Miguel Moran
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Writing For
TheSixthAxisLatest Reviews
I’m a massive fan of TRON, but more specifically, I’m a massive fan of TRON: Legacy. The 2010 sci-fi sequel has been cemented in my subconscious since the day it came out. The world it built has always been so captivating to me, with sleek metal obelisks and neon colorized highlights dancing around in my dreams most nights. It’s all complemented by gripping audio design, from the roar of the light cycles to the zap of a bouncing identity disc and the iconic Daft Punk curated score. Every opportunity I get to revisit that world is a thrill, so I’ve been chomping at the bit to get my hands on the latest spinoff of my favorite sci-fi property – TRON: Catalyst.
I’ve been a huge fan of Keita Takahashi’s work for years. As a kid, Katamari Damacy was a weird and wacky sandbox that was so much fun to pick up and play. Returning to it years later helped me appreciate not only the touching story of togetherness that the game culminates in, but the effort that was put into making the simple act of play so perfectly satisfying.The blending of lofty themes with intertwined gameplay didn’t just elevate the themes, but is still fun as heck to play in it’s own way. I had high hopes that To a T would take this further. The game does have a poignant and heartwarming message behind it, but the lack of any kind of satisfying or consistent gameplay to go along with it makes this more of a mixed bag than gaming bliss.
Typically, the big reason the Rune Factory series always appealed to me a bit more than its sister franchise Harvest Moon, was because of the more fantasy-focused setting. While Harvest Moon always presented a pretty chill and down-to-earth Japanese farm fantasy, the Rune Factory series always leaned a bit more Western and high-fantasy in its style. I’ve come to associate that setting with the series, which made the initial reveal of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma and its traditional Japanese twist on the setting make me feel a bit conflicted. Despite a vibe shift and new setting, though, this game is an incredible new take on the Rune Factory series that shines just as bright as my favourite entries.
I never played the original Fantasy Life on the Nintendo 3DS, so I jumped into Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time completely unaware of what I would be signing up for. As my customised character was tossed through a time portal to an ancient island, I gradually found my feet, settling into a quaint life-sim fuelled by a choice from over a dozen job-altering Life selections. This was plenty interesting, but by the time I got used to that loop, I was whisked through another portal and dropped onto an entire other island where the entire ebb and flow of the game completely changed.
DOOM Eternal is one of my favourite games of all time, and easily my favourite entry in the long-running id Software franchise. It’s the only shooter I’ve played where the end of every encounter makes me feel like I just finished jogging up the stairs for an hour. It’s a game that tests all your senses and fires all your synapses and locks you into a gameplay loop where you never. stop. moving. In DOOM: The Dark Ages, you need to stop moving. The game has swapped the jump and dodge action of the last entry with a new combat loop focused more around universal weapon utility, slower and steadier battles, and a melee parry system. It’s a wildly different direction, and while the result is absolute demon-blasting ridiculousness that’ll make anyone smile, it never quite reaches the same constant highs of the last game.
Sometimes a video game is an epic. It’s daunting, and it’s forever, and it’s a slate of marble you slowly chip away at for weeks and months and an entire year. Other times, a video game is lightning and fireworks. It’s an instant flash, and immediate dopamine, and a bag of chips that’s empty before you know it but also maybe empty before you have too much of it. It’s Shotgun Cop Man.
When SNK was bought by the Saudi Arabian Electronic Gaming Development Company back in 2022, they reassured the general public that this would not affect the content of their games at all. It happened during a pretty tumultuous period of foreign investment funds and corporations buying their way into several gaming companies, so people were rightfully pretty concerned about how it would affect the legendary fighting game developer. After playing Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, it feels like that promise from 2022 has been broken, draining away any chance of this game having a cohesive aesthetic or style. Beyond some interesting combat mechanics and a handful of promising new character designs, there isn’t a whole lot to this game that would make it feel like a standout hit, anyway.
It feels like a no-brainer for a collaboration between the creators of the Zero Escape and Danganronpa games to just be the biggest, wildest death-game crossover imaginable. Yet, to the credit of both developers, they’ve spent the last few years instead collaborating on projects that explore refreshingly different genres and mediums while still retaining a lot of the creative charm that made their breakout works so memorable. The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy is by far the magnum opus of their collaborative game works as Too Kyo Games. Blending the wild flowchart-storytelling of Zero Escape with the bombastic and absurd mystery thriller antics of Danganronpa is incredible enough, but doing so within such a different frame of narrative and with such an addictive gameplay loop has resulted in one of the most memorable games I’ve played in ages.
Before nerd culture went mainstream, and everyone was into or aware of anime in all its forms, there was what anime die-hards called The Big Three. It was the three iconic and long-running shonen action manga & anime series that were mainstream titans compared to any other series – Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. The first two have had a healthy variety of video game adaptations over the years, but Bleach has never truly had its moment in the sun. A number of middling arena fighters have come and gone for the stylish and edgy series, but Bleach: Rebirth of Souls aims to be a breakout hit by combining a reverence for the origins of the series with the sleek underground futurism of it’s recent anime revival seasons, all bundled together in what is easily the most inventive anime arena fighter I’ve played in years.
When you love something a lot, it can be hard to see it change. The Atelier series has held onto a pretty strict and consistent style and vibe for over a decade of yearly entries. Yet, in the opening hours of Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land so much of that has changed. The style is sharper, the vibe is a bit more serious, and the titular alchemist doesn’t even own a giant cauldron! I was shook by these changes at first, since they betrayed that cozy, slice-of-life, Kiki’s Delivery Service-adjacent tone that made me fall in love with the series. Dozens of hours, hundreds of battles, and thousands of alchemy sessions later, I can confidently say that this is an incredible step forward into the exciting unknown for the Atelier franchise.