As my first pickup of the 2015 spring anime season, Shokugeki no Soma (also known as Food Wars) made me scratch my head right off the bat. I tend to only go for anime that is mostly about sexualized aspects when there’s something extra to go with the creepy bullshit (i.e. Kill la Kill). However, since food anime and manga are quite relevant to my interests (i.e. Cooking Master Boy), I had to look into this title. (more…)
It’s easy enough to imagine life as a roguelike game as they both share some commonalities, especially when it comes to random encounters. As with everyday life, you can have streaks of good or bad luck, depending on the conditions and how prepared you are for all eventualities. I’ve come to a realization that perhaps those who play roguelikes and other games that feature encounters and events that call for careful decision-making and may lead to either reward or undesired consequence. (more…)
Square Enix just released the announcement trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution that is not a mobile or browser game (because to hell with Deus Ex: The Fall). As you can see from this website’s design (as of this posting), I quite like the look and feel of DX:HR. However, it was far from perfect as it had some “broken” parts that got in the way of immersion. These are my thoughts on what can be improved through the new game. (more…)
This website is admittedly not even a tiny blip on the blogging radar (or at least not yet), but I’ve been finding ways to get there somehow. Perhaps being able to post daily content is the best solution to my current problems, but I’ve also encountered another problem recently that’s quite annoying on its own. It’s not bad enough that the website is trying to get more views, but also that the views from real people and not from referrer spam. The latter has become quite a pain in the neck for many websites lately, especially for the smaller ones like this one. (more…)
This is an anime series that I had to review due to its premise, although it did take a bit of brain-twisting to get a finger on its strengths and weaknesses. Shirobako seemed to be on a mission to show the animation industry in a more honest light, and it seems that P.A. Works succeeded there. It may have started slow and hard to follow, but it did finish strong. If you’re fascinated with art or animation and have some patience, you won’t regret watching this series. (more…)
Talk about being late to the party. However, I actually took quite a bit of time to sort my thoughts out on what I think about the short film in order to come up with this post. Perhaps it was good that I posted this only now as Henshincon — a celebration of the tokusatsu genre that had been a part of Filipino childhoods during the 90s — gets underway. I myself grew up with Power Rangers and tokusatsu shows imported from Japan (and translated into Filipino), so it seems apt for me to start off a tribute of sorts by looking into someone else’s tribute. (more…)
It’s rare for me to await the release of a game right on day one; I’ve only done that for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- in recent years, as far as I can remember. This is one of the titles I was looking forward to this year because I love the first game, so I had to cover this game every step of the way. Therefore, here are my impressions of Hotline Miami 2 after playing it for around 3 hours or so. (more…)
With Valentine’s Day having passed by and Fifty Shades of Grey becoming this growing mutated mass made of leather whips and rope that has droves of women going to movie theaters and book stores to consume what looks more like a sad example of adult writing, I thought of recommending something more human and heartfelt that still involved whips and rope as part of intimate activities (whatever makes you happy). One of the great things about Sunstone is that you don’t need to shelf out hard-earned money for a ticket — it’s free. (more…)
In The Co-Optional Podcast Episode 56, the guest Babylonian (formerly of Rev3Games) discussed the relationship between skill and luck when Hearthstone was brought up, which piqued my interest in the subject. It touched upon the competitive aspects of games, whether tabletop or digital. This, along with having gone on a bit of a tirade about Five Nights at Freddy’s in a Facebook thread, pushed me to look deeper into this subject. (more…)
Most of the games I ever play on mobile are either strategy or puzzle games in various forms. For the longest time, SpellTower was the only game on my phone, and I also liked Rymdkapsel. When I bought a new phone, it looked like I wasn’t installing a game on it anymore. But when I heard of Puzzle Forge 2 in a podcast, I had to try it out. From what I’ve seen, my time was certainly not wasted. (more…)
Exactly a year ago, I posted the first part of a commentary on an old article I did for a gaming website (CheatMasters) called The Progression of the Western RPG. After all this time, I now continue my commentary with some new insight, which is perhaps my main excuse other than procrastination for taking so long to post this. (more…)
Commentary on the Progression of Western RPGs – Part 3
As I worked to conclude this series that may or may not have been worth writing about, I did start thinking that this had been dragged on for too long. Perhaps I was thinking that while western RPGs were worth talking about at length, the things I’ve mentioned in this series aren’t exactly new information and may even be full of holes. I do admit to those doubts, but I still have to finish what I started. (more…)