by Amr (@siegarettes)
[TRANSCRIPT]
Sonic Team has made one of the best games of the year. It doesn’t have Sonic, it’s not even a platformer. It is, of all things, a fighting game. So move over Capcom, Arc Sys, and make way for Puyo Puyo Tetris.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
[TRANSCRIPT]
Sonic Forces feels incomplete. It’s straining against its budget, with signs that it may have gone a few changes of direction. Everything is highly polished, but it’s clear that plenty got cut on the way, leaving them to assemble what’s left into something resembling complete. It’s frustrating, seeing something with so many ideas, but with almost none of them explored.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
The Games We Played is a year-end round up of thoughts about games we spent time with.
Walking on the touchline of the pitch, I gaze upon my eleven players as they line up. The national anthem is sung and the fireworks exploding in the background. The whistle is eventually blown and the game starts, but 48 seconds into the game, Los Angeles Galaxy scored against us. In a fit of rage, I jump up and my laptop flew off the table.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Most driving games are about mastering speed. They’re about obsessing about the angles through a corner, or how much time is spent at the highest gear. Mudrunner, by comparison, is often about the incremental variations in speeds within first gear. The only opponents here are the slow drain of resources and the mud that threatens to trap every one of your vehicles.
It’s hard to make a 3D platformer. It seems like a relatively simple genre, but simplicity often means the effect of small details is more strongly felt. A 3D platformer lives and dies by the weight of inertia, or the cooperation of a camera. So I had my doubts that A Hat in Time could pull it off. There’s plenty of games that give off that intangible sense of something being off, and A Hat in Time doesn’t give off a good first impression either.
The oversaturated lighting and overcrowded hub of Mafia Town, the game’s first world, has a strange, unpleasant aura. It’s busy both visually and topographically, pulling attention in every direction and failing to provide a compelling playground. I wasn’t impressed by its first few missions either, which didn’t endear me to its characters or world. Thankfully, by the time the second world unlocks it becomes clear that there’s a lot more to A Hat in Time than first impressions hint at.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
It’s been a year of surprises. I never expected to get into fighting games. Or to see a strategy game that I could enjoy. And I definitely didn’t expect to have a game that got me into deck building, let alone two of them. But thanks to Card City Nights 2, here I am.
The first Card City Nights drew me in with its charming art. The colorful, playful character designs paired well with the card art drawing from Ludosity’s previous games (Ittle Dew, Muri, Princess Pitch etc). It gave off a lighthearted vibe and felt like a good alternative to more serious card games that often aim for something more epic and expansive. The same is true for Card City Nights 2, but set upon a dysfunctional space station, giving them room to bring in even more bizarre designs and plenty of fantastic monster girls.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Sometimes you take on an assignment that’s probably more than you’re prepared for. In this case, I found myself absently looking for releases to check out, and accepting a code for Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. I’d heard the name talked about in vague terms for while, enough to check out some of the opening episodes of the anime adaptation, but I’d never seen any of the games themselves despite the series being around since the PS2 era. Mostly because they weren’t in English. So with them finally getting a release I thought it would be a good time to check them out. Well, what I happened to miss was that Mask of Truth was the final part in a trilogy.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
People often joke about the number of sports videogames out in the market, then you look at a franchise like Neptunia. The games range from traditional RPGs to idol simulation games and they seem to come out every other month. It also feels that every entry seems to be a carbon copy of another. While the characters and dialog are charming, the games themselves are nothing to be desired of as of recently. Until now.
I’ll just say this right out of the gate. This game is good. Not ironically good, but actually good.