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My Steam wishlist is full of cute and cozy titles, many involving animals. Time on Frog Island had been there for a while, so I was thrilled to see we got a code to review! I was drawn to the art style, particularly the anthropomorphic frogs, and how colourful it was.
Space Invaders is a well-known top-down shooter game that is loved and admired by many. It started the journey many gamers find themselves on today, across galaxies far and wide, visiting skies of unknown worlds. When I viewed the trailer for Blink: Rogues, I was drawn back to that moment in my childhood, of discovering shooter games through Space Invaders, and wanted to give it a try. Intrigued by its own blueprints, I put myself forward to review the game. Here’s what Rapid Reviews thought, as we lift off into the skies of Blink: Rogues.
Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic takes place 4000 years before the Galactic Empire, and the Jedi Knights have fallen at the hands of the Sith. It’s up to you, a nameless protagonist, to save the Jedi Order from becoming a memory. You must protect the Republic’s last hopes, the Jedi knight Bastila Shan. Unfortunately, the Jedi are hellbent on interfering with your plans. After the squirmish, you and Republic soldier Carth Onasi need to hunt down Shan as they escaped before you. Can you master the power of the Force or will you succumb to the Dark Side?
Back in the 90s it wasn’t an unusual sight to see a title region locked to its country of origin. Across both the US and Japan there were often titles released that never made their way to UK shores. However, there were also titles that never made it outside of Japan. This was primarily seen with an abundance of JRPG titles – with the biggest culprit being the then named SquareSoft. To be fair you can’t rest the blame onto the developer’s shoulders. Back in the day, the genre was seen as somewhat niche to Western markets, and it wouldn’t be until the arrival of Final Fantasy VII that the developer/publisher got its foot in the door with Western gamers.
Back in 2020, I reviewed Jisei: The First Case HD, when Ratalika Games S.L. ported the first instalment of the Jisei Series from PC onto consoles. The port of the second instalment, Kansei: The Second Turn HD, arrived a short time after the release of the next generation of Xbox and PlayStation consoles. I reviewed the Xbox version, which is optimised for Series X|S. Did I find the next game in the series as engaging as the first? Find out here in my Rapid Review.
At a glance, Ravenous Devils immediately invokes images of the classic macabre tale of Sweeney Todd. The killing of innocent people in order to cook them into delicious meals for the unsuspecting public makes for a grim, disturbing and yet curious element in this horror cooking simulator. But is this more Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares?
Games like Tinykin are very special, mainly because they look great, and bolster a very niche and small genre in gaming. It is a good blend of Chibi Robo and Pikmin, with a clever visual style that oozes charm.
On a clear crisp Summer’s day, I like to be outside pottering around in the garden. Tending to plants and weeding brings a sense of tranquillity to what might have been a long week at work. When I saw Cloud Gardens was available to review, I was keen to extend my green fingers to the gaming world. Let’s dive straight in.
MADiSON is an immersive and terrifying first-person psychological horror game, featuring disturbing gameplay and an unsettling and compelling narrative. Solve puzzles, explore your surroundings, and most importantly, survive. You play as Luca and throughout your journey, you are haunted by Madison, a demon who is forcing you to continue a gory ritual started decades ago. She wants you to finish her sinister ceremony. Do you have the strength to resist?
Souldiers is a standard Metroidvania that follows different soldiers on their quest through the afterlife. I platformed different locales, solved simple puzzles, and defeated ferocious enemies. Does this classic formula still hold up today? Find out in this Rapid Review.
In honour of Kirby’s thirtieth anniversary, Nintendo published Kirby’s Dream Buffet, a frantic multiplayer party game where I tried to eat as much fruit as possible. Did this anniversary special remind me of all the great times I had with the Kirby series? Find out in this Rapid Review.
Games, where you manage a city and grow it to a booming metropolis, are nothing new. However, town simulation games in VR are a fairly new occurrence. Little Cities from newcomer, Purple Yonder, a husband and wife team, brings cozy systems management to the Oculus Quest 2. Little Cities tasks you with taking over an empty series of islands and building out the streets, residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.
Going into RPGolf Legends, I had no idea what to expect. The mix of RPG gameplay smashed together with the least adrenaline-filled sport ever conceived was a concept that intrigued and surprised me. I expected a golf game akin to the Tiger Woods or Wii golf games with a subtle levelling system. What I got was a strange RPG game more like the top down 16-bit adventures of old, such as classic Final Fantasy or Zelda adventures revolving around a golf obsessed world.
Being a massive Roguelite fan, I was interested to see what Dungeon of Clay had to offer. Can it stand shoulder to shoulder with the heavyweights of the genre, such as Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon or Neon Abyss? Let’s find out!
World of Mechs puts you into the suit of an armored mech adorned with machine guns, rockets, grenades, and more. If piloting a hulking machine on a battlefield was ever a dream you had, World of Mechs will make that a virtual reality. The game itself is broken into two parts, a single-player campaign and a 4v4 online with various match types.
If you are as old as me and let’s be honest, you’re probably not, you would have loved thumbing through choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid. If you are a whippersnapper and have no idea what I am talking about then these were adventure books with choices. At various intervals in the book, you would be given a choice, to attack the snake turn to page 10 or to give it a wide berth, turn to page 20, those kind of free-flowing shenanigans.
Thymesia is a third-person grim dark souls-like with a unique twist on enemy health bars. Instead of just one health bar, dealing damage only inflicts wounds. I needed to manage both wounds and traditional health to take out enemies. Did this innovation make Thymesia stand out? Find out in this Rapid Review.
Created by indie developer FYQD-Studio, Bright Memory made its debut back in 2019 as part of Steam’s Early Access program. Originally released as Bright Memory Episode 1, the indie first-person shooter received great reviews, and to this day holds a 91% approval rating on Steam. Instead of releasing the planned Bright Memory Episode 2, FYQD-STUDIO have instead completed the game, and rebranded it under the new name of, Bright Memory: Infinite.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or Hero Turtles for a while here in the UK) is a name that is synonymous to anyone who’s grown up in the late 80’s and 90’s, as well as the current younger generations, due to various multimedia adaptations of their original comic book incarnation. They have spanned movies in the 90’s and late 2000’s, as well as animated shows, comic books and, for the purpose of this review, video games.
Upon starting Wildcat Gun Machine, you’re thrown straight into the deep end without any real context on why you’re here or what your main goal is. While some people may enjoy not sitting through a five-minute-long cut-scene to explain the story or the character’s motivations, I found it a little strange and a bit rushed. I normally like to get to know the character a little more and the reasons for why we’re here and doing the things we’re doing. Sadly it’s never explained, and why our main character is always surrounded by ghost cats is another detail that is never touched upon. The game doesn’t want to waste your time with any sort of introduction or fluff, it wants you to familiarise yourself with the combat and the controls through actually playing it.