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Centerfold Squares: naughty gaming, 1988-style
Dear reader, as I’m sure you’re aware from the vast number of games I’ve covered on this site to date, I am certainly not averse to a naughty game or two. For a lot of the time these days, these are...
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Class of ’09: of cynicism and sociopathy
I’ve been a little leery of western-developed visual novels for a while now. I know that there are some genuinely good ones out there — but there are also a lot that play up the obnoxiously ironic,...
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The term “adventure game” no longer has any meaning
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always enjoyed adventure games — mostly those of the point-and-click variety, but I’m certainly not averse to those with text parsers, or which are entirely text. Trouble...
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The Yakuza games are not beat ’em ups, and never have been
I’ve been playing a lot of Yakuza Zero recently. Having been a fan of the series since its original PS2 incarnations, but also being very, very behind on it, I figured it was time I started playing...
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A Re-Introduction
Hello everyone! Apologies if you’ve been trying to reach the site for the last couple of days — I’ve been moving to new hosting as the site had pretty much outgrown the WordPress.com plan it was...
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Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and the Japanese adventure game...
Although Japanese-style adventure games are a bit of an acquired taste for some, I’ve become rather fond of the format over the years. While the more “pure” visual novel format is considerably more...
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Another Code: Recollection – the way remakes should be
The timing of Another Code: Recollection’s release — shortly after Sony’s hyped-up but completely superfluous and unnecessary The Last Of Us Part II Remastered — is kind of hilarious. And this game...
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Cataloguing the collection with Collectorz.com
Since I started this site nearly ten years ago, my video game collection has expanded by a considerable degree. It wasn’t necessarily a deliberate choice like “I want to become a video game...
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Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind – a truly compelling mystery
The Famicom Detective Club games are something that I’d been meaning to get around to for a while, but have only just picked up. Having played through — and adored — first episode The Missing Heir, I...
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Revisiting Final Fantasy VII Remake ahead of Rebirth’s release
At the time of writing, we’re counting down to the long-awaited second part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, which we now know is called Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. That’s not all we know, in...
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Ace Attorney: evolving the Japanese adventure game formula
Playing through the two Famicom Detective Club games got me well and truly in the mood for some more adventuring. And so it was that I finally booted up the Nintendo Switch version of the first Ace...
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Is the desire to beat games a sunk cost fallacy?
Full disclosure: I didn’t come up with this topic out of nowhere; it was inspired by seeing a recent Second Wind podcast which posed a similar question float across my YouTube feed. I haven’t actually...
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Reflections on Final Fantasy VII Remake Hard mode – a solid New Game Plus...
“Back in the day,” as those of us of a certain age tend to say, it wasn’t unusual to replay a favourite game to see everything it had to offer. Sometimes you’d play the game again immediately after...
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Final Fantasy VII Remake Episode INTERmission: short and mostly sweet
After clearing my Hard mode playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake, I was keen to try out “the Yuffie DLC”, also known as Episode INTERmission. After my initial annoyance that Square Enix didn’t...
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A first look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink
I’ve been looking forward to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for a while, despite its seemingly troubled development cycle. Ever since I spent some time playing the original mobile version of Granblue...
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One Piece Mansion: the puzzle of stress management
One Piece Mansion is not a Capcom game I had any familiarity with whatsoever prior to receiving a surprise copy of it from a YouTube viewer a little while back. I’ve spent a bit of time with it this...
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Helldivers II and the Battle Pass delusion
A few years back, you may recall that the gaming world was seemingly united against the scourge of microtransactions in full-price games. The most prominent event that demonstrated this was the case...
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How Ace Attorney does so much with so little
We live in an age where, at the upper end of the market, video game budgets are spiralling out of control in a relentless pursuit of movie-like photorealism. And yet, a series of games that first...
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Another look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink after finishing its main scenario
I rolled credits on Granblue Fantasy: Relink after about 20 hours of play. That might sound short for an RPG — and it is, by modern standards — but reaching the end of that main story is also...
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Is Burnout Paradise still good?
It’s fair to say that Burnout Paradise was, on its original release, simultaneously very well received and rather controversial. Few would deny that it is a quality game, and one packed with things to...
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