Final Fantasy VIII Remastered
A lot of people liked Final Fantasy VII. A lot of those people were confused and angry two years later when Final Fantasy VIII erased everything they liked about Final Fantasy VII. The role-playing game that finally captured the mainstream—and signaled Sony’s PlayStation was indeed legitimate hardware—created expectations of more Final Fantasy VII, or at least something like any previous Fin...[Read More]
Catherine: Full Body
In 2011 I had never played a game like Catherine. In 2019, with the 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 puzzle games with a complicated variety of block pushing. And social simulations with the ambience of...[Read More]
Oninaki
Oninaki is equipped with all of the necessary materials to construct a genuine Japanese role-playing game. It has a world consumed by fantastic corruption and engulfed in despairing melancholy. It features combat mechanics with a creative hook and a considerable allowance of player agency. The visual package has a consistent aesthetic that works its chibi euphoria into surreal, dreamlike framework...[Read More]
SEGA AGES Puyo Puyo
In a perfect world, Puyo Puyo would share the Falling Block Game throne with Tetris. Compile’s 1991 MSX2 original quickly found popularity in Japan with its eventual arcade release. Puyo Puyo’s console iterations eventually made it to North America under the guise of Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Kirby’s Avalanche. Rule adjustments shuffled through persistent iterati...[Read More]
Gravity Ghost: Deluxe Edition
Gravity Ghost’s sense of movement serves as a mesmerizing introduction. Hopping its protagonist, Iona, from one 2D planetoid to another and feeling the pull of gravity between the densely-packed surfaces is akin to playing with two magnets in your hands. On a primal level, it’s just fun to test the magic physics that manipulate reality. Super Mario Galaxy made the same bet and interpre...[Read More]
Metal Wolf Chaos XD
For fifteen years, Metal Wolf Chaos persisted as one of gaming’s more enigmatic legends. Produced by (then) unheralded maestros at mech-and-fantasy obsessed FromSoftware, released in 2004 as an exclusive to the original Xbox’s imaginary Japanese audience, and featuring the President of the United States of America in a mech suit obliterating parades of an usurping military power, Metal...[Read More]
Lucah: Born of a Dream
Lucah: Born of a Dream is a convergence of three disparate systems of expression. Its narrative is an amalgamation of the isolation of adolescence, the overbearing pressure of conforming to the status quo, and the chaos of trying to unify a public and private identity. Its top-down combat has roots in the Souls trinity of magic, health, and stamina, and shares a fondness for intense difficulty and...[Read More]
SEGA AGES: Wonder Boy in Monster Land
Wonder Boy in Monster Land is a delightful game that has the problem of not being Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. The latter is the most celebrated member of Wonder Boy’s bewildering lineage and received a tender and beloved 2017 remake on modern platforms. Wonder Boy in Monster Land, meanwhile, was a lesser inflection point and has the dubious honor of only appearing on the Master ...[Read More]
SEGA AGES: Virtua Racing
Nothing looked as good as Virtua Racing. This was true in 1992 when Virtua Racing debuted as a superstar for Sega AM2’s Model 1 arcade hardware. It was also true of Virtua Racing’s 1994 port to the Genesis, employing the SVT processor to deliver polygonal graphics to an aging console. Both were quickly antiquated by Sega’s breakneck hardware development in the early 90’s, b...[Read More]
Devil May Cry (Switch)
In Devil May Cry the player can use a giant sword to uppercut a demon ten feet high and then brandish two pistols and juggle the demon in the air with bullets. Devil May Cry will literally tell you this is cool. It is, in fact, cool. In 2001, during the PlayStation 2’s ascent to global gaming domination, Devil May Cry’s innate transformation of the beat ’em up genre put it in the...[Read More]
Judgment
Yakuza’s Kamurocho is a seedy slice of Tokyo that grants meteoric elevation to charisma, coercion, and capacity for violence, but only to one person at a time. For ten games—seven core entries, two remakes, and one imprudent spin-off—this power was devoted to Yakuza’s infallible protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu. Others tried to assume that power, Yakuza 5 juggled five active protagonists, but...[Read More]
Outer Wilds
The first time I blasted off my home planet of Timber Hearth, my ramshackle rocket ship smashed into a nearby cliff before skidding off into outer space. It needed to be repaired—an action I had actually practiced back home—so I put on my space suit and dropped out the exit hatch. I spun around to face my ship and found it whizzing away into the abyss of the unknown. Confusion turned into understa...[Read More]