Lucas White
Game industry critic and reviewer
Writing For
ShackNews 
TheGamer 
Playstation Lifestyle Latest Reviews
Video games being self-referential is about as special as grocery store sushi, but Shadow Labyrinth is like how Kroger started dusting its spicy California rolls with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos crumbs. The team behind this monstrosity basically asked: “Pac-Man’s 45th birthday is here; what if instead of the usual stuff we made everything as weird and gross as possible?” And folks, these people succeeded. Shadow Labyrinth is a massive, complicated, stressful Metroidvania that is full of self-referential material presented in supremely unhinged (but shockingly narratively cohesive) fashion.
When I first saw Date Everything, I was suspicious. There’s a trend in Western visual novels with a heavy lean toward parody or irony often flavored with a hubris or disrespect that borders on, at best, otherism. Games like Doki Doki Literature Club or the constant barrage of April Fools joke games in which you date a yoked up fast food mascot or whatever use a genre with historical significance and genuine longevity as a cudgel to look down on its games and people who make and play them, and it sucks! Date Everything, a visual novel that has you exploring an apartment to go on dates with personified household appliances, has “smarmy hater” written all over it.
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo makes an absurdly powerful first impression. As the game loads, a 3D-modeled, handheld gaming console descends from the heavens, artificial light reflecting from the smudged plastic coating on its screen. The console twirls as a cartridge falls into the slot, then spins back to face the audience as the game boots. Pipistrello doesn’t just transition to a normal, fullscreen video game at this point, like you may expect. It just runs in this fictional handheld, taking up more than half the display. The game hasn’t even started, and we’ve dived headfirst into the pungent depths of sicko territory. Playing this game means shouting into the abyss, and the abyss responds with the Game Boy Advance boot jingle.
MercurySteam and I don’t tend to get along. I found its Castlevania series interesting at first, but ultimately a whiff. And its take on Metroid is perhaps the most impressive effort in Missing The Point I've ever seen in a video game. But there’s no denying this studio has a history of big ideas and big swings. An original story without any IP baggage is the perfect space for that kind of energy, and that’s exactly what Blades of Fire feels like. A nuclear testing ground for doing things a little differently.
A pumping soundtrack. The sounds of endless bullets. Naughty words that start with “eff” and rhyme with “pluck.” Yep, it’s time for a Devolver Digital-ass Devolver Digital review. Hopefully this one’s better than Anger Foot.
Before Skin Deep came across my desk, I had never even heard of it. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong, but that I went in completely blind. What is this game? Who knows, let’s just boot this bad boy up and see what happens. That’s probably for the best, because “immersive sims” don’t do a lot for me, and that’s exactly what Skin Deep is when you boil it down. However it’s also weird, scaled-down, relatively simple and fast-paced, and also, weird. It’s almost like someone took Deathloop and tossed it into a blender with a bunch of YouTube cat video compilations.
When Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Zero Escape/AI: Somnium Files creator Kotaro Uchikoshi formed (with other industry legends like composer Masafumi Takada) Too Kyo Games, fans of both series wondered if these modern visual novel/adventure game legends would collaborate. It took a while, but that day has finally come. The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- is the result, and it is exactly the kind of thing I expected from this dream team project. It’s completely unhinged, basically.
Readers, if you recognize my name, you probably know I love the heck out of classical, turn-based RPGs. I’m always happy in front of games like Dragon Quest, SaGa, Shin Megami Tensei, Final Fantasy, and other weird stuff that doesn’t have huge brand power. But if you asked me to name the quintessential RPG, the one that defines the genre in my mind, it’s gotta be Lunar. These games, especially their PlayStation remakes that were lovingly packaged in boxes full of goodies, were formative experiences for me at an age when I barely knew what things like anime and “role-playing games” were on a conceptual level. So much so that when I booted up Lunar Remastered Collection and started hearing its newly-recorded version of “Wings,” a wave of nostalgic yearning hit me like a truck. So, that’s the angle I’m coming to this review from. Be warned. We might get a little cringe tonight, folks.
Nitroplus’ Rusty Rabbit is an easy hook. The key visuals show us a bipedal rabbit, wearing a patched-up bomber jacket, chomping on a carrot like a cigar, with a village made of scrap junk on the side of a frozen mountain in the background. Learning the rabbit pilots a mech suit in Metroidvania dungeons and is voiced by Kazuma Kiryu of Yakuza fame in both Japanese and English seals the deal. But what might seem like a zany, over the top action game turns out to be more nuanced than you might expect. Weird, wholesome, and deliberately rough around the edges, Rusty Rabbit is an earnest passion project that looks like a normal video game but happens to be more of a visual novel-coded character study.
It’s a great time to be into SaGa. Kawazu’s team has been able to build on the success of some risky remasters, all the way to making a brand-new game and a full remake that has helped solidify SaGa as one of Square Enix’s secret weapons. As such, SaGa Frontier 2: Remastered was seen as the perfect time to try a “shadow drop,” and see how the RPG community reacts. I hope it does well, because not only is a new SaGa always a good time, but this remaster is a beautiful example of how an older game can be preserved and refined at the same time.