Dystopian science fiction has been popular of late, and it might be tempting to think that it’s a reflection of the modern age we live in, and therefore a new concept in the sci-fi world. Tempting… but badly inaccurate. Dystopian depictions of the far-flung future have been part of science…
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You would think fashion was an easy concept for video games. I mean, sure there won’t be visceral bloodletting (though a catwalk fighting game would be amazing…), but fashion lends itself to collectability, which is how many games keep players invested, and who doesn’t like playing dress-up with pretty characters?…
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It was inevitable that Yakuza 6 would not be the end of Kazuma Kiryu. It should have been, since it finished the series in spectacular fashion. However, this is the video game industry, and when you’ve got a bankable star, you keep returning to that well until enough people get…
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Most annual sporting properties have a reputation for each year’s edition offering little more than a new roster over the top of the base game. Sometimes that’s fair. Often it is not. Football Manager is the one series where “roster update” is actually one of the critical features that you…
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Nintendo’s WarioWare series has represented the company at its whimsical purest since the Game Boy Advance. Players play through hundreds of micro-games, each a few seconds long, in rapid-fire succession. With every minigame being a microcosm of pure and unfiltered creativity, WarioWare has always boasted vivacious energy and charm in…
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If you polled the Star Ocean fan base on which is the finest in this relatively obscure but long-running sci-fi/fantasy series, Star Ocean 2 would pop up quite often, if not in most cases. I would personally argue that Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time is slightly more…
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Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade was meant to be out much, much earlier in the year. It had even briefly appeared on some eShop storefronts around the world. Something must have been wrong with it, however, as it was unceremoniously pulled and put back into development for some months.…
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There’s a certain end of the video game industry that mistakes emotional manipulation for quality narrative. The goal is to find the right voice actors, get the players invested enough in the world that they spend a lot of time in it, and then make sure those key scenes are…
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Archetype Arcadia has an awful lot of content. The PR material claims 50 hours, and while I have a gut feeling that that’s assuming a fairly slow reading speed, I read quickly and I wouldn’t be surprised if I did actually spend that long getting to the end. It’s generally…
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Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue is not the Danganronpa clone it seems to be. It looks the part, but rather than being a “death game,” it’s closer to the first 90% of Lord of the Flies (the part where there’s tension but no murder) than Saw. Or Blue Lagoon were…
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