Maybe when I just want to have a pulpy storyline with a bunch of turn based combat, I pick up a short RPG and blast away at mutated animals and doomsday cultists and call it a day. Perhaps, when I’m hungry for it, For A Vast Future is just the snack I need. Sadly, today, I was looking for something a bit more filling, and this left me just a bit dissatisfied.
It’s hard to sell an arcade game beyond what a trailer might tell you, but Formula Retro Racing – World Tour has a sincere veneer about it that keeps you coming back for more. This isn’t just some random cabinet in a smoky arcade in Glendale, this is a lovingly crafted homage that begs you to try and walk away once you get the hang of it. There’s precision, there’s enjoyment, there’s actually fantastic design that promises a fun time and delivers in spades.
Fans of Fairy Fencer F should get in on this title and get in now. Drink deep of this lore and excellent scripting before it becomes bloated with extra noise, and enjoy it as such. If you’re scared by the change in approach, don’t be: a good IP can wear any hat as long as it fits. Refrain Chord wears the helmet of SRPG well, and players will honestly feel so much better being able to enjoy this new storyline without also wondering when their console/PC is about to crash.
Whether you have only touched upon the Playstation 4 and later titles or dabbled in mobile game hijinks; if you’ve owned every Nintendo title since inception and still have four Gameboy Advance adapters for your Gamecube; if there’s even a shred of you that remembers brute forcing through the original with a party of four Fighters, then I have to let you know: this game is for you.
Mugen Souls is a fun trek, and you might as well do it right if you’re that determined to assist this pink haired demon in taking over the universe.
That is my feeling, my awful, heavy feeling about Arcana of Paradise ~ The Tower. If I had gotten exceedingly lucky with my first roll of characters, maybe I would have been hooked by the grindloop and joyfully gotten bread for my fellow kids. Instead, I just felt disappointment and disinterest grow like a fungus in my heart. I kept trying to play so I could find more, figure out what it is that makes it tick, and I found nothing. This isn’t worth my time, and I can’t say, with any confidence, that it’s worth yours.
What players are left with is something similar to my experience with Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. If you love the source material, it’s going to be a grand expansion of the world and, truly, this is a great entry to the Tron pantheon. It’s a very competent if short visual novel, and it’s engaging in a bite sized sort of way. I do wish that Disney had thrown some money at it to get voice work, but I’m fine that there’s just ambient electronica and the proper synthesized sinister feel that carries the read text.
In an ocean of games both great and small, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox breaks the surface and gives an astonishing display of joy, irritation, irreverence, and nuanced detail. I am deeply pleased to have played, and sincerely hope that I find even more reasons to continue plumbing the depths of these mad missions.
It’s got a great set of characters, some solid gameplay and a lot of heart. It’s engaging, maybe more tower defense than true strategy, but still a great time sink for upwards of an hour at a time. I highly encourage players to take a look at this stunning update to a classic game and see what happens in a magic school where at least someone is competent.
While it’s only on PC for now, console players should fully prepare for a dive into Hunt the Night later this year as a serious contender for a 2D soulslike that brings the ambience, the horror, and the satisfaction that can only come from an excellent experience.
You can enjoy some explosions, and there are additional elements to unlock with the challenge mode. You actually have a lot of fun when you find cute combinations that trigger cutscenes between the soldiers, and there’s satisfaction from destruction at a grand scale. The pixel art is lovely and detailed without losing some of that chunkiness, and the opening is a banger, even if the remaining score is a snore. I say if you’re determined to having something hit that dopamine switch, there’s a good chance you’ll have enjoyment with Marfusha.
Mato Anomalies is relatively short, looks good but not amazing, and loads like I just caught it sneaking in after curfew and asked what it was doing. The voice work is okay but not fantastic, combat is good, card game is awful. It’s just a bit of everything but not enough of something, if that makes sense.
In any case, this is fun, this is dumb, this is a great distraction for exactly as long as you want to give it. Don’t expect to dedicate your life to this game, but have a few chuckles and maybe get inspired to watch the movie again. It is, after all, the only way to make it like a true survivor.
It wasn’t always clear what should be done, it wasn’t always easy, but it did always manage to be unerringly true to itself. Like skydiving or another extreme activity, I would cautiously tell the right people to give it a try and find so much that, honestly, is like nothing else. Are you the right people? You may just need to buy a train ticket and find out.
Ib is a slow burn of disquiet and high strangeness that gets you with a scare and keeps you with the story. It’s a fantastic marriage of art and gameplay, and it’s worth a trip to see the crafting of something truly unique. Beware; the art may not show what you want to see.
Personally, I might revisit Pronty at some point in the future, but it simply won’t bubble to the front of 2023 as the forerunner for what game I would want to play. It’s classy, it’s structurally sound, but I feel like I’ve been down this road several times and it doesn’t have anything that sticks out as a “one more time” moment. Perhaps others will enjoy their voyage under the sea, but I had to surface, pronto.
Return to Dream Land Deluxe has a lot baked in, but I would have rather that Magolor’s quest launch as a separate game, and then had Dream Land Deluxe be a forty dollar standalone with the option to DLC Magolor in if it meant that much to people. We’ve seen what Kirby can be, and yes, the next “new” Kirby game probably will be. But this is what we’ve gotten this year, and I have to call it like it is. It’s cute, it’s fun, and it makes my family happy. It’s just slightly overvaluing its own worth to make it a solid purchase at the time, and that, like Kirby, sucks.
Though it’s not necessarily my favorite otome to date, The Crimson Flower that Divides: Lunar Coupling is an excellent piece of work in terms of appreciation and dedication to the story and the player. The sheer amount of choices and nuanced results can lead to hours upon hours of replay, and the locked endings force a player who wants to find out more to actually walk the path before arriving at the destination.
So everything is being given to fans here. As many songs, as many characters, as many different ways to play and enjoy and remember as possible. This may very well be the swan song for THEATRHYTHM, but it is an impossibly wonderful last act. My only hope is that we might, someday, see a PC port so that fans can continue to keep it alive and, perhaps, give justice to the songs that were forgotten (Gau and Shadow, I’m sorry). But, as it lies right now, there is nothing left to give but a standing ovation.
So treat it as such. I don’t think there’s anything horrifically bad about the game, but there’s nothing here that’ll make me fire it back up in a year or so. If you want an entertaining action metroidvania, and you have already ticked some other boxes, come and pick up this interesting yet forgettable journey. Otherwise, you may need to hire a totally different mercenary to do the job.