Reviews
Reviews of the games I play, aiming to quickly encapsulate the game’s essence and quirks. Most games have an audience; my goal is for the review to make it clear to you whether you are part of a game’s audience (whether or not I am).
A spelling game with a variety of mechanical gimmicks based on the premise that you are guiding a group of survivors down through the floors of a highrise building after an apparent earthquake. Spelling is done on a grid of letter tiles by connecting adjacent tiles to form words. Like in Bookworm and other similar games, tiles that are used are removed and the tiles above drop down.
A conversational mystery game in which you play a detective robot interviewing other robots to find the truth behind recent robot disappearances. Ride the eponymous subway line and talk to the other passengers who get on and off, learning what they know and sometimes solving small puzzles to get their cooperation or help them out.
A spaceship management sim puzzle game, notable for its optional co-op and for being one of very few Wii U games to actually make good use of the gamepad screen. While the TV is occupied with the ship and its environment, the gamepad is used as the ship’s control panel allowing you to toggle and route power between various systems.
A streamlined Pokémon collection and combat game. Take your team of up to three Pokémon on “expeditions” where they automatically walk around, encounter other Pokémon, and automatically fight them in real time. Your only direct control is that you can manually trigger their abilities (which then have cooldowns before they can be used again), but you can’t target them, so you might as well just put them on auto.
An action RPG with a branching story and time travel gimmick. As dashing swordsman (well, swordsfox) Reynardo, attempt to lead the Rebellion to victory against the once-benevolent-but-now-mad Emperor. Make four plot-forking choices and fight through waves of imperial raven soldiers to accomplish your objectives - maybe you’re saving an old friend who’s in trouble with the Empire and claims to have a brilliant scheme for winning the war, or maybe you’re working to unearth a legendary superweapon that could instantly turn the tide of battle.
An atmospheric and exploration-heavy puzzle platformer superficially similar to games like ICO, Journey, and ABZÛ. Play as a nameless boy who wakes up on an island with no explanation, explore a handful of varied and beautiful environments, complete platforming challenges and solve puzzles to progress. There’s no dialog and much of the storytelling is vague or ambiguous.
A Musou game set in a crossover Dragon Quest world, featuring some original characters as well as some fan favorites from previous games. There’s a lot to like here for fans of Musou action and Dragon Quest flavor, though some pacing issues, an overreliance on defense/escort missions, and a complete lack of multiplayer hold the game back.
A first-person physics-based puzzle game in which you manipulate designated cubes in the environment to create platforms, barriers, springboards, and more in order to solve a series of puzzle rooms. In many ways, it’s an expanded and refined followup to Q.U.B.E: Director's Cut, though not all the changes are improvements. Where Q.
The fourth in a series of budget-priced downloadable Picross games for the 3DS.
There are 105 standard Picross puzzles up to 20x15 in size (making this the first game in the series to include puzzles above 15x15) and 45 Mega Picross puzzles up to 15x15 in size, bringing the total up to the familiar 150.
A simple puzzle game in which you must paint each numbered grid square in contiguous paths that can’t cross each other or move from a higher number to a lower one. Some grids are filled with a single number and have a single starting point, meaning you simply have to find the path that touches each square once; others have multiple starting points and ranges of numbers from one to nine, meaning you must find a way to draw several paths that touch each square in the right order.