Berwick Saga, Tear Ring Saga's 2005 PlayStation 2 follow-up, managed to annoy me before I'd even opened the box. The reason is down to the subtitle, "Lazberia Chronicle Chapter 174", a rather grandiose label that at first blush appears to imply Shouzou Kaga, the game's creative lead and strategy-loving force behind Nintendo's Fire Emblem series, had 173 … Continue reading New tricks
Gradius V's staff roll reads like a fan's happy daydream, bringing Treasure, G.rev, and Konami (with none other than Hitoshi Sakimoto on soundtrack duties to boot) together to work on an all-new entry in the legendary shmup series. As far as the genre's concerned this melting pot of talent is easily on a par with Sega's sublime … Continue reading Shoot the core!
You would expect this 2003 PlayStation 2 release of the first Sakura Wars to be a straight transfer of the PC version of the game (which is in itself a nigh-identical to the Dreamcast por- actually, we'd probably call that version a "remaster" these days): The game was already popular, the existing ports were already … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: Sakura Wars vs Atsuki Chishio Ni
As I've mentioned before Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra had a heck of a lot of work to do if it was going to win me back and I freely admit I came at this final entry with something of a hostile attitude, one fuelled by two games worth of annoying characters, poor writing, and various … Continue reading That meeting could have been an email: The Game
Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse starts off so strong it's worth staying on the title screen for a while just to hear Yuki Kajiura's haunting musical piece "In the beginning, there was..." gently flowing around an otherwise silent scene of the ES Asher (these replace the AWGS' of Episode I) being constructed piece by … Continue reading Jenseits von Gut und Böse
I don't remember much about any part of this trilogy - the last time I played these games they were newly released US imports, which would have been... about eighteen years ago now - but I do remember they were stuffed full of religious imagery, a memory Xenosaga: Episode I is eager to refresh over and over … Continue reading Der Wille zur Macht
I'm sure this one will look very familiar even if you've never been anywhere near a Japanese PlayStation 2: 2005's Namco X Capcom is perhaps best described at this point in time as Project X Zone 0, as bar the obvious language barrier (a fan translation is available here) and complete lack of Sega just about everything in here - … Continue reading This battle is about to explode!
Hungry Ghosts opens not with a context-free FMV montage of epic events yet to come nor an attention grabbing intro neatly ending as your own adventure begins but something far more ominous - a simple text message addressing you directly, warning of all the difficult decisions ahead that cannot be undone. This then seamlessly drifts … Continue reading You are being watched. You are being judged.
The first Siren was a divisive experience; praised by some, loathed by others, and I... well, it's probably best you read about it for yourself. But whether you view the original as an unflinchingly brutal nightmare played out within a dense tangle of plot or nothing more than a deeply unfair game loosely attached to a string of indecipherable … Continue reading Second Siren lucky?
Until a few days ago I hadn't played Siren - or Forbidden Siren as us PAL gamers called it - since it was new. Isn't that weird? I love horror games, and I love the PlayStation 2 - why wouldn't I have played this since 2004? Ah. I hadn't played Siren for almost two decades … Continue reading FFScinating
Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster 