25,361 community articles
Published
I realize I'm doing a whole Halloween-themed daily series of late, but nothing stops the Indie Game of the Week. Nor does anything stop Ruth, the heroine of this storybook sci-fi tale about a Norwegian milkmaid who is forced to intervene when an alien spaceship attempts to make off with her beloved bovine one cold morn. This leads to a Space Quest -esque adventure of ingenuity and courage in th...
Published
To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will b...
Published
To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will b...
Published
To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will b...
Published
World of Aden: Thunderscape Pros: Very Good Menu Developer: Strategic Simulations Inc. Release Date : August 30, 1995 Time Played : About 90 minutes Dubiosity : 3 out of 5 Soundtrack : ROCKIN Would I play more? Just a reminder that I’ve put more time into some of the games featured in this blog series than I have on actual beloved RPGs like Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (which I swear I’l...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
Published
To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will b...
Published
To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will b...
Published
Xenoblade Chronicles was always a game that I meant to play but never got around to. It came out towards the end of the Wii’s period of dominance, and was only sold at Gamestop in the US. The price never dropped much below full retail, and I moved on to the new generation before I ever got around to picking it up. When Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition was announced I resolved to actually...
Published
For many gamers, the original Dead Space was their introduction to diegetic UI: a form of user interface design where typically abstract elements like meters and menus exist within the narrative of the game. With a single release in 2009, Visceral brought diegetic UI forward by leaps and bounds, but few studios afterwards rushed to create the next Dead Space. Complications ranging from aestheti...
Published
To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will b...
Published
Author's Note: If you missed it here's a link to previous episode of this series: How Bad Is The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII Actually? Part 1: The OVAs, Light Novel, and Advent Children Preamble Oh, fuck me. Does this blog open the door to me needing to play Final Fantasy All the Bravest at some point? This week we have another episode of my blog series examining the " Compilation of Final...
Published
After the troubled development and lukewarm reception of Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power , I was slightly anxious that we wouldn't get any more games in this acrobatic puzzle-platformer series. That would be a shame, since while Trine tends to stick to its wheelhouse of box physics and character-switching mechanics this franchise always brings it when it comes to satisfying puzzles and a wonder...
Published
Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator So it's the 90s and the Final Fantasy is popular, but you don't own a Playstation. Developer : Valkyrie Studios Release Date : October 31, 1999 Time Played : About Two Hours Dubiosity : 2 out of 5 Final Fantastosity : VII out of VII Would I play more? Would not be opposed, but I’d prefer a turbo mode kthx Septerra Core occupies a similar space to Dubious RPG...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
Published
Welcome once again to the Mega Archive, where we take a chronological look at the tinny MIDI wonder that is Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis one game at a time. Or ten games at a time, as is now the current system. What's been a great time-saver for me this week is that seven of the ten games featured on this list also came out on the SNES: a degree of overlap we'll be seeing more frequently now that...
Published
Welcome to “Gaming Memories,” a blog series where I reminisce about my favorite video games . I will slowly but surely get to every game on the list, and speak to why each holds a special place in my heart. That not only means I’ll talk about why I think each is a great game that speaks to my tastes, but also where and how it affected me in a larger context. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for rea...
Published
Genshin Impact is not my first gacha game. Like many people I've tried out previous gacha titles on my smartphone and while none of them sunk their hooks deep into me I enjoyed a couple enough to throw a few bucks at for a coin doubler or battlepass or whatever. Most of those games were pretty similar to one another, and in fact a few of them even used the same assets despite being from purport...
Published
This is a video I made about the early history of Nihon Falcom . I started out researching the company since I'm a fan of the Trails series, adding information to the wiki here and there, and eventually ended up creating this huge thing. I spent about 4-5 months making this video, by far the largest project I've ever undertaken, and I hope it is a fun watch. I realize the video is pretty long b...
Published
When I reviewed Ludo Land's Four Sided Fantasy last month , I remarked that it spiritually embodies the frontier spirit of the presently ongoing era of Indie prominence, adapting a format similar to early darlings of the scene like Jonathan Blow's Braid and the soulful imitators that followed. However, I forgot that there was another genre, unique to the Indie development scene, that pre-empted...
Published
I have a confession to make: I fucked up. Last time , I mentioned buying old PSP copies to explore the plethora of crappy video games that are out there. As it often happens, my disease for collecting ill-conceived boxes makes me tend to linger on used market websites. I'm a lingerer; I linger. To really illustrate my bad taste, my main goal at the moment is trying to acquire an affordable Nint...
Published
Since we've hit two milestones of late on the Mega Archive - 20 entries and 300 games processed - I've decided to switch up the format a little to make these blogs both A) easier to write, and B) easier to read. To that effect, each entry will now comprise of ten games on average, with slightly deeper dives for each. I'm still going to struggle to say much of anything of value about some Japane...
