The first, and lasting, impression that SWORD ART ONLINE: Alicization Lycoris gives is anime, and plenty of it. All of the well-trodden tropes are present here. Blue-haired swordsman protagonist? Check. Fast-paced and heavily over-cut intro? Check. Inexplicable amnesia? Check. Anime waifu goodness? Check, check and check.
This also means, however, it suffers a couple of the pitfalls too.
I am bad at rhythm action games, however, I will happily gorge myself on any one I come across simply because I find them so fun. From playing Dance Dance Revolution in the arcades to tapping away with Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, I genuinely adore the genre. So, when I heard that the legendary Taiko No Tatsujin series was coming to Switch, I simply had to play it, even if I was going to be terrible at it.
We’re firmly in the age of the rogue-lite now, with various takes on the genre cropping up, each offering a new spin on the do or die and start trying again style of gaming. At the same time, we’ve long had a love affair with the gaudy nonsense and retro titles of the 80s and 90s. Enter RAD, a retro-themed rogue-lite that’s all set to aggressively smack players in the face until they submit or succeed.
I love GOD EATER as a franchise, as it takes everything I like about Monster Hunter and throws away everything I don’t, replacing it with better stuff. So, I was looking forward to getting back to clouting Aragami with big swords with a GOD EATER 3 review.
Tales of Vesperia has always been a missing link in my love of the Tales series, as a game that I had no means of playing (outside of imports) and yet one that was more widely praised than any other title in the whole franchise, and so I spent years of generally feeling sad about not playing it.
Very late to the party on this one, but it’s time for another event report, this time covering the games at MCM London Comicon on the weekend of 27th-29th October. Comicon isn’t exactly well-known for it’s games, but there’s always been a decent showing to keep gamers happy among the comics, movies, and anime. I actually remember playing Guilty Gear with one of my friends at last October’s event. However, enough about that, what did I play and how was it?
This review was originally posted on Nintendo Scene on 19th February 2016.
In my first review of the year, I exclaimed that 2016 was the Year of the JRPG and I was not wrong. They’re actually coming faster than I can review them, but I’m making sure that the biggest titles will be spoken about and have the attention they deserve. So, next up for critique is the ultimate mash up title; Project X Zone 2 on Nintendo 3DS. When I say mash up title, there is a tremendous amount crammed into this game with franchises from Bandai Namco, Sega and Capcom all making an appearance. So with franchises like Tekken, Tales of, .HACK and many others you would expect the plot to be a bit of a mess, right? However, the writing of Project X Zone 2, much alike its predecessor, is remarkably clever and utterly insane.
So far, 2017 has been a phenomenal year for Nintendo but most importantly the Switch. We have seen both new titles gracing the new hybrid and a few fantastic Wii U titles being brought over to the Switch. Needless to say, given the arguable lack of success of Nintendo’s asymmetric gameplay console, giving some of the games of the Wii U another shot at gaining the audience they deserved is a fantastic idea. The latest example of this to come out of the Big N is Pokkén Tournament, which is receiving a DX (I assume short for Deluxe) version, Nintendo’s Pokémon fighting game. But how is the Switch update for the fighter?
As a new thing I’ve decided to do on here, I’m now going to post updates from any tournaments I enter, as I’m trying to take fighting games (or at least certain ones of them) a little more seriously.
Reu The Gamer 