Latest Reviews
Review Azur Lane: Crosswave - Great Anime-Style Design Sunk By Terrible Combat
You sunk my busty battleship
Azur Lane started life on mobile devices as a 2D blend of RPG mechanics and side-scrolling shooting. Its move over to console with Azur Lane: Crosswave brings with it some flashy 3D battle scenes, but the overall experience retains a similar structure and feel to its mobile counterpart. Fans of this type of game will...
Review Bravely Default II - An Excellent Old-School JRPG That's Happy To Play It Safe
A brave new world, or a throwback to an older one?
Square Enix has always been one of the biggest names in the RPG genre, but it’s been interesting to see how the company has changed its design philosophies with the times. For example, its biggest franchise – Final Fantasy – has long since left behind its humble origins as a turn-based RPG and...
Review Curse of the Dead Gods - Fans Of Hades Will Find Lots To Like Here
Nietszche and tidy
Sometimes a game comes along that changes the way people look at an existing genre. And then another game comes along and copies it. Curse of the Dead Gods takes enormous inspiration from Supergiant's smash hit rogue-lite Hades. And, we have to say, there are far worse games to draw from – lest we forget, Hades got a coveted...
Review Capcom Arcade Stadium - A Rich Tour Through The Coin-Op History Of A True Legend
Keep your loose change
Even if you harbour a deep and sincere love for classic gaming, it can sometimes be tricky to muster a bounty of enthusiasm when a new retro gaming compilation lands. Over time we have perhaps become spoiled by an abundance of access to the mainstream of the video game form’s past. Iconic outfits such as Sega and Capcom have...
Review Taxi Chaos - A Crazy Taxi Spiritual Successor That Fails To Go The Extra Mile
Ticket to ride?
It’s been a minute since we last got a proper, honest-to-God taxi driving game. Putting aside a couple of questionable mobile spin-offs, Sega’s own Crazy Taxi series has remained dormant for more than a decade. Since then, of course, even the word ‘taxi’ has largely been relegated from the English language for the far less...
Review Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection - A Masochistic Medieval Marvel
Give ‘em Hell
Tokuro Fujiwara is back in town, and his mission is murder. TheGhosts ’n Goblins foreman has been summoned by his former employer, Capcom, to impart pain and suffering upon the gaming masses, and he’s come at it with gusto. To put a fine point on the conjecture surrounding Resurrection, it is indeed anvil-through-the-skull hard;...
Review Thomas Was Alone - An Ageing Indie Hit That Still Has Something To Say
Be there or be one of several different rectangles
More than 10 years after its inception as a Flash game, Thomas Was Alone is now so much more than the puzzley, story-driven platformer it appears to be. It is an artefact of an interesting time in the progress of indie games; a time when lo-fi, hi-concept darlings made Twitter swoon week-to-week...
Review Haven - It Takes Two To Fully Enjoy This Space-Age Love Story
Huggin' and a-kissin', dancin' and a-lovin'
Although it's not about the pandemic (and it's been in development for much longer than we've all been trapped inside), Haven is a game that came at exactly the right time, because its message is all about two lovers, alone together for the foreseeable future. Having escaped the Aviary – a futuristic...
Review SNK vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium - The Battle Still Rages, 20 Years On
A portable victory
Once upon a time, the battle between Capcom and SNK was real. During the early '90s, the two companies – each dedicated to the evolution of the fighting game – embarked in a tit-for-tat cold war. SNK’s Ryo, an orange gi-wearing approximation of Street Fighter’s Ryu, ended up in Capcom’s official Street Fighter II:...
Review Blue Fire - A Superb Action-Platformer That Puts Gameplay First
Fire in the whole
It’s often interesting when a game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, especially so when they actually manage to capture some of the magic of the beloved titles from which it draws said influence. Spoiler alert: Blue Fire is a roaring success, weaving together elements from several other games in a way that still manages to...
Titan Quest
If you've ever wondered what The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would be like if you added a bunch of modern roguelite elements, randomly generated its dungeons and threw local and online four player co-op into the mix, well, wonder no longer, as Heliocentric Studios' Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos is pretty much exactly that. Here is...
Review Cathedral - A Fine Metroidvania Which Can't Quite Match The Best Of The Genre
What a wonderful night to have a curse
About seven years ago, a Swedish developer named Eric Lavesson set out to build his own game engine, not knowing entirely where it might lead. As time passed and prototypes were made, a retro-style project began to coalesce which demanded more of his time and attention. That project was Cathedral, a new 8-bit...
Mini Review Prehistorik Man - The Stone-Age Platformer That Time Forgot
You're in real Barney Rubble now
For a brief, shining period, the video game industry seemed to become obsessed with cavemen. We’re not sure why this is – the Flintstones remake can’t have accounted for all of it. Bonk’s Adventure, Caveman Games, BC Racers, Joe & Mac, Bignose the Caveman and more absolutely flooded the market with...
Mini Review Fire 'n Ice - A Fine Puzzler That's Worthy Of Rediscovery On Switch
I've got the (Solomon's) key, I've got the secret
Sokoban, initially released in 1982 for Japanese home computers, is the first “block-pushing” puzzle game that challenged players to move around boxes to accomplish some kind of goal. Of the numerous similar games it inspired, one of the most popular was Tecmo’s Solomon’s Key, released for...
Mini Review Doomsday Warrior - A Street Fighter II Clone That's Doomed From The Start
Welcome to your doom
The Super Famicom port of Street Fighter II was released in June 1992. Telenet’s Doomsday Warrior then hit the market later that year in November. It’s unknown how long it was in development, but based on the final product, one could easily surmise that it was slapped together as quickly as possible to capitalize on the...
Review Psycho Dream - The Flawed Yet Fascinating Cult Classic Finally Comes To The West
Import Inception
To best understand Psycho Dream – which has finally come to the west thanks to its addition to the Nintendo Switch Online SNES line-up – you first need to understand Nihon Telenet. It was a prolific company throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, and while its games often had some interesting concepts (and some legitimately...
Review The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon - A Solid Expansion To A Cracking Sci-Fi RPG
Noir Wars
The Outer Worlds' first helping of DLC finally makes its way onto Nintendo Switch, having released on all other platforms back in September of 2020, and it's a very solid return to the Hyperion System for the colourful crew of the good ship Unreliable. Peril on Gorgon sees fans of Obsidian's satirical sci-fi romp indulged with a handful of...
Neo? Trinity? Where's Agent Smith??
We think it’s fair to say that modern gamers aren’t known to be the most patient of audiences. When we want gratification, we want it now. It’s 2021, we don’t want instruction manuals (unless they’re part of some boutique physical release, of course), we just want to get into the game. Neoverse Trinity...
Mini Review Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing - A Love Story That's Too Close To Reality
A quaran-teeny tiny game
The original Half Past Fate has been out on Switch for almost a year now, and our review praised it for its striking pixelated visuals and engaging dialogue, albeit with a few too many mini fetch quests. The same can be said for its follow-up, Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing, a short (really short) story in which two...
Review Gal*Gun Returns - A Mechanically Basic Yawn-Fest
Absolute pants
Inti Creates' 2011 on-rails ecchi shooter Gal*Gun, a bishōjo game that has only ever seen the light of day in Japan, finally makes its way onto western consoles in this remastered edition that comes complete with dolled-up visuals, full voice-acting and all previously released DLC. But does it improve on the decidedly-average Gal*Gun...
Review Heaven's Vault - A Beautifully-Realised Adventure With A Few Technical Quirks
Archaeology, without the guns and whips
Aliya Elasra is not a likeable character. She is cynical, untrustworthy, and as stubborn as a wayward child. She is unpleasant to those who care about her, and as a result, the list is rapidly dwindling. Her mentor at the University of Iox calls her into her office one day and tasks her with finding a missing...
Review UnderMine - A Supremely Refined And Downright Delicious Roguelite
That's gold, Jerry! Gold!
By this point in time, the roguelite genre has become positively saturated in the modern indie scene, spurred on no doubt by key success stories (like Dead Cells) over the last few years. This can be both a good and a bad thing; on one hand, fans of the genre are spoilt for choice when looking for another game to get into,...
Mini Review NUTS - A Relaxing But Repetitive Way To Spend A Few Hours
Furry found footage
With its striking visuals, first-person perspective, and rural setting, you could easily mistake NUTS as a spin-off of the critically acclaimed narrative title Firewatch. Indeed, you spend much of your time free-roaming a woodland area, retreating back to the comfort of your caravan to sleep and chatting to a friendly colleague...
Mini Review PUSS! - Strangely Compelling Nightmare Fuel
A whisker away from sadism
Remember that scene in the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where the tour group take a boat ride through a psychedelic tunnel? Remember how utterly terrifying it was (still is)? Now imagine such lunacy applied to an entire video game; that’s pretty much what you get with PUSS! Billed by developer...
Review Hero-U: Rogue To Redemption - A Fine Successor To The "Quest For Glory" Series
So U Want to Be a Hero
Twenty-three years have passed since the release of the fifth and final entry in Corey and Lori Ann Cole’s Quest for Glory hybrid adventure/RPG series and now, after two Kickstarter campaigns, the duo has returned with Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. This is a spiritual successor to their classic franchise that manages to...
Review Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - A Superb Mario Adventure With A Bowser Bonus
Meow that's what we call value
Well, it’s finally here. The 35th anniversary of Mario may soon be ending with a Thanos-style snap of the fingers for Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35, but before we mourn them, Nintendo has one final release to celebrate the big three-five, and this one’s sticking around for good. Super Mario 3D...
Review Little Nightmares II - A Spooky Platformer Dripping With Tension And Dread
Sweet dreams are made of this
Ever been somewhere you know you shouldn’t? Fear and curiosity can entwine themselves into intoxicating shapes, dancing in your guts as you push ever forward into the dark, knowing that the consequences of your being discovered will most likely be dire and terrible? That’s what Little Nightmares II goes for, and it...
Review Persona 5 Strikers - Much More Than Your Average Musou Spin-Off
Screwball Scramble
Persona 5 Strikers, otherwise known as Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers in Japan, finally blasts its way onto Switch consoles in the west and, if you were expecting this Atlus/Koei Tecmo crossover to be a straight-up Musou style spin-off, a Dynasty Warriors-esque effort with a fancy Persona skin hastily slapped on top,...
Mini Review Glyph - Takes Metroid Prime's Morph Ball Ability And Turns It Into An Entire Game
Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
One of the coolest aspects of the Metroid series – in particular the Prime trilogy – is the Morph Ball ability. Curling up into a literal ball and using its momentum to reach new places is a consistently unique and fun way to traverse the world. Glyph takes this concept and applies it to an entire...
Review Project Starship X - An Unconventional Shmup That's Full Of New Ideas
X marks the spot
Just as we tend to approach games that try to hammer the shoot-em-up into a new mould with an air of caution, Project Starship X, in fact, starts with a caution. And it’s necessary. We fired it up in a dark room and, ten seconds into the first stage, just as hell broke loose, the cat sat on the TV remote. The volume went so...
