Game Reviews
-
Chained Echoes Review – Master of the Craft
Chained Echoes is a modern SNES-style RPG that keeps getting compared to Chrono Trigger, but actually has hardly anything to do with that game. Its most obvious inspiration is, surprisingly, Final Fantasy XII, which is recognizable in its warring kingdoms, human species, cast of characters, and much besides. You’ll also find some ideas from Suikoden…
-
Super Kiwi 64 Review – High Flying Bird
Super Kiwi 64 is, unsurprisingly, a collectathon platformer inspired by the classic games of that genre on the N64 and PS1. Each level tasks you with collecting a certain number of gears that are scattered around the level as well as with finding six gems that are either hidden in hard to reach areas or…
-
Pokemon Scarlet Review – Finally, We Play as a Bug Catcher
Pokemon Scarlet is the first game of Pokémon’s ninth generation, but also the fourth mainline game for Switch. It builds on formula changes that we saw the beginnings of in Sword and Arceus by moving to a largely open-world format in which there are no longer any routes, all Pokémon are visible before encountering them,…
-
Ashina: The Red Witch Review – Bewitching
Ashina: The Red Witch is an adventure game that’s apparently a prequel to an earlier title from developer Stranga, although I haven’t played it and can’t say how much it adds to that story. Stranga’s other games appear to be horror adventures, but while Ashina has some horror elements, it’s fairly lighthearted overall. The tone…
-
Alina of the Arena Review – Fleeting Fight
Alina of the Arena is a roguelite that is both a deck builder, like Slay the Spire, and a tactics game, like Duelyst. You control a character I assume is the titular Alina and (usually) need to kill everything else in the arena before any of it manages to kill you instead. You’ll do that…
-
Signalis Review – Loud and Clear
I said in my Ghost Song review that Humble Games has a remarkably consistent track record of producing games that look like I’ll love them, but that ultimately disappoint. Signalis has finally broken that trend. It’s a survival horror shooter unashamedly in the vein of PS1 games like Resident Evil, though it ditches both tank…
-
This Way Madness Lies Review – Brevity is the Soul of Wit
This Way Madness Lies is the latest game from Zeboyd, developers of very silly RPGs like Cthulhu Saves Christmas. Difficult as it is to top that for silliness, I think they’ve managed to do it with a game that is basically the result of cramming Sailor Moon, Shakespeare, and yet more Cthulhu into a particle…
-
Vermintide Review – Winning the Rat Race
Vermintide is unashamedly Left 4 Dead. You cooperate with three other players/bots to complete objectives on maps while defending against a horde of basic enemies spawning from every direction. You also have to look out for special enemies who can pin players down, drag them off, create AoE threats, or just be a massive tank.…
-
Ghost Song Review – Ephemeral Fun
Ghost Song is the debut game of developer Old Moon and comes from Humble Games, who have a remarkably consistent track record of publishing games that look like I’d love them, but end up being disappointing or even outright bad for one reason or another. GS is a metroidvania with clear specific inspirations from games…
-
Frog Detective 3 Review – Third Best Detective
The first Frog Detective was a 30-minute first person adventure that basically amounted to what would happen if a young kid made a detective game. There was a lot of impromptu dancing and other silliness, the characters had the attention span of a particularly distractable kitten, and there weren’t actually any crimes. There wasn’t really…