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PS2 Essentials: Alpine Racer 3
I am one of the least sporty people I know, and I find the prospect of winter sports particularly terrifying. But I’ve always found something appealing about games involving skiing and suchlike. My...
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Mighty Gunvolt Burst: Bringing It All Together
If you ever wanted to play a game that is clearly Inti Creates “at play”, Mighty Gunvolt Burst on Nintendo Switch and 3DS is emphatically the game for you. Coming across as a rather wonderful attempt...
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Waifu Wednesday: Joule and Lumen, The Muse
When I asked Inti Creates producer and localisation specialist Matt Papa who his favourite Inti waifu was, he was initially hesitant to answer, saying it was a “REALLY hard question”. I can understand...
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Azure Striker Gunvolt 2: Amping It Up
What makes a good sequel? It’s a question that there isn’t really a conclusive answer for, because there are so many different ways you can approach it. In the world of video games, we’ve had titles...
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SNES Essentials: Top Gear
It’s weird how some memories stick with you for the longest time, for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Prior to picking up a copy again recently, I hadn’t played Top Gear on the Super NES since the...
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Neo Geo Essentials: Shock Troopers
“The eight soldiers get to attack the wicked terrorists!!” So ran the promotional blurb on the arcade flyer for SNK’s Shock Troopers, a well-regarded installment in the Neo Geo library developed by...
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On the Age-Old Question of Video Game Violence
Over at The Well-Red Mage, which you should really be reading if you enjoy thoughtful and well-considered writing about games without sociopolitical showboating, the Mage posed an interesting question....
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Waifu Wednesday: Uni
We’ve already covered quite a few Neptunia waifus in our weekly Waifu Wednesday celebrations, but there are still plenty more where those came from. And with today being the six-year anniversary of the...
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Introduction and History
The fact that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 exists and, moreover, has been treated as a distinctly high-profile title for Nintendo’s Switch platform is nothing short of remarkable. The Xeno series as a whole...
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Switch Essentials: Splatoon 2 (Part 1 – Single Player)
Splatoon was not only a great game, it represented Nintendo successfully giving a rather pointed middle finger to everyone who thought it relied too much on its old franchises. Despite being on the Wii...
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Honey Select Unlimited and Illusion’s Quest for Immersive Adult Entertainment
There have been quite a few “sex games” from Japanese developers over the years, but outside of visual novels that incorporate erotic elements to varying degrees, relatively few of them make it West in...
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Taito Essentials: Continental Circus
Ah yes, Continental Circus, the game which UK magazine Sinclair User declared “Cock-Up of the Year” in 1988 for the assumption that its peculiar title had rather prominently misspelled “Circuit”, only...
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Waifu Wednesday: Nia
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game practically overflowing with top-tier waifus, so it’s almost impossible to know where to start celebrating them. While it might seem obvious to immediately focus on...
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Combat Complexity Without Chaos
Role-playing games, by their very nature, tend to deal in abstract representations of reality. The exact way in which they do this varies somewhat from title to title — and significantly between...
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Violence Doesn’t Solve Everything
One of the key ways many people like to distinguish the stereotypically Eastern and Western approaches to role-playing games is via non-combat mechanics and progression. It’s fair to say that, as we’ve...
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The Case for “Adults Only” Ratings
It was announced earlier today that the upcoming dungeon crawler Omega Labyrinth Z would be refused classification by the Video Standards Council in the UK, despite the game already having successfully...
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Puzzler Essentials: Tropical Liquor
For many of you reading this, the words “erotic puzzle game-cum-dating sim with art by Sayori” will doubtless be enough to convince you that Tropical Liquor is worth a shot. For those less familiar...
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Waifu Wednesday: Poppi
One of Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s best characters is Poppi (aka Hana in the Japanese voice track), the artificial Blade created by the Nopon Tora as an attempt to finish the work his dadapon and...
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2: A Titanic World
While the Xeno series has, from its outset, always been about imaginative takes on worldbuilding, the Xenoblade subseries in particular has placed a strong emphasis on this. Indeed, as we’ve already...
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Rod-Land: “So Cute… It’ll Make You Puke!”
I have spent more time than is probably strictly necessary pondering who my first “video game waifu” was. My initial reaction was that it was Sophia Hapgood from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,...
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