Most games try to start out with a bang. It may be an epic battle, or stunning vistas with photorealistic graphics. Ni no Kuni completely disregards that train of thought, and begins with a young boy doing chores to help his mother. This understated, ordinary beginning leads into an adventure unlike any other I’ve experienced in games, and it is all the better for it. READ MORE
17-Bit’s Skulls of the Shogun has been a highlight of indie festivals and competitions for a few years now. The turn-based strategy game is, even before release, known for its pick-up-and-play nature and subtle tactics. Its transformation into a multi-platform, Windows-8-and-Windows-Phone-showpiece project has caused it to take a bit longer to get to our hands, and also raises inevitable concerns about development priorities. We’re happy to say that it had little effect on the game itself, and that the full release of Skulls delivers on a lot of the promise of that earlier work. READ MORE
Fire Emblem: Awakening, the latest from Intelligent Systems, strikes a tough balance. It’s at once a celebration of the series’ peculiar quirks and a friendly introduction to newcomers, a reinvention for the modern age and a reminder of days past. That it does it so gracefully is a testament to the developers’ attention to detail, and the resulting game is one that can be different things to different people. READ MORE
Defense Grid is special. It’s a tower defense game with an interesting story, likable characters and a great variety of tower, enemy and level types. There is no single best strategy, non-tutorial levels have multiple (and often wildly different) ways to succeed and the entire interface is designed to allow the player to experiment with new strategies and tower location without needing to restart the level every time something goes wrong. That’s what makes Defense Grid great – what does Containment add? READ MORE
When rebooting a franchise, you have to take into careful consideration what made that franchise so well-liked to begin with. When rebooting a franchise with a different developer at the helm, your chances of appealing to hardcore fans of the previous games has been reduced exponentially. Despite the outcries those fans, DmC: Devil May Cry manages to capture everything that was great about the original games, while carving out an identity that’s all its own. READ MORE
