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Steins;Gate Elite is not only the perfect visual novel improved, but it's also a shining example of what the top tier of visual novels should look like.
I definitely don’t regret the download – even though my Switch is bloated full of titles, I can see myself always coming back to Downwell whenever I need to fill a short five to ten minutes.
For those who have played and loved any of the tabletop games over the years that have been based on Lovecraft’s mythos – the tabletop miniatures game that Cthulhu Tactics itself is based on, for example, or Arkham Horror, or the legendary Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper RPG, Cthulhu Tactics does a remarkable job of capturing that same aesthetic and sense of overwhelming challenge. This game is well and truly worth a look.
The universe of Genesis is vibrant, with distant systems lighting the ship with a beautiful sci-fi glow, and the aliens representing a full intriguing gamut from cockroach-like beasts through to humanoid aliens. This is the kind of game that people who dream of crafting their own space exploration stories, without being dragged through any particular forced narrative, will absolutely love.
Sphinx has aged relatively well. This is the perfect way to introduce newcomers to the game, even if it’s a series that didn’t take off.
If you can push past the sense that Luc Bernard’s art deserves to be associated with something that is so much more, this game is a great filler in between whatever else you’re playing on the Switch.
Legrand Legacy is, in the end, a very playable JRPG. Sadly it's also one of marginal appeal, even to those who grew up playing old JRPGs back in the 32-bit era.
There are games that do genuine sexiness better, and there aren't many out there that have the wild, unbound entertainment value of Senran Kagura.
For Christie nuts, The Raven is one of the better attempts to do her style of detective mystery that Christie herself wasn't involved in. It's well performed and convincing, and the age of the game is hardly a concern because, dated as it looks at times, the appeal of this one has to do more about the cerebral. It's all about the storytelling, in other words, and that side of things is spot on.
All being said, The Shrouded Isle is so razor-focused on its darkly original theme that it comes across as quite brave. This isn’t a necessarily uplifting or relaxing game. Nor is it particularly rewarding. It is, however, genuinely clever with how it works within an established genre, and it’s uncompromising in its vision. We need more games that are willing to do that.
It’s a love letter to survival horror, delivered direct like a bullet to the head.
More than anything else, Fight of Gods feels like a proof of concept.
Unfortunately it's difficult to see where the audience might be for this game. It's too much of a grind to work as a silly little character-driven sports game.
Pikuniku is an intriguing game as it takes some heavy concepts and transforms them into something colourfully palatable, with interesting characters and a fun soundtrack.
It's now in its 20th year, but Ace Combat 7 shows that there's plenty of life yet in the series. Neither pure arcade, nor hardcore simulation, it straddles the line it needs to offer both a sense of flight and fast, furious dogfight action, even as it tells a cinematic and genuinely enjoyable story.
The best way to describe the way Suda's games play is "energetic."
Bury Me, My Love is an remarkable exercise in building empathy. It’s a simple game, but so much more razor focused and successful at creating authenticity than most games that have budgets of a hundred million. Most importantly, however, is that no game is telling a story of greater importance to the world at the moment than Bury Me, My Love.
I’ve played lots of games, searching for something that might help me understand a bit better the infinite complexities of our human existence. And then I played Clock Simulator.
Whether this release is testing the water for a return to the series, or it's just a dip into the library to throw out a release in January, Onimusha is one of Capcom's finest and least appreciated. Hopefully with this new version, creaky as it can be at times, the game (and franchise) finds some new fans. It would be great to have Onimusha and Nioh competing side by side to have the premier Japanese dark fantasy crown.
The designers don't seem to have understood how strategy works with card games, and, unfortunately, that's really what differentiates a good TCG from a very poor one.