Umurangi Generation Macro
Umurangi Generation’s vibrant ambience validates the rebellion of its doomed youth culture. It also renders the player a transient witness to a surging tragedy. Umurangi Generation’s key is its camera, as it allows its protagonist and its player the agency to access and capture a world beyond their control. It creates a vantage point untended since Jet Set Radio, and Umurangi Generation didn’t eve...[Read More]
Foregone
You’ve played Foregone before you’ve played Foregone. Big Blue Bubble’s side-scrolling action game reaches across roguelikes, metroidvanias, and soulslikes to arrange a delectable medley of aesthetically pleasing and mechanically soothing methods to murder ten thousand demons and fight a half dozen bosses. Foregone is not like any one of these action subgenres but, quite paradoxi...[Read More]
Hades
Supergiant Games have always made room for their characters alongside their action. Bastion’s ubiquitous narrator transformed a fierce hack-and-slash into a comforting storybook. Transistor split the difference between action and strategy and infused the product with a melancholic narrative featuring a talking sword. Pyre was half visual novel and half NBA Jam, both parts of which benefited ...[Read More]
Moon
In 1997, the same year Final Fantasy VII showcased the power of Japanese role-playing games, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure was wondering what it would look like if one was turned inside out. The former, of course, went on to launch the genre to the Western mainstream. The latter wasn’t localized and sold out of Japan until last week. Ironically, Moon’s sensitive self-awareness and understated se...[Read More]
Post Void
To the untrained eye, some works of genius could easily be mistaken for the rambling menace of a lunatic. Without an appreciation for form, an ear for melody, or command of a specific history, anything from a magic eye poster to an abacus could be perceived as incomprehensible and useless. If you pull someone off the street and administer Post Void’s fifty-three second trailer to their eyeba...[Read More]
Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash!: Space 39 miku Pack
When it released last March, just before the planet fell apart, Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash! was an impeccably timed throwback to the medium’s finest and most fleeting bliss point. Years and decades pass without the opportunity to appreciate a signature Dreamcast game in a modern skin, and Space Channel 5 VR was allowed to capture that precise moment in time. For a hefty price,...[Read More]
Yakuza Kiwami 2 (Windows 10)
Yakuza 2 was the game where you could punch a tiger in the face. Its 2008 release to the PlayStation 2, while a pleasant gesture from Sega, was buried under the next console generation. Its status as a sequel to a commercial failure, lacking the marketing budget and english dub of its predecessor, emptied the rest of the clip into its chances of success. On forums and through budding forms of soci...[Read More]
Lithium City
I’m going to need you to kill all of these guys is perhaps the most popular videogame challenge. It works for competitive shooters, solo dungeon crawlers, and Madden if one were to factor in the lingering effects chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Homicide is a facet of humanity that would normally induce explicit horror but, divorced of reality through the magic of gaming, killing all these ...[Read More]
CARRION
Carrion posits its player will relish an opportunity to play as a ruthless jumble of teeth, viscera, and carnage. In a medium lined with antiheroes and ambiguous morality, acting as a pure villain seems like a capable thesis. Carrion also hopes its player fully embodies the role of an obstinate monster, trading sophistication and ego for the wild intensity of the id. Your power is clear. What, exa...[Read More]
SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE
When Superhot finally released in 2016, its novel take on the first-person shooter allowed safe passage into best-of lists at the end of the year. Its concept, time only moves when you move, introduced acute planning and intense precision into a genre rife with frenzied action and conservative production. Superhot VR, an entirely different game based around the same set of principles, later used t...[Read More]
Catherine: Full Body (Switch)
In 2011 I had never played a game like Catherine. In 2020, with the Switch release of Catherine: Full Body’s treasure chest of enhancements and additions, I have still never played a game like Catherine. I have played visual novels that use supernatural energy as a metaphor for recurrent vices. And I have played puzzle games with complicated varieties of block pushing. I have also played soc...[Read More]
Marvel’s Iron Man VR
Iron Man VR really goes for it. It could have passed as a tightly controlled rail-shooter, a narrative adventure, or a good-enough flight simulator with some action elements. Instead, Camouflaj’s take on Iron Man combines dynamic 360-degree freedom of movement with frenzied shooting mechanics and tasks players with performing both at the same time. When Iron Man VR began I couldn’t bel...[Read More]