Ubisoft’s recent push towards releasing smaller, downloadable titles alongside its big hits has been a positive step in the right direction. It began this trend with Child of Light and is continuing it with Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Utilizing a striking art style, provided by the publisher’s UbiArt framework, Valiant Hearts covers a time in history rarely presented in the medium and, thankfully, does so with a level of sophistication you don’t often see in games about war.
Influences from the NES era are nothing new. This has been an ongoing trend in indie games, often to draw on the nostalgia factor and also cut the costs of developing in HD. Some might even say the trend is getting a bit overdone, and I might have agreed with them until now. Shovel Knight has proven that combining old art styles and mechanics, and mashing together old genres, can still be done well. READ MORE
Battle Princess of Arcadias is not the type of game that Nippon Ichi is typically known for. When I hear the company’s name I think of the turn-based combat of the Disgaea series, but everything in Battle Princess takes place in real time. There is one key similarity, though: female characters are considerably more than just eye candy. READ MORE
After spending some time with (deep breath) Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha’ (whew), I came out of it like a kid stumbling out of a major house party for the first time: overwhelmed, dazed and unsure of what happened, but feeling like, despite the sensory overload, I had a lot of fun. I just wish I could get invited to more parties. READ MORE
Both good music games and good puzzle games have value outside of the mechanics themselves. One gives you a reason to listen to new music, and the other keeps your head in check and reinforces pattern recognition. Arc System Works, known for its work in the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue series, released Magical Beat, a hybrid rhythm-puzzle game, in the arcades in 2012. Two years later, it’s on North American Vitas. READ MORE
