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Lightfingers is a party heist game with a wonderful sense of physicality

Lightfingers
Developer- Nuzimatic
Publisher- Nuzimatic
Nintendo Switch

Modeled in the style of a board game, Lightfingers is a party heist game that plays out like a living diorama. Players take turns rolling dice, moving around a board, and strategically playing cards on their way to be the first to get away with four bags of loot. As they perform heists they draw unwanted attention from guards and will have to duck them or stash it away before their inevitable capture to avoid losing it.

What’s striking is how well the materials of the game are well realized. There’s a physicality to the board and all the playing pieces. Characters feel like living miniatures, and a wonderful little mechanical action precedes movement as a tiny arm lifts, moves, and flips tiles of the board as they’re uncovered. When the game moves from its turn based back and forth to the heist action sequences, everyone comes together to interact with its playset style environments. The attacking player controls their character, while everyone else pulls and turns plungers and cranks to operate the deathtraps of each secure location.

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To Leave Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

To Leave
Developer- Freaky Creations
Publisher- Freaky Creations
Steam, PS4

To Leave feels like a game out of 2008. So much of its design philosophy reflects the aesthetics of the Xbox Live Arcade generation, and the indie game trends that rounded out the end of the previous decade. There’s a story that tries to add a sense of importance by tackling subjects like depression and mental health, and the promise that each moment of gameplay, each written word, is a meaningful and intentional delivery device for metaphor. What this means is a game that mixes elements of cinematic platformers, adventure games, and uh, Flappy Bird? It’s an uneven mix, one that’s often beautiful, though just as often archaic in the way it delivers its points.

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Fast Striker Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Fast Striker
Developer- NGDEV
Publisher- Eastasiasoft
PS4, PS Vita

Originally designed for the Dreamcast and Neo Geo MVS, Fast Striker is a straightforward, almost routine example of a shoot-em-up. At the same time, it displays all the competences of the genre, providing examples of what makes the genre feel good. It works with its limitations to provide good visual feedback and varied styles.

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Speed Brawl Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Speed Brawl
Developer- Double Stallion
Publisher- Kongregate
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

With a focus on momentum and aerial combat, Speed Brawl brings one of the best feeling combat systems of modern memory. It combines elements from popular time trial platformers alongside mechanics of tag based fighting games like Marvel Vs. Capcom to create a brawler with a wide range of expressive tools to master. It brings together the need to shave off seconds to get that gold ranking, and the desire to build even more elaborate combos in training mode. All of this is wrapped up in fantastic and varied character designs, each with their own distinct playstyle and synergies.

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Yakuza Kiwami is one of the best in the series

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Yakuza Kiwami 2
Developer- SEGA
Publisher- SEGA
PS4

With the sheer volume of entries in the Yakuza series, sometimes it becomes hard to talk about just what it is that separates an exceptional entry from a great one. Thankfully the rapid releases of Zero, Kiwami and Yakuza 6 have all put on display different facets of Yakuza’s appeal. Zero remains the peak, with well integrated side stories and strong characterization, Kiwami’s core drama and combat held the game together despite a choppier narrative arc, and Yakuza 6 showed off the series’ incredible ability to capture local flavor. Yakuza Kiwami 2 then, is a synthesis of the work done in these previous entries, collecting the best elements and using them in its return to one of the series’ strongest stories.

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Dancing Wildly With Cars

By: RJ (@rga_02)

It’s been a while since we’ve done this, for those who are new visitors, every week (lol) we’ll be recommending you a game, and either an album or a movie to check out. This week I’m recommending GARNiDELiA’s Kyouki Ranbu and Forza Horizon 2.

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Shikhondo is a beautiful hand drawn shooter-em-up that lives for aesthetics

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Shikhondo: Soul Eater
Developer- Deer Farm
Publisher- Deer Farm
Switch, PC

Shooters live on spectacle. A good shooter can get by on satisfying gunplay, but an exceptional one often enhances it with strong aesthetics and world design. Aesthetically, Shikhondo has it nailed. Its detailed, illustrated style evokes both modern anime and traditional Japanese ink paintings, with subtle animated touches. The animation itself uses popular paper doll style techniques, with small distortions to the illustrations to give them a bit more life. It’s an impressive look, and even the UI feels stylish. But even with this close attention to the art direction, Shikhondo has some major inconsistencies, which damage both the art and its readability as a game.

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SNK Heroines is a fighter that doesn’t know who it is for

by Amr (@siegarettes)

SNK Heroines Tag Team Frezy
Developer- SNK
Publisher- NISA
PS4, PC, Switch

I was totally wrong about SNK Heroines. It’s not the followup to SNK Gals’ Fighter nor the girly themed KOF14 style game I got on first impression. In fact, it completely ditches the familiar mechanics of King of Fighters or any other SNK fighters and goes for a pared down approach to tag style battles.

It’s astounding how many genre conventions SNK Heroines has stripped away. For instance, you can’t even crouch. You won’t deal with any high low mixups, or even any jumping cross ups, since blocking has now been moved to a Smash Bros style block button. Blocking can even be used in the air to do an air dodge, or combined with a direction to perform a dodge roll. Dodge rolls can even be done during blockstun for a small amount of meter.

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