Latest Reviews
While Curse of the Dead Gods isn’t overly narrative-driven, it is intriguing, and the randomised dungeon levels all have their own stories to tell. Enemies might cover off the who’s who of generic Dungeons & Dragons beasties, with snake-men, undead and so on, and traps are all the standard trigger-plates...
– Matt S. Editor-in-Chief Find me on Twitter: @mattsainsb
Whereas for its 2018 PC release, PUSS! played with the mouse to deliver an experience akin to a digitalised version of Operation!, the Switch port is best played with the joysticks, similarly to a bullet hell shmup. The left stick handles small movement and pressing the right accelerates the player...
Bowser’s Fury, meanwhile, shifts that perspective to a behind-the-player one, more like Super Mario 64, Sunshine, or Galaxy. That shift in perspective allows players to directly compare two very different approaches to Mario platforming, side-by-side, and with the takeaway that a change in perspective can mean a big change to...
The defining quality of any of the titles in the Persona series is the characters. The turn-based combat is engaging enough, as is the dungeon crawling, but it’s the cast, their relationships, and the dramas – both hilarious and tragic – that really draws the player into the experience and...
If you hadn’t played the Nioh games previously – perhaps concerned over their difficulty – then don’t let it miss you the second time. They are difficult, but that was essential in setting the desperate, nightmare tone and atmosphere. One other key takeaway that I’ve had from replaying both games...
There are other little subtle ways that the game continues to undermine what Gal*Gun is supposedly famous for. There are four “main” girls that you can woo, and each of them has a different narrative, within which there are special event variations on the base railgun action. One of these...
Speaking of PlayStation 5, though, the one complaint that I have with Monstrum Nox is that it crashes a lot. About once per hour on average. I played the game exclusively on PlayStation 5 and didn’t have the time to check if it was any more stable on the PS4,...
I’m told that all of this is also in keeping with the spirit of the anime, and I was genuinely impressed that the developer went to such lengths to come up with a fairly unique combat system just to do justice to the base property. It would have been so...
The narrative reminds me of the Pacific contact fiction of the 1800s, such as the works of Herman Melville or Daniel Defoe. Faraday (a name dripping with English pomp) finds himself often at the mercy of strange island tribes, learning from their cultures, fighting their enemies and adapting to the...
In most other ways Atelier Ryza 2 tracks along with what its predecessor achieved, tweaking things at the edges to refine them, but resisting making any major changes. The combat system remains vaguely turn-based, but characters take their turns to a timer that is both highly dynamic and snappy. Success...
The reward systems are also nice, with a steady drip-feed of new characters and items to mess around with that will help to keep you interested. As with any roguelike, Rhythm Fighter wants to test your patience for repetition in re-treading old ground in exchange for the satisfaction of making...
