It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve played a good ol’ straightforward first-person shooter. The last one I reviewed is certainly a distant memory: that honour goes to Mothergunship in 2019, which was forgettable then and definitely hasn’t improved with time. It’s strange too, because shooters in general are a genre I tend to enjoy; I spent uncountable hours playing various Halo games in single and multiplayer as a teenager, moved on to Warframe in university, and have more modern releases like Robocop: Rogue City and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun sitting in my Steam backlog. Maybe it’s just that recently I’ve been more invested in narrative-centric (see: the several visual novels I’ve covered in the last year) and cozy games (Mika and the Witch’s Mountain and Tiny Garden both jump to mind) over the traditionally “shoot first, ask questions later” experiences of many shooters. Then again, perhaps that expectation has been clouding my judgement all this time, because while Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion is thoroughly a game about shooting stuff (I think it’s illegal to put “shoot” in your title twice and not be), it surprised me with how much of a story it actually wanted to tell.
Tag: Hand-drawn
Battle Chef Brigade Review
The popularity of cooking shows is something that I completely understand. Despite previous discussions around my dislike of cooking, even I can appreciate the artistry that goes into prepping an expertly-crafted dish under a strict time crunch, or the schadenfreude of watching everything fall to pieces. So what would happen if you took one of TV’s most popular genres and made it so that — rather than simply collecting ingredients from a kitchen — competitors had to go out into the wilds and gather the freshest ingredients themselves? That’s a question that Battle Chef Brigade seeks to answer, and the result is a damn fine meal of a game.
A Little to the Left Review
“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” is the unspoken motto of A Little to the Left. It’s a game full of slots that have been perfectly sized for the right object to fit in, be it a battery or a button. Colour-coordinated bookshelves and leaves with perfectly matching holes await in what is surely an organization nerd’s dream. Every level requires you to place objects so they slot together in a satisfying way, whether it’s by carefully sorting them or creating symmetrical designs. Yet it’s also a game about letting go of that desire for perfection and accepting a bit of chaos, in this case taking the form of a mischievous cat who loves to mess with your meticulous patterns. It’s an interesting dichotomy, one which saw me cursing the wretched feline to high heaven at the outset, but then gradually warming up to it by the end. It’s an odd puzzler, in that it causes reflection as much on the solution being undone as it does on the steps taken to complete it. I think it’s for the best, though, as it kept me consistently engaged and enjoying my time with it from start to finish.
Minami Lane Review
It’s a great time of year for cozy games. With the weather getting colder (though where I am it’s still unseasonably warm) and the days shorter, there’s nothing quite like curling up with a welcoming game. Well, maybe not literally; it’s hard to curl up at a computer desk without getting into spine-mangling poses. Be that as it may, jumping into Minami Lane at this time of year turned out to be an excellent choice on my part. It’s a brief experience, but one which I absorbed in bite-sized portions, making it seem longer than it actually was. And for my money, if you like the idea of a city-builder game but get easily overwhelmed, it’s well worth a look.
Olive's Game Garden 