Game Reviews
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Judgment Review – I Fought The Law(yer)
Judgment is the beginning of the Yakuza series’ move away from that name and its focus on, well, the yakuza. You play as a private detective/lawyer who is not and has never been an actual yakuza member, but who still has close ties with one particular family. The story and gameplay similarly sit somewhere between…
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Tanuki Sunset Review – Longboarding into the Sunset
Tanuki Sunset is a game about longboarding down an extremely long road while being a tanuki. The road was built with wanton disregard for the safety of both longboarding tanukis and drivers, so there are no barriers preventing you from plummeting thousands of feet to the ground below. The road is also strewn with hazards…
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Bear and Breakfast Review: Half Baked Breakfast
Bear and Breakfast is a game about running a bunch of cabins in the wood while being a bear. There’s really very little significance to you being a bear, though, and, unfortunately, it is far from the only idea that wasn’t fully developed. B&B starts off with a promising loop of repairing buildings, decorating them,…
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Petal Crash Review – Super Flower Fighter
Petal Crash is a puzzle fighting game in the vein of Super Puzzle Fighter, Tetris Attack, or Pokémon Puzzle League, although it relies on a sokobon-esque mechanic rather than falling gems. Any block on the board can be pushed in any of the four cardinal directions ice puzzle-style, and if it hits a block of…
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Peglin Review – Fear the Pachinko Goblin
Peglin is a roguelite by way of Peggle and, thanks to Roundguard, is somehow not the first game I’ve played with this exact mashup of mechanisms. Just like in Peggle, the core idea is that you need to launch a ball each turn so it falls down a pachinko board and ideally hits as many…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
