Inkulinati review

How can you tell something is the result of passion and care, rather than cold, hard economics? For me, it is the little touches. The things that developers add in when there’s absolutely no need whatsoever. In Inkulinati, a game where you draw beasts onto a battlefield, your hand is represented by a human hand. …

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Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft review

They got it right the first time. That’s the headline here. I was going to start this review with a load of waffle about remakes and remasters and rose-tinted glasses and all that. But playing Tomb Raider, the thing that kept coming back to me was that simple phrase. The most important thing that this …

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Rough Justice ’84 (Switch) review

I love board games. There’s nothing better than getting friends together, rolling dice, and dealing cards. In the last decade, there’s been an influx of interesting board games, powered by interesting decisions and video game inspired mechanics. Now board games are feeding back into video games in interesting ways, influencing people like Gamma Minus – …

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Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster review

If you’re a Switch owner with a passion for RPGs, you’re spoilt for choice. A handful release every month, which is a remarkably different situation to the GameCube era. When Nintendo’s purple cube had its plug pulled, it had only a dozen to its name – some of which never made it to Europe, including …

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The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails review

This hack ‘n slash RPG hybrid was originally released on the PSP in 2012. You might not have heard of it until now, and that’s because it was never translated and brought to the West. With the success of the Switch making portable and smaller scale RPGs viable again, developer Falcom has decided to fancy-up …

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Fitness Circuit review

Fitness games are inherently very difficult to review. Everyone has different fitness needs and there’s a ton of fitness games currently on Switch vying for attention. Zooming out even further, there are the likes of Nike Fitness on Netflix, YouTube fitness channels, and things like Peloton and Apple Fitness. Fitness Circuit certainly has its work …

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ghostpia Season One review

PQube’s latest visual novel has a haunting, melancholic, and unsettling tone, entailing a glitchy children’s storybook that often spills out into violence and bloodshed. It’s a tale of female friendship with a lovely melodic soundtrack smashed together with trauma, a bit of John Wick, and some discordant electronic bleeps and bloops. Do these ideas work …

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Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord review

Developer Compile Heart seems to have set themselves the challenge of making the most quintessentially Japanese role player of all time. Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord features dragons, mechs, monsters, heroes with swords, and a lot of sexual tension. If you’ve seen it before, it’s in this game. Unfortunately, Fairy Fencer doesn’t have much new …

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Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly review

Like a lot of men my age, I’m a huge Haruki Murakami fan. Yet, whenever someone asks me why I like his work, I struggle to come up with a reason. Nothing really happens in a lot of his stories. There’s often a well and a cat and people just wandering around not doing very …

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Papertris review

Tetris is, to my mind, close to perfection. It’s also a game that can support an unfathomable amount of mutations. There’s the classic Game Boy Tetris, the annoying controls and T-Spin ticks of the arcade games, the frantic battles of Tetris 99, the blissfulness of the Tetris Effect, the mad energy of SEGA’s Puyo Puyo …

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Intrepid Izzy review

Do you ever find yourself stumbling into an ancient tomb and unleashing an evil genie? Me too. All the bloody time. It’s an issue that seems to be affecting our protagonist, Izzy, too. They should really do something about those tombs. They’re a health and safety nightmare. Of course, when I inevitably unleash another ancient …

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Donut Dodo review

Film reviewers don’t have this issue. When film critics talk about ‘challenging’ films, they’re usually talking about films that have shocking content, ones that have disconnected dreamlike narratives, or ones that touch on difficult subjects. Mulholland Drive is a challenging film. But I still managed to watch it all the way through. Donut Dodo on …

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Not a review of Aquarist (Switch)

This is not a review of Aquarist. I can’t review Aquarist. Let me explain. You see, I write reviews as a hobby. It’s fun to sample new games, see what’s coming out and use my creative side to craft a review. After an hour or so with FreeMind’s Aquarist, an aquarium management game, I wasn’t …

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Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef review

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. I remember reading this in a Warhammer rulebook when I was a wee lad. I thought it was the coolest introduction to anything I’d ever read. A bleak volley to the face. A statement of intent. The thing is, and whisper this quietly, …

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C.A.R.L. review

I’m not an angry player. I tend to either roll with the punches or step back from a game. I’m not one to throw a joypad or storm off in a huff. I prefer the Zen approach. To embrace the cycle of life and death. Take a minute and breathe. Surprising, then, that cute robot …

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