Francesco De Meo
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WCCFtech Latest Reviews
Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture have always approached game design with an "art-first" philosophy. While their titles aren't always the most modern in terms of raw mechanics, they are always more than the simple sum of their parts. Powered by a singular, punk-rock vision, each title possesses a distinct flair that is becoming increasingly rare in the risk-averse AAA space.
I am not going to lie: I love Team NINJA. If you have been checking out my coverage over the past few years, you likely know this already. Ever since first picking up the PlayStation port of Dead or Alive, I was hooked. There is a specific feel to their combat that no other developer quite replicates. That admiration for the studio founded by the legendary Tomonobu Itagaki, who sadly passed away last October, only deepened as they pioneered the genres I love most: the high-octane character action of Ninja Gaiden and the punishing Masocore depth of Nioh. Even when they stumbled, as they did with the original Ninja Gaiden 3, their DNA remained unmistakable.
Although its popularity doesn't reach the heights of other established series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the Octopath Traveler franchise is proving to be rather seminal for the JRPG genre as a whole, mainly thanks to its HD-2D visual style which has been employed to great success in other titles, including the tactical role-playing game Triangle Strategy, the upcoming action role-playing game The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, and remakes of classic games such as the first three entries in the Dragon Quest series and in Star Ocean: The Second Story R, remake of the second entry in the series created by tri-Ace.
Back in the 90s, the side-scrolling beat'em up genre dominated video games, with series like CAPCOM's Final Fight, SEGA's Streets of Rage, and Konami's licensed games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons gaining widespread success, which sometimes even surpassed traditional fighting games, thanks, for the most part, to the immediacy of their gameplay.
The launch of Genshin Impact in 2020 fundamentally changed the world of free-to-play gaming, ushering in an era of free open-world RPGs with AAA production values. While this success prompted a proliferation of high-quality experiences, the genre continued to be defined by the gacha mechanics that often introduce a certain clunkiness to the experience by tying progression and key characters to monetization. For old-school players like me, this was a major issue that prevents them from getting into this type of game. I'd rather pay for a full experience than have the story told piecemeal or rely on luck for a cool moveset or character.
Despite being the series that defined Japanese role-playing games, Dragon Quest took some time to get the widespread recognition it deserved in North America and Europe. Nowadays, the franchise created by Yuji Horii is a household name as much as Final Fantasy is, and the popularity of the franchise led to the successful release of the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, a very solid remake that was met with a warm reception from fans, thanks to its great visuals and how small choice tweaks made the classic gameplay more compelling.
Despite having been released almost thirty years ago, Final Fantasy Tactics is still remembered as one of the best tactical role-playing games ever released and one of the finest entries in the Square Enix series, thanks to its incredible story, deep gameplay, and the most refined iteration of the series’ Job system, which grants it excellent replayability. I played through the original and the War of the Lions PSP release dozens of times, testing countless strategies, experimenting with wild Job combinations, and finding unusual ways to play—all while continuing to enjoy Ramza's journey through a war-torn land and Delita's efforts to reshape their world, as if experiencing it for the first time.
At a time when the horror genre was thriving, KONAMI’s continued neglect of the Silent Hill series was baffling. While Resident Evil reclaimed its place as one of the greatest survival-horror franchises with its seventh entry and successful remakes, and new IPs blossomed, one of the genre’s cornerstones remained dormant. With KONAMI showing little interest in reviving its legacy franchises, it often felt like we’d never return to that fog-shrouded town. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case: last year, Bloober Team’s excellent Silent Hill 2 remake brought the series back to life.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is hardly going to be remembered as the finest entry in the series or the best open-world game set in Feudal Japan, but the good the game does definitely outweighs the bad, making for an enjoyable experience whose real fault lies in the series' now trademark content bloat and the by-the-book open-world ARPG experience rather than in the bad execution of any of its features.
Following the release of several horror games to a reception ranging from positive to mildly negative, sometimes due to how particular sensitive themes were addressed, Polish developer Bloober Team has risen considerably in the estimation of survival horror fans for the excellent work the studio has done with the Silent Hill 2 remake, a faithful adaptation of the classic Konami game enhanced by some modern features that make it a joy to play. While the Polish studio is set to continue this fruitful collaboration with the development of the remake of the first entry in the series, Bloober Team is also expanding its own properties with new titles, the first of them being Cronos: The New Dawn. Right from the game's reveal, it was made clear how this game would be a threshold release for the studio, moving past the narrative-focused experiences such as the Layers of Fear series and The Medium to delve deeper into the survival horror genre. And while it is definitely a little flawed, there's no denying that Bloober Team created a solid game that becomes rather engaging once things really get going.