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Review Shovel Knight Showdown - A Smash Bros. Challenger That's Perfect For Switch Parties
Have at you!
After completing its record-breaking Kickstarter run for Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games had its work cut out in terms of keeping the promises it made with stretch goals. The much-lauded three additional campaigns were what drew the most reaction from press and fans, but one other mode was announced which didn’t seem to grab nearly as...
Review Shovel Knight: King Of Cards - A Worthy Swan Song To A Legendary Platforming Series
The closing chapter of five years of shovelry
Nearly seven years ago, Yacht Club Games launched the Kickstarter for Shovel Knight, thus beginning the long journey towards building one of the most recognizable characters in the indie gaming space. After a record-breaking response from the community, not only did the game receive the funding it...
Review Five Nights at Freddy's 3 - Proof Of The Law Of Diminishing Returns
What could possibly go wrong?
By the time Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 came out, it had been just over half a year since the first game’s debut. The low budget feel and ongoing lore had solidified the series as a popular mainstay, although for many, a modicum of franchise fatigue was beginning to set in. Though each game features its own take on...
Review EarthNight - A Rewarding, Well-Presented Auto-Runner Lacking A Long Tail
A roaring good time
The auto-runner genre is one that’s typically associated with the mobile gaming space, where microtransactions and shallow gameplay are an expected burden. Indeed, some examples—such as Super Mario Run—have shown there can be a little more depth to the concept than one might assume, but nonetheless, these games have...
Review Five Nights at Freddy's 2 - A Sinister Sequel That Dials Up The Complexity
New location, same horrors
Five Nights at Freddy’s took the world by storm after its August 2014 release, yet series creator Scott Cawthon wasn’t one to simply rest on his laurels. A mere three months after the first game’s debut, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 was available for purchase, offering an expanded and revised take on that basic cat...
Review Five Nights At Freddy's - Accessible Horror That Loses Its Edge Too Quickly
"The characters do tend to wander a bit..."
When it first launched in 2014, Five Nights at Freddy’s seemed for all the world like just another basic low-effort horror game; the sort of thing that wouldn’t make much of a splash in the broader gaming world. However, thanks to the help of some popular YouTube creators and a rapid-fire succession of...
Review Romancing SaGa 3 - A JRPG Classic That's Often Quite Hard To Love
"You and me could write a bad romance"
It would take years to fully play through the entirety of Square Enix’s seemingly bottomless back catalogue of RPGs, and though the company is best known for genre stalwarts such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, there’s also a staggering number of ‘other’ offerings that – for some reason or another...
Feature Hopoo Games On Bringing Risk of Rain 2 To The Switch
Coming soon to a storeshelf near you
Earlier this fall, Hopoo Games opted to release Risk of Rain 2 on the Switch and its fellow console brethren, setting another milestone moment in the long and ongoing development cycle that's been taking place since the title entered early access on PC in March. We were quite pleased with the build that was made...
A story about one very curious Kat
The Professor Layton series is one that’s defined puzzling on Nintendo handhelds ever since the early days of the DS. Since 2007, we’ve received two trilogies and two spinoffs starring the eponymous professor, but declining sales and a general sense of stagnation seemed to have scared Level-5 off from...
Not exactly a whole new world
Movie tie-in games can be notoriously hit-or-miss in their quality. Often, the games seem to be something of an afterthought or simply advertisement fodder for the film they're based on, but every now and then, tie-ins can surprise with how well they stand on their own. Back in the day, the video game adaptations of...
Review Disgaea 4 Complete+ - An Often Overwhelming SRPG That Genre Veterans Will Adore
Give it a try, dood!
The Disgaea series has always been one of those in gaming that could best be described as an ‘acquired’ taste. The sheer amount of complexity and micromanaging offered up by each game is nigh peerless in the genre, and though these games are a veritable feast for those who love a nice thousand-hour grind in their RPG, it can...
Review Overwatch: Legendary Edition - Hardly The Best Way To Play, But Still Pretty Great
Nerf this
Once upon a time, it would’ve been a cold day in hell before we’d see a Blizzard game on a Nintendo console. The traditionally PC-centric company broke its nearly twenty-year hiatus from Nintendo when it released Diablo III last year, and after making that port a reality, tongues got wagging about what else the company could bring over...
Review The Alliance Alive HD Remastered - This 3DS Classic Is Worth A Second Look On Switch
Back from the dead
Back in 2018, the 3DS was still receiving a slow, but steady trickle of new releases despite the Switch stealing the spotlight with its runaway success. Though many put away the old handheld in favour of bigger and better things, there were still plenty of excellent titles released in this period, one of them being The Alliance...
Review Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince - This Magical Series Is Back On Track
More than just a dream
It’s been rather fascinating to follow the development of the Trine series since its debut in 2009. The initial title was lauded for its fantastic puzzle design and aesthetics, which were honed and improved even further by the sequel that launched two years later. Things took a turn for the worse, however, when Frozenbyte...
One for the ages
It’s fascinating to see how much the JRPG genre has changed over the years, as countless new studios and designers have come up with a seemingly bottomless amount of ways to riff on battle systems, narrative styles, and world designs. In many ways, one could say that a JRPG is judged by how well it subverts genre expectations, but...
Review Castle Crashers Remastered - Addictive Brawling Action That's Best Enjoyed With Friends
'Tis but a flesh wound
Long ago, during the ancient times of the early 2000s, the cesspool that was the online Flash game community acted as something of a precursor to what would go on to become the modern indie gaming scene. A site called Newgrounds soon rose to prominence as the go-to place for quality Flash games, and one of the most popular...
Review Ni no Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch - Level-5's RPG Classic Will Bewitch Your Switch
"It's flippin' finally on the Switch, en't it?"
In 2008, Level-5 was coming up on its tenth anniversary and wanted to produce a project that its staff was passionate about, regardless of how well it would sell, and the world was introduced to Ni No Kuni: The Another World. A two-pronged project, one version of it came to the Nintendo DS as the...
Guide Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Get Started With These Heroic Tips
"Oh my, what could've brought you here?"
It could certainly be argued that Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the most complex release yet in the long-running strategy series, which is no mean feat considering the intimidating barrier to entry many previous games have had. It’s extremely rewarding, of course, but juggling time in the Monastery, building...
Review Super Kirby Clash - Monster Hunter Meets The Cute Pink Puffball
And it's free to play, to boot
When Kirby: Planet Robobot launched in 2016, one of the sub-games included was a neat little RPG-lite take on a boss rush mode called Team Kirby Clash. A year later, HAL opted to expand on the concept further in a free-to-play release on the 3DS eShop called Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, which added in several more bosses,...
Review Risk of Rain 2 - Rough 'Early Access' Edges Can't Spoil This Rewarding Roguelike
It's a wonderful day for rain
It’s always fascinating when a 2D game series makes the jump to the third dimension, as the developers are given the impossible task of keeping the gameplay more or less the same while also instituting huge change. Many franchises—such as the Sonic the Hedgehog and Castlevania series’—arguably fail to make the...
Review Torchlight II - A Brilliant Dungeon-Crawler Expertly Ported By Panic Button
Fill your boots
Looking at it from a purely objective standpoint, Torchlight II seems like a game that would grow stale within a matter of minutes. You kill, you loot, you level up, and then you do it all over again with slightly bigger numbers all around. Rinse and repeat for a few dozen hours, and that’s more or less Torchlight II in a nutshell...
Chicken-Wuss!
Imagine being in the unenviable position in which Square Enix found itself following the release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997. The studio had just put out a genre-defining game that many still say they haven’t topped and had catapulted itself to a position that invited unrealistically high expectations. Gamers are a notoriously...
Review RAD - A Gnarly Roguelike Which Is Let Down By Balance And Performance Problems
Get bent, muties
Double Fine has long since made a name for itself as a rather ‘out there’ studio that nonetheless produces quality work, such as Brütal Legend, Psychonauts, Headlander, and Costume Quest. Its latest release, RAD, fits right in with this lineage, blending in crazy '80s themes with an action-heavy roguelike gameplay loop. It’s...
Review Grandia HD Collection - Two Classic Games, Shoddily Remastered
Not as grand as we'd hoped
You’d be forgiven for not immediately recognizing the Grandia series at first glance. This adventurous JRPG series is one of those that – for better or worse – never really found its footing with a wider audience, and though it had a strong start in the late ’90s, Grandia mostly fizzled out by the mid-2000s for a...