Category: Articles

Articles about game design, games journalism, the games industry or maybe just games. Chill takes over hot takes, every time.

“Complaining on the internet” works. #DealWithIt

A common reaction to basically any complaint on the internet, but especially in gaming, is “no one cares”. No company is going to change their minds because you complain on twitter, so they say, because after all who cares about one person?

Well, this common knowledge has turned out to be very clearly false. Since just 2013 a myriad of major changes in gaming have occurred due to “internet” outcry. (it’s important to remember that “internet” doesn’t actually make a thing less real, every complaint is from a real, flesh and bone, meat and organ human being.)

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Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer Mini-Review

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you might not know I’m a pretty huge Animal Crossing fan. Being able to design my home is pretty much the main driving force behind most of my actions in Animal Crossing, so I was quite excited to see them break out a whole game around designing homes.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer has gotten a lot of “who asked for this” replies from the peanut gallery but I’ve always been pretty excited and I was very relieved to find out that yes, it’s pretty darn fun!

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Backwards compatibility in the digital age

Backwards compatibility has had a weird history. The PS2 is probably the first “major” device to offer it, mostly being a thing sported by minor revisions of specific PC/console gaming systems like the PC Engine (and generally PC games have BC though each Windows version jump is a bit of a question mark).

Since Backwards Compatibility never really became a 100% expected feature of consoles, a lot of “no one even uses that” talk came out when it was announced the PS4 and Xbox One would completely lack any form of Backwards Compatibility–and in Sony/MS’s defense, the architecture mismatch is a pretty big deal so it’s not quite a minor deal. Continue reading “Backwards compatibility in the digital age”

Niche games and useless reviews

I encountered the following statement regarding Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture:

“Totally see myself rating this a 6 out of 10 for the site. I’m just completely bored with the mechanics in this game.”

If you’re unfamiliar, Rapture is a “walking simulator”, the only “mechanics” are move, look, a very slow run button and an “interact” button (actually, every button interacts). It’s not my intent to explain the appeal of walking sim games here, but suffice it to say if you were looking into this game hoping for Deep Mechanics you have absolutely no idea what this type of game is. Continue reading “Niche games and useless reviews”

On pace and walking simulators

pace
noun
1. a rate of movement, especially in stepping, walking, etc.: to walk at a brisk pace of five miles an hour.

2. a rate of activity, progress, growth, performance, etc.; tempo.

(Dictionary.com)

While playing TIMEframe I found myself thinking–isn’t this a bit slow? As a “walking simulator” (forgive my use of the term, I don’t mean it derogatorily), TIMEframe’s primary input is, yes, walking. And I began to notice something about the genre: they really all are quite slow–very much walking sims and not running sims.

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Omega Quintet Review

Omega Quintet: I am the alpha and the  *ω*

Editor’s note: I’ll be comparing this game to Hyperdimension Neptunia a lot. Both are silly JRPGs by Compile Heart, so if you’re interested in one you’re probably interested in the other, but more importantly Omega Quintet is also based on a moderately modified Neptunia engine.

Editor’s second note: I do not actually have an editor.

All in all, Omega Quintet is pretty much what you expect for better or worse. Fairly low budget, the story is focused on humor rather than complexity or intrigue, graphics aren’t impressive, but the one thing that really stands out is the gameplay, specifically the combat.
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Senran Kagura Estival Versus Import Review

I wouldn’t normally import a game almost certain to get localized, but I went and made an exception here as I had to have the chibi figures the game comes with. So I thought I’d make a review, note I’m reviewing this as someone who can’t read, write or understand a lick of Japanese.

If you’re unfamiliar with Senran Kagura, there may be evil sinful M rated boobies in the following digital pages, so kindly flee in horror if that is a problem.

All of this review is written from the perspective of the PS4 version of Senran Kagura Estival Versus and assumes you’ve played Shinovi Versus (it’s basically required playing first). I can’t say much about the vita version–it’s still in it’s wrapping and will probably remain that way. I have heard the Vita version has assorted minor problems, framerate dips, 30 FPS to start with, some bugs not present in the PS4 version (at least, I never saw them), and I assume the load times are far higher–they range from instant to ~5 seconds to load a cutscene/level on PS4.

Update

The game has received a lot of patches adding a lot of extra missions, 10 DLC characters (3 are free) and a new cooperative multiplayer mode of some sort. The game has even more content than when I wrote this post, but nothing below is particularly invalided by the updates. I’ll make a separate post when I review the US version, which should ship with all the new content I believe.

Also, the game’s now available for order in the US (affiliate link). Note that there’s only one physical version, and the digital copies will be $10 cheaper and come without the physical art book/OST of course.

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Axiom Verge Review

Platforms: PS4 (March 31st), PC and Vita versions coming in the months after.

A review copy of this game was provided free of charge by the developer and played on PS4. This review will be spoiler free, showing only images of things already “spoiled” by official sources. I strongly recommend avoiding spoilers. For players who have already played, I will be putting out a spoilerific guide on launch day.

It’s an unfortunately common reaction to look at the first screens of Axiom Verge and think, “yeah, that’s a Metroid clone”. But while the inspiration is quite heavy and quite shamelessly apparent, it’s a big mistake to dismiss Axiom Verge as a mere clone. Digging under the surface, Axiom Verge does it’s Metroid roots proud emerging with it’s own identity and simply of the finest Metroidvania games there is. Yes, I’m including Super and SoTN in that.

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