you’d be in the best position to get something out of Lapis x Labyrinth – but if you’re looking for something a little deeper than a button masher you might walk away disappointed.
It's almost painfully delightful, warm, colourful, and completely charming in everything that it does, but its reliance on nostalgia and series tradition means that I'm just not sure that this will be one to win the series new fans.
it’s tailored right down to the core as a simple way of passing time with accessible challenge. But SMG Studio has nailed that brief, and this game does deserve to be considered among the very greats of the genre.
Castlevania Anniversary Collection is an excellent, high quality retro collection. It is of a collection where too many of the games don't hold enough value beyond their nostalgia, and it's lacking titles I would have considered to be key. However, with a great set of features, and plenty of classic dark fantasy platforming, this package is a useful reminder of just how prestigious the entire franchise really is.
On the surface, Akane is a super difficult game that requires absolute dexterity with a controller. It has some fantastic ideas which sadly are all cancelled out by mechanics and design choices that fight against the good stuff. It looks gorgeous, and can be enjoyed in really short spurts, but unfortunately there’s just not enough substance in this game to consider recommending it above the vast array of games available on the eShop right now.
While the basic formula to Total War hasn't changed, Creative Assembly is genuinely impressive in the way that it manages to capture the subtleties of warfare in whatever era its depicting.