Toomanywires

It's been nine years since I last wrote a straight-forward review. The subject of that last write-up was Persona 4 Golden, a game deserving of a thousand write-ups. Triangle Strategy isn't P4G, but it has inspired me to write a review. This is that review. Triangle Strategy is an SRPG cut from the same cloth as personal-favourites Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics. We follow Seranoa Wolffort, the son of a lord and the loyal vassal of the king of Glenbrook. Glenbrook is one of three domains that coexist in a state of hard-won but paper-thin peace. An opportunity to strengthen the bonds between their kingdom (muscle), Aesfrost (iron and industry), and Hyzante (salt and religion) goes awry and the land is soon consumed by war. Young Searanoa has to grow up fast, as difficult decisions must be made about where to go and who to ally with. The choices you make are interesting ones, and the outcomes are rarely obvious. Most interestingly, there are few clear distinctions between ...

Most nights, I couldn't wait to fire up my PS4 and get lost in Bloodborne's world of rot and misery. I'd play well past my intended bedtime, stifling yawns while I carved up ghouls in my pyjamas. However, there were also evenings where I was far less eager, nights where I made little to no progress and questioned whether Bloodborne was worth losing an hour of sleep. On the good nights, I struggled to put Bloodborne down. There was always one more area to explore or another boss that I wanted to have a stab at. Across fifty hours, my blood splattered hunter and I covered every last inch of Yharnam, successfully taking down every boss, some more successfully than others, and mingling with the locals. I enjoyed the shift in combat from Dark and Demon Souls’ more deliberate and defensive style, to a speedier and more aggressive approach. The ability to regain health by quickly attacking after taking damage rewards aggression and (calculated) risk taking, though s...

After three and a half months, Person 4 Golden has finally left my Vita. I imported a copy for Christmas, and spent more than seventy hours playing on the sofa, in bed, on Tokyo trains and in Russian airspace before reaching the true ending just last week. I'm referring to the ending that follows the other finale that comes after the first ending, which was actually just a glorified game over screen. It is done, and now I don’t know what to do with myself, other than write some nice words about a game that would not let me quit. And I tried to quit on a number of occasions. I wanted it to end at forty hours, but it wouldn't comply. I'd had my fill at forty and was concerned that another thirty odd hours would dampen my enthusiasm for one of the finest portable games I've ever played. More than once, I was tempted to throw in the towel instead of grinding out another half a dozen levels in order to beat a problematic boss. Instead, I stepped away for a couple of days ...

I was stuck in a room full of zombies. To be more precise, I was stuck in the corner of a room full of Japanese zombies. The camera was angled in such a way that all I could see was the grimy wall to which I was pinned, thanks to an unfortunate gathering of obstacles. The undead were only a few feet away, ready to chomp down on my snake skin jacket, desperate to trap me in a loop of stumble-bite-stumble. By the time I had finally gained control of the camera the pack was already upon me and I spent the next thirty seconds unsuccessfully trying to reload my shotgun, each time being interrupted by a salary man's corpse, burning through curative items until I finally got a shot off and cleared some space. Such encounters are common place in Yakuza: Dead Souls, a non-canonical addition to the Yakuza franchise that sees the seediest corner of Tokyo suffer a zombie apocalypse while the rest of the city, including the people just over the road, go about their business as usual. G...

Asura’s QTE-based anger knows no bounds. Betrayed by his fellow deities, he shouts and punches his way to exhaustion in a quest for vengeance, one that is more interactive story than video game. Asura’s Wrath is rather unique; a heady mix of action game and anime that is short on gameplay but unmatched in spectacle. The tale unfolds through quick-time-event laden cut scenes, where player involvement often feels like an afterthought and an interruption to a story that is well told. Think Heavy Rain, only in space and featuring muscle-bound, shouty demi gods. JASONNNNNN! Yes, just like Heavy Rain. Wearing its anime influences on its sleeve, it makes the most of its episodic format, featuring regular recaps, teasers and credits that serve to constantly remind you that this is not just another action game. These stylistic elements add to the charm and perfectly suit an outing that is concerned first and foremost with telling a story, not offering a traditional gaming experience. Thrust...

Despite a new platform and developer, Golden Abyss feels like a true Uncharted. Naughty Dog may be absent, but Bend have proven themselves a capable stand-in, careful to preserve the essence of the series while also making worthwhile additions of their own, resulting in a game that will be remembered long after its fellow launch titles have faded from memory. Golden Abyss sees charismatic treasure hunter, history buff and lovable serial killer Nathan Drake up to his old tricks or, more accurately, new tricks as GA is set before the events of series debut, Drake's Fortune. What starts off as a routine trip to a South American excavation site quickly descends into something far more serious and Uncharted-like. Racing towards a lost city of gold, Drake must rescue new friends and battle old ones, as well as taking on the remnants of a revolutionary guard - just another day in the antiquity business then. The faux-historical backdrop is rather confusing and at times dull, but then...

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a rather difficult game to review. It is one of the most immersive titles of any generation, one that has demanded over one hundred hours of my time in arguably the most competitive stretches in gaming history, but it is also an experience that is plagued by shoddy design and glitches that would earn most games a critical panning. Skyrim is able to addict and infuriate, entice and repel; it represents everything that is wrong with the "release now, fix later" development model, yet manages to emerge smelling like roses. Skyrim is a difficult game to review, but a great one all the same. From the outset, Skyrim’s saviour is yours to mould. From a Sean Bean look-alike to a feline magician, you dictate everything from their fighting style to the shape of their eyebrows. However, no matter your cosmetic choices you will remain the Dragonborn: a prophesised slayer of dragons able to manipulate the Thuum - a deadly shout - and consume the souls of the a...

I was a little apprehensive going into the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection. My caution was born of past experiences with older, critically acclaimed titles that never quite lived up to my lofty expectations, played for the first time years after release (see Shenmue ). I had played neither of Fumito Ueda’s games when they were contemporary, and recall being only vaguely aware of Ico, and then quickly forgetting all about it. Shadow of the Colossus completely passed me by in 2006, arriving around the same time as I moved to Japan, where I was PS2-less for the best part of a year. It was EDGE magazine that came to the rescue in early 2009, with a list of the "100 best games to play today" which featured Ico and SoTC well inside the top 100. Reminded of Ico and introduced to SoTC, I dutifully went out and purchased Japanese copies of both games. I would manage around thirty minutes of each before I grew tired of the grainy visuals, as seen through my old com...

Call of Duty is a peculiar series. Each year it shifts millions of copies and is greeted with near unanimous critical praise, yet it also attracts a special kind of hatred from a vocal segment of the gaming community that consider it a microcosm of everything that is wrong with modern gaming.  If Call of Duty is to be an acquired taste, then with Modern Warfare 3 it's one that is more refined than ever. The single player campaign is exactly what we have come to expect from Modern Warfare: a relatively short rollercoaster ride, punctuated by memorable set pieces. The narrative doesn’t quite reach the heights of the original Modern Warfare, but it succeeds in telling an engaging story which revisits familiar characters like Captain Price, Soap and villain extraordinaire Makarov. It’s fun controlling these violent men, but war is never glorified in this dark tale that focusses on a bleak near-future, where life is cheap and atrocities par for the course. There is a lot of jumping a...

Shadows of the Damned was a Suda 51 project from the outset. The CEO of Grasshopper Entertainment, and the man behind Killer 7 and No More Heroes, Suda was eventually joined by Shinji Mikami - the creator of Resident Evil, Devil May Cry and more recently Vanquish - in the role of creative producer. The final, high-profile member to join the team was composer Akira Yamaoka, best known for his work on the Silent Hill series. Despite its noteworthy contributors, Shadows of the Damned is a Suda 51 game through and through, and your opinion of his previous work is likely to dictate whether or not you pick it up. However, Shadows of the Damned can be enjoyed by any gamer, irrelevant of their fondness for OTT violence, juvenile humour and gobshite protagonists. Garcia Hotspur is our foul-mouthed, demon hunting lead, who is in search of his girlfriend who has been kidnapped by the demon lord, Flemming. We guide Garcia and his ex-demon side-kick Johnson - a skul...

  This review can also be found at criticalgamer , where you will find an abundance of video game news, reviews, previews and articles.   WWE All Stars attempts something a bit different with the wrestling genre and the WWE license. An arcade style brawler, it pits a roster of past stars against some of today’s finest and simplifies the more realistic move-sets of games like Smackdown vs. Raw. Concerns such as body proportions and gravity have been discarded, resulting in impossibly beefed-up wrestlers leaping ten feet in the air and tossing each other around like rag-dolls.    WWE All Stars is as colourful as its roster of wrestlers, which includes past greats such as Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior and Stone Cold as well as current day stars like John Cena and Randy Orton. There are a handful of unlockable characters and more are promised as DLC. Both sides of the roster are well balanced, with no discernible advantage in choosing the legends over the current...

Yakuza 4 can be rather overwhelming, even for the most adventurous of gamers. From the outset you are invited to explore every nook and cranny of Kamurocho - a city filled to the brim with sub-stories, side-missions and mini games which can easily keep you occupied for the best part of 100 hours. It is a distinctive game, one that will delight the converted but fail to win-over critics of the series thus far. Picking up the story one year after the events of Yakuza 3, we return to Kamurocho, Tokyo for the vast majority of the game. Kazuma Kiryu, reformed Yakuza and hero to many is back to cracking skulls and protecting his kin, only this time he is joined by three other playable protagonists. In a series that has stuck religiously to formula this ranks as quite the change, and it is one for the better. Shun Akiyama is the well-meaning loan shark and man about town who, despite not being Yakuza, has plenty of dealings with the mafia. Taiga Saejima is the imposing gangs...