By: RJ (@rga_02)
If you gave me the option to either win at a crane game or abandon everything in life and move to some island in the Pacific, I’d chose the latter. I’m not only awful at crane games, but I hate them with a burning desire.
So you could only imagine how I felt like when I encountered one in Yakuza Kiwami.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
This review contains some spoilers
It has been 12 years since the release of a “proper” Ace Combat console game. Since then, Namco has experimented with the series - with varying degrees of success depending on who you ask. However, the common opinion you’ll find across is that there hasn’t been a “proper” Ace Combat game since the PS2 era.
Fans of the series have been left wondering when they will be gracing the skies of Strangereal once more. Luckily for them - including me, our prayers have been answered this year with the release of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unkown. And spoiler, it is everything that I’ve wanted.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Contrary to its title, one of the first things Baba is You taught me that my adorable sheep avatar was not in fact always me. Sometimes I’m a rock, or a ghost, or every single wall in the room. Sometimes the goal is to get Baba to a flag to win, sometimes the goal is to get something else there, transform into it and then make yourself the win condition. If that sounds confusing or inconsistent that’s because Baba is You is fundamentally about changing its own rules.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
When I originally reviewed The Caligula Effect for the Vita I found it to be a dire RPG, with a half-baked story and combat that was held back by its abysmal technical performance. I questioned the merit of returning to it for a PS4 remake. Still, I was curious if any of the original game could be salvaged. So once again I found myself, like the game’s protagonists, stuck in an endless loop of high school life.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Ghoulboy doesn’t quite capture the retro feeling that it goes for. Ghoulboy fits comfortably along games like Poppyworks’ Super Skull Smash and Halloween Forever, which look the part in screenshots, but aren’t quite there when you get your hands on them. The movement is all slightly off, the feedback isn’t there, and some of the stage designs get finicky. Regardless, it ends up being decent fun in its own right, even if it mostly reminds me of games it can’t live up to.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Assault Android Cactus is just fucking fun. I have a natural tendency to slip into critic mode–whether playing a game for review or not. After engaging with games for so long it’s hard not to constantly be reading into the craft of everything I play. I’m always thinking about what a designer intended, how certain parts of the game intersect with narrative aims, how a level design guides you…you get the idea.
When I play Assault Android Cactus all I think is “this game is so fucking fun I want to keep playing it.” Not to say that it’s a mindless shooter that’s easy to zone out to. Rather, this is one of those games that’s so thoughtfully designed that I my thoughts can take time off and appreciate the sheer physical joy of manipulating it.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
What if a puzzle game removed the cursor and replaced it with a character? That’s Treasure Stack’s big gimmick, turning an otherwise regular competitive puzzle game into a platformer hybrid. The order which you stack blocks not only sets up chains to attack and defend, but creates a space you need to be able to physically traverse to engage with. It’s a solid concept, only rarely explored in other games like Super Puzzle Platformer or Mr. Blocko Super Tournament Edition.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Eastshade seems like a fruit ripened just for a me–an art school dropout with little sense for painting. Escaping to the life of a traveling artist is still a potent fantasy–seeing new places, capturing them, and making a living off your art are all about as fantastical as the setting of Eastshade itself, after all. I expected to come out with a certain appreciation for painting, maybe a with the game’s pastoral landscapes. Instead, I learned about something else I missed in my truncated art education: the hard material reality of trying to make art for a living.
