25,361 community articles
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What's this? An Indie game actually released this year? Have I finally stopped cheaping out on you all? Well, yes and no. Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions is both light on the wallet and light on new features, in essence a rerun of the preceding 2016 game I reviewed for this feature last year . These games can be reductively boiled down to a series of jigsaw puzzles, albeit ones that use glass sha...
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I don't know why I'm so surprised, as familiar as I am with both the mobile games and F2P business model, that Mario Kart Tour is so grossly bloated with microtransactions and gatchapon style unlocks. For those that haven't played yet, the unlocks are sorted into Drivers Karts Gliders Each of which will give either a points multiplier or bonus items when used on certain tracks, so effectively;...
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Oof, just gotta pop my joints back into place after reaching so hard for that title. Hey everyone. I've been playing Yakuza games for close to a decade now; I'm a relative Kiryu-come-lately, though I did the due diligence of at least playing all the preceding games leading up to 2017's prequel Yakuza 0 (Zero) . It's been remarkable seeing how much the series has changed with this special preque...
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Author's Note: Minor SPOILER WARNING for anyone who has not played Final Fantasy VIII. I've tried to keep this blog as spoiler-free as possible, hence all of my images are from Disco One of Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. Nonetheless, this blog does talk about the game's overall story in some depth so you have been FOREWARNED! Also, If you enjoyed this blog, might I recommend the first episode o...
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Note: The following article contains major spoilers for Goodfellas, The Little Mermaid, Paratopic, and Whiplash, and a minor spoiler for Deadly Premonition. In life, it's the destination, not the journey, right? If you have a fulfilling job, you shouldn't focus on the day it will end; you should be happy for the time in which you can still do it. If you go on a hike, the point isn't reaching th...
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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...
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If I had my druthers and the Indie industry was even busier than it is already, I'd probably rename this feature "Indie explormer of the week" (in this alternative universe, people would also intuitively understand that explormers are exploration-platformers, like Castlevania or Metroid ) because I sure do play a lot of them. It's not so much the niche these days as the default. My theory is th...
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I'm putting the finishing touches on a video review I'm going to make for Control but I just have to put it out there. Holy cow, this game was outrageously fun. This is Remedy at their best and you can really see how much fun they had putting the game together, specifically the various memos and case studies regarding the Bureau's collection of altered items and objects of power. I haven't had...
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Few games studios have established an in-house style as immediately identifiable as Zachtronics's. Systemic, dry, and often fiendishly complex, Zachtronics puzzle games such as SpaceChem and SHENZHEN I/O became cult hits for not just allowing players to find solutions but to build them. I was able to talk briefly to Zach Barth, the man behind the games, about the mindset that goes into developi...
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Welcome to another edition of "Indie games are just like big boy games only streamlined in some intelligent ways". We've discussed this recurring phenomenon in countless IGotWs past, most recently with the moderately fun Heroes of the Monkey Tavern a fortnight prior , but the example I've covered in the past that comes to mind most readily for Victor Vran is Aarklash: Legacy . Both have formats...
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I've been a fan of the Sakura Wars franchise for a while, and have posted about the series several times on this site, so I experimented with making a video where I share some random fun facts about this once prolific Japanese franchise. Hope you enjoy it!
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As the video game industry continues to grow, it is thus required to seek out avenues of growth. You can't appeal to the same audience with the same whiz-bang action fare forever, and that's keenly understood by the indie market most of all who have been pitching to audiences from all walks of life (largely because indie developers themselves come from all walks of life also). Even before this...
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SPOILER WARNING: This blog speaks at a very high level about mid-to-late game happenings in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It's stuff that has been covered in other reviews and marketing materials, but I want to mention there are mild spoilers here just in case. About two-thirds of my way through Fire Emblem: Three Houses , as I walked through the emptier-than-they-used-to-be halls of Garreg Mach M...
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Look. I try to give all games a fair shake. I'm the type of frugally irksome person who hates abandoning anything I've spent money on, whether that's leaving food on my plate or a well-regarded game that looked to be up my alley. Due to that sunk cost fallacy, I make an effort to understand them, from the nuts and bolts of the game mechanics to the broader and more elusive ways the total packag...
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Hey there! My name's Cameron Lowe, and I'm about to throw myself under a bus. This is me: Ugh, I know, right? Jeez, what a loser. Right! I'm four hundred pounds. Sometimes it's a lot less depending on the year I'm having, sometimes it's more, but it usually winds up being around that mark. I used to be six foot even, now I'm five eight. I have glasses thicker than just about anyone you'll ever...
sparky_buzzsaw (Premium member)
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Welcome to the Bucketlog! It's going to be 2019's year-long blog series, focusing on games I've been meaning to play since forever. I've put together a list derived from a mix of systems, genres, and vintages because it's starting to look like 2019 might be the first "lean" year for games in a spell (though time will tell whether that pans out to be true) and I figured this would be a fine oppo...
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It's a sign of the times that a blockbuster like Fortnite can become a worldwide sensation while its contents still remain a mystery to most of the medium's old guard. Fortnite has pride of place in the cultural arena of kids 8-16, and there is a limitless supply of YouTube videos with animated young men shotgunning a path through Dusty Divot. However, if you're the kind of person who reads a l...
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I've always enjoyed wargaming for the aspects of planning and then executing (hopefully to success). Wargames can be very simple (like Risk) to complex day long affairs like Axis and Allies Global or even longer campaigns. They also span many different levels of theatres of war, from the individual soldiers to globe spanning adventures, where losses in one theatre can set you back turns to reco...
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As someone who has thrown together their fair share of creative projects, there's a certain irritating process that I tend to call "inspiration evaporation": those occasions when you're hit with a complete image for what your next endeavor will look like and in the process of getting from the conceptual stage to the finished product most of that creative energy has dissipated into the ether, le...
