#review
#review
By: RJ (@rga_02)
Pro Evolution Soccer is back – and the lights are shining on the pitch brighter than ever.
by Omar(@siegarettes)
While the original Dragon Quest games have largely come to dominate the legacy of developer Chunsoft, the Mystery Dungeon series has provided a quiet historical counter-point. First conceived as a Dragon Quest spinoff, the Mystery Dungeon games arguably did for the roguelike genre what Dragon Quest did for the RPG. It took a complex, systems heavy western genre and stripped it down to its core appeal, creating a surprisingly fully formed console roguelike. In some ways, it feels like the culture of games has just now caught up with the work Chunsoft did on the Mystery Dungeon games. When the original Shiren the Wanderer game finally reached US shores with an port for the Nintendo DS, it still felt modern, despite its Super Famicom roots. Even now entries in the series still quietly sneak out, feeling perfectly at home with the current popularity of indie roguelikes. Spike Chunsoft is not ignorant to this either, if their work on One Way Heroics is anything to go by.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Even among the recent revival of SHMUPs, DOGOS, by developers OPQAM, immediately makes an impression. Rather than looking to immitate the more commonly mined arcade titles, DOGOS builds itself in the tradition of European PC shooters. Instead of being led down a tunnel of enemies, you’ll move between mazes, canyons, and open arenas, taking on a variety of objectives as you progress. There’s a focus on detailed graphics and environments, and an overall more open approach to a genre that’s often driven by a perpetual forward momentum. DOGOS, if nothing else, attempts to shake up the common formulas of the genre. How successful it is, that’s a bit more complicated.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
If you know anything about me, you know that I have a soft spot for robots. Well, okay, more like a liquefied gooey center that spills out whenever I get the chance to talk about them. If the design of Heart & Slash is any indication, developer AHEARTFULOFGAMES does as well. There’s an art direction that evokes the Mega Man Legends series, clear nods to other famous robots, and a return to themes of artificial beings finding a sense of humanity that’s been popular since Pinocchio came around. The story itself centers on Heart, the titular protagonist, struggling in a post-human world against QuAsSys, a quality assurance system moving to create a world of perfect equality—by removing the unique individuals it sees as defects. Naturally, that puts Heart, with their Apple II inspired chassis and singular design, in opposition with QuAsSys, which of course means a lot of robot brawling.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
I have a love-hate relationship with dungeon crawlers or games similar to that genre. For the most part, I think they’re outdated and repetitive. For the ones I do like - or tolerate, it was largely in part because they had a solid story behind the archaic gameplay. I was hoping that MeiQ would a dungeon crawler backed up with a good enough plot that I can tolerated crawling around ugly soulless dungeons. Plus the game has mechs, MeiQ should be good right?
By: RJ (@rga_02)
I tend to treat my VNs (Visual Novels) like how my mother treats her telenovelas. Go in with the highest expectations possible only to be disappointed in the end. Nurse Love Addiction was a shakeup to that formula. I came in expecting nothing due to it being a Yuri based (I’m no fan of both Yuri and Yaoi genres). I’ve always had some sort of perception that both genres were nothing but just filled with nonsensical fanservice to the brink – and that gets boring very fast. However Nurse Love Addiction turned out to be a sweet heartwarming story.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
At its most chaotic Blade Ballet is a whirlwind of blades and robotic debris, attracting and repelling, scattering across a hazardous dance floor. It’s a show of light and sound that earns its name. Most of its appeal, in fact, is wrapped up in its color. Take for instance, its title theme, Contradanza Robotica, whose melody is taken from the Habenera aria of the opera, Carmen.
By Omar (@siegarettes)
Cyberpunk is a volatile thing. Conceived in a time of growing corporate power, technological advancement, and social turmoil, cyberpunk was largely concerned with a dystopic vision of the future where “progress” had overwhelmed our ability to contain it. So what does it look like in a world where those concerns have arguably come to fruition?
This is what Dex comes into. Following in the template of the genre, Dex presents a messy world of hacking, conspiracy, and urban decay. It has an obvious reverence for cyberpunk, to the point where it makes a point to straight up call residents of its world “cyberpunks”. In a way, that is indicative of the tone throughout, a straightforward, obvious allusion to its predecessors.