Lucas White
Game industry critic and reviewer
Writing For
ShackNews
TheGamer
Playstation Lifestyle
Nintendo WireLatest Reviews
I still remember how hyped I was when BlazBlue first came out, all the way back in 2009. I was at my peak interest in fighting games, Guilty Gear was on some kind of hiatus, and this was the next best thing with its own cool twists. Eventually, I fell...
The somewhat controversial Yakuza Kiwami series continues, with its most controversial entry yet. There’s a lot to unpack here, but needless to say the internet has been alight with discourse, with hardcore, longtime Yakuza/Like a Dragon fans clashing with more casual or newer fans over retcons, casting decisions, gameplay changes,...
An easy comparison to make with Routine is Alien Isolation, due to its green-tinted, chunky technology, and invincible, free-roaming (ish) antagonist forces. While the actual timeline suggests Routine was in development early enough for some of those similarities to be coincidental rather than derivative, there’s no denying the aesthetic comparison...
There’s a lurch in Unbeatable, the debut work from developer D-Cell Games, finally out after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2021. Pink-haired and surly protagonist Beat and her soon-to-be bandmates are locked up in a prison, with no choice but to get through the doldrums of inmate life before the...
I know what it feels like to desperately want to sleep. A medication mishap left me unable to sleep for three or four days. I laid in bed each night trying to make it happen, then drifted through the following days struggling to focus on things like work. It started...
Here at Shacknews, I’ve talked about Atelier a few times. GUST and Koei Tecmo’s item synthesis and cozy vibes RPG series has had a lot of ups and downs over the past few decades. If you’ve read my previous reviews, you might have a skewed perspective, as the most recent...
Sometimes you see a game when you’re just scrolling through the eShop and you see the potential for a life-changing experience. Sometimes it doesn’t pan out the way you’d hoped, but you still have a few laughs along the way. That’s what happened when I tried Full Metal Schoolgirl, the...
Unless you’re sitting in the ludicrously small mid-section of a Venn Diagram comparing “Katamari Damacy fans” and “Apple Arcade subscribers,” you’ve probably been waiting upwards of 14 years for a new Katamari game that isn’t a remaster or wacky spin-off. And Touch my Katamari was a PS Vita game, so...
I find myself growing more and more tired of roguelikes lately, and I don’t really believe in “guilty pleasure” as a concept. But if you held a gun to my head and asked me to identify my gaming guilty pleasure, I’d probably answer with Vampire Survivors. It’s the perfect combination...
Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee was one of many Kickstarter successes of its time, in an era in which spiritual successors for classic games were an easy hit. The 2017 original was a clear callback to Banjo-Kazooie, a Nintendo 64 platformer known for its googly eyes, wealth of collectibles, and complex platforming...
King of Meat is an action-packed, multiplayer dungeon crawler developed by Glowmade and published by Amazon Games. It’s kind of a mix of goofy vibes, from Adult Swim-like edgy cartoon humor to Ninja Warrior and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Imagine a fantasy-flavored challenge of carnage, spikes, and skeletons, televised to...
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, a janky, low budget PlayStation Vita RPG from 2015, is one of my favorite games of all time. I’m not even that much of a Digimon person, but that’s a game I’ve dumped a few hundred hours into over multiple playthroughs, something I’m rarely capable of...
