We are less than a week away from the western launch of Sega's Sakura Wars, the newest entry in a long-running strategy-RPG franchise that is yet to find much more than a niche audience outside of its native Japan. This is obviously not hel...

During these uncertain times, many have clung to the new Animal Crossing for comfort. It offers players a world with enough structure to help make sense of existence, but not so much that you ever feel trapped or otherwise punished. It's le...

Sabotage Studio's second game shares roots with the developer's debut, but they could not be more different. The Messenger was undeniably excellent, a faithful homage to the retro action-platformer genre. But if The Messenger was ...

Man, I remember when Wasteland 2 hit Kickstarter, I was so excited. Not because I had a nostalgic familiarity with the series, but because I am just so in love with traditional RPGs in that vein. I wanted to support that style of game ...

Disc Room was one of my favorite games of PAX East 2020. That's high praise considering that two new Shovel Knight titles, the laughably sexy Final Fantasy 7 remake, the return of one of Hideki Kamiya's greatest games, and the one and only ...

I love the original Animal Crossing for all the things it does do, and maybe even more for all the things it doesn't. It doesn't let you traverse a big world, fight anything, or ask you to do much other than wander around and engage in a re...

When I recently drafted up an interview for the director of the new Bubble Bobble 4 Friends release for Switch, I was filled with hope. Bubble Bobble was one of my favorite games growing up, and there was more than one reason to believe it ...

Despite its faults, I will always look back on my time with the original Luigi's Mansion fondly. After being forced to play as Luigi for years as my older brother would always get to be first player, it was nice to see Nintendo put him...

Just last week, Skybound Entertainment and Skydance Interactive announced a brand new VR shooter based on the popular Walking Dead series. Called Saints & Sinners, the studios were looking to leverage the visceral intensity of VR to cre...

Fix your eyes at middle distance, that's where most of Stela -- but far from all of it -- takes place. This mysterious and eerie trek through the apocalyptic final days of an ancient world makes the most of its scenery by constantly pl...

It's been a good year since I last set foot inside a Call of Duty multiplayer mode. While I'm no stranger to Activision's immensely popular shooter series, a lot of my recent down-the-barrel action has been confined to Ubisoft's tactical sh...

When I was first sold on Trine, all I needed to hear is that it was vaguely similar to The Lost Vikings. I sought it out that very day. Over time, the magic of Trine kind of waned a bit, and the dream almost came crashing down entirely...

Technically, Konami is still making games with some of their classic franchises. They have a new Contra game in the works, a new 2D Castlevania title set for release this year, and last I checked, the servers for Metal Gear Survive were sti...

There wasn't one particular reason why I put down Deck13's The Surge after a few sessions close to its 2017 launch: there were too many to count. As their sci-fi follow-up to Lords of the Fallen and their second foray into the "Souls" ...

My first experience with Stadia was playing Doom Eternal for half an hour or so last week at E3, and I can't think of a better game to showcase Google's game-streaming platform. It's fast, it's ferocious, and you know what? Stadia totally w...

I liked Ghost Recon Wildlands way more in theory than in execution, but with this year's follow-up, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, my mind is at ease. Ubisoft's E3 showing brought me around and, frankly, I'm as surprised as anyone by this turn of ...

There is no such thing as high-level Roller Champions because Roller Champions itself barely exists. Its introduction to the world came last week with an E3 announcement and a surprise technical alpha that was open to everyone. At...

The story of Psychonauts is one of the happiest underdog stories in recent memory. The original launched to critical acclaim in 2005 but underperformed so badly that plans for a sequel were scrapped fairly early on. The relative failure of ...

Ubisoft's approach to game design for the past decade can most succinctly be summed up as "more is better." More content, more open world, more everything. Sometimes it works out, like with Assassin's Creed Odyssey -- a game that felt ...

We've gone entirely too long without a new PC game that captures the magic of the original Zoo Tycoon, but with Planet Zoo this year, Frontier Developments is looking to set things right for neglected fans. It's a management sim in which yo...

The setting is anything but exciting. A labyrinthine office building, the sort of place where Karen from accounting navigates a maze of cubicles just to ask how your weekend was. She doesn't care. She's just looking to kill time before she ...

Nintendo's E3 Direct was full of a ton of surprises, but one of the more striking was the announcement of Empire of Sin. Feeling completely out of place for Nintendo's family-friendly image, the short teaser showed mobsters gunning down oth...

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair popped up unexpectedly a couple weeks ago, and we were able to get some hands-on time with it at E3 last week. It takes the lizard-and-bat duo from 2017's crowdfunded 3D platformer and flattens the actio...

NIS America wasn't at E3 proper this year. A few blocks away from the convention center, it set up shop in a Chinese restaurant where the smells emanating from the kitchen made my stomach grumble even though I had just eaten about a half-ho...

CJ got the early take on Final Fantasy VII Remake at E3 this year, and after having played through the same section he did, I can agree with most of his observations. But this is one of those big deals so we needed to dig deeper than just t...