Author: Lee Jewett

Developer: Shedworks Publisher: Raw Fury Genre: Open-World Exploration Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S In Team Cherry’s 2017 masterpiece Hollow Knight, Cornifer the Cartographer says in an early encounter “Getting lost and finding your way again is a pleasure like no other.” Though Sable and Hollow Knight are quite dissimilar in most respects, Cornifer’s philosophy is one point they converge on; both games are most rewarding for those who enjoy the experience of being lost, though not even necessarily for the pursuant pleasure derived from finding yourself again. And it’s a rather…

Developer: Flying Wild Hog Publisher: Focus Entertainment Genre: Third-Person Action Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, PC It’s tough being a fan of westerns, dear reader. It’s not even that it’s a dying genre – it’s a genre that died decades ago, and all the examples made since have been less last gasps and more necromantic conjurations. Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that so many contemporary westerns incorporate supernatural elements, to the point that “Weird West” is its own increasingly well-recognized genre. Either way, the relative scarcity means that actually good examples…

Developer/Publisher: WayForward Technologies Genre: Action Platformer Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PlayStation 4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC Let me say, before anything else in this review, that I am a huge fan of RWBY. Though I only got into it relatively recently, it has very quickly carved out a sizable space in my thoughts, and as such I was very excited to learn of an upcoming title by WayForward, of all people, which gave me hope despite the less than stellar quality of previous attempts at adapting the series into video games. I say this to make it…

Developer: Exe Create Inc. Publisher: KEMCO Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PlayStation 4, PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X When I started playing Overrogue, a deck-building roguelite with a spooky underworld theme, my immediate first thought was “this is just Slay the Spire but horny.” Certainly, there are many things it does very similarly, such as negating damage with shields that disappear on the next turn and gathering relics to grant yourself current-run-only bonuses (the relics even display in a line starting from the top left of the screen), but as I got further in…

Developer/Publisher: Spike Chunsoft Genre: Fanservice Board Game Visual Novel Spinoff Reviewed On: PlayStation 4 Also Available For: Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS, Android Danganronpa is probably one of the most popular and well-known Japanese visual novel series in the west, but for those unfamiliar here is a quick rundown: Each mainline entry in the series takes a different cast of fifteen to sixteen eccentric high school students – each of whom is exceptionally talented in a particular field – and locks them all up together in an isolated locale with the only way to escape being to commit murder and not…

Developer: Massive Monster Publisher: Devolver Digital Genre: Hybrid Town Manager and Roguelite Reviewed On: PlayStation 4 Also Available For: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Series S/X, PC Sometimes, letting a game sit with you for a while can be very helpful in forming an opinion about it. Once a gut reaction to something settles down, you might find that you end up appreciating certain aspects of it far more than you initially did – though, more often, you’ll probably end up cooling off on less phenomenal aspects. Unfortunately, Cult of the Lamb, the hybrid roguelite and town-builder game…

Developer: OverBorder Studio Publisher: Team17 Genre: Souls-Like Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S OverBorder Studio’s Thymesia is the latest souls-like to be released (as of the time of this writing and probably not for much longer) into the wild and highly saturated modern video game market, but where many of its contemporaries feel merely inspired by FromSoftware’s ubiquitous formula (their Fromula, if you will), Thymesia feels more like a proper rip-off of Bloodborne specifically. The story follows a man named Corvus, an amnesiac alchemist attempting to find the cure to the plague decimating…

Developer/Publisher: Wayforward Genre: Run and Gun Platformer Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, Apple Arcade At this point, it feels safe to say that Wayforward are one of my favorite developers. Between their flagship Shantae series, River City Girls, Mighty Switch Force!, older titles like LIT, and even their licensed projects such as The Mummy: Demastered, they’ve built up a rather impressive pedigree of quality games over the years. It’s the sort of thing that earns a developer faith in their future titles and a surprising degree of leeway when actually judging…

Developer: FYQD Personal Studio Publisher: Playism Genre: First-Person Shooter Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch The Basics: Bright Memory: Infinite is a first-person-shooter game with an emphasis on quick, hectic, and over-the-top action. The game follows a special operative for a science organization named Shelia as she fights her way through a military organization and time-travelling (maybe?) warriors on her way to close a black hole that’s opened over the countryside. It’s a bit of a nonsense plot with clunky dialogue that is at least partially the result of some less-than-stellar translation…

Developer: Izanagi Games Publisher: NIS America Genre: Shoot-Em-Up, Visual Novel, and Escape Room Reviewed on: PlayStation 5 Also Available For: PlayStation 4, PC, Nintendo Switch If there’s one thing I really love about the current state of video games, it’s how much more willing developers seem to be to take risks and experiment with mashing together genres that don’t seem like they should go together. The best part is, a lot of these experiments work, more or less – when a weird little genre-mixing game isn’t great, it’s usually more a function of flaws in the smaller details of the…