Video by Matt S. It’s fan service, it’s satire, and it’s fun! Akiba’s Trip took the whole hikikomori trend in Japan, as well as the social and cultural concerns that have come from it, and spun it into an entertaining PSP game about a decade ago. Now it has been…
Read MorePreview by Harvard L. The first thing Acid Nerve’s top-down action game, Death’s Door, has going for it – it GIFs really well. Check out the team’s Twitter and you’ll find multiple crunchy loops of a well-timed sword swing bouncing a projectile back at an enemy, and it’s just so…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. As I was playing Legend of Mana, I found myself constantly wondering at just how innovative and beautiful this game must have seemed back on the PlayStation, where it originally released in 1999 (2000 in North America). On its art and aesthetics alone, this is one…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. With over 30 books in print starring Drizzt Do’Urden and his companions, you would think that there’s plenty of material to turn into a compelling RPG. After all, while R.A Salvatore’s novels are pulp fantasy in every sense of the term, so too are The Witcher…
Read MoreVideo by Matt S. Bandai Namco’s Scarlet Nexus is a blistering-good game with a compelling theme. In this video I discuss the broader implications of the narrative and those themes; why it’s relevant and allegorical to today’s world, and why more and more artists, across all media forms, are making…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The nature of reality is becoming an ever-bigger question mark that artists are grappling with, and that’s because we’re getting greater levels of control over the very foundations of the reality that we exist within. We’re taking the digital, constructed would and painting it over the…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I knew that I would love Aluna from its opening moments. The game kicks off with a cutscene talking about Zeus and Hercules, before saying (and yes, I am paraphrasing here) “but you know what? Let’s talk about this South American goddess and her daughter instead”.…
Read MoreVideo by Matt S. NieR Gestalt is – or at least was – my favourite game of all time. I’ve had the opportunity to get hands-on time with NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 and… well, unless something catastrophic happens with the stuff I haven’t seen yet, it is the perfect remaster of…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. While the roguelike genre is well overplayed at this point, enjoyable examples of the genre do deserve to be noted as such. Curse of the Dead Gods is an enjoyable roguelike, but being too stylistically similar to last year’s breakout super-hit, Hades, won’t help its cause,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free,” so Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote once, and Ys IX reminded me of that quote a little. It’s not such a direct interpretation (we leave that to Persona 5), but imprisonment is the…
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