Tag Archives: PlayStation 4

MoeGamer Awards 2019

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Unexpectedly Meaningful Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards I’ve devised in collaboration with the community to celebrate the sorts of things that never get celebrated in end-of-year roundups! Find out more here — and feel free to leave a suggestion on that post if you have any good ideas! We’re fast running out of time for this year, but leave a suggestion anyway and I might use it next year!

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You know how sometimes you see a game and you think “that looks like fun, but it probably doesn’t have a whole lot to say”?

I should know better than to think like this by this point, as I’ve had my expectations subverted more often than not over the course of the last decade or so, but nevertheless, it still happens; I still sometimes end up surprised by getting both exactly what I expected and a whole bunch of other stuff besides.

Today’s award celebrates a specific game that I took a long time to get around to actually playing… but I’m really glad I finally did.

And the winner is…

Continue reading The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Unexpectedly Meaningful Award →

Videos, Warriors All-Stars, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: Hungry Hungry Horo – Warriors All-Stars #10

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Darius is hungry, and the only cure for that is, of course, the cooking of a local village that has recently been raided by bandits.

Naturally, they want their food retrieving first, so the Warriors gladly agree to help out, secure in the knowledge that doing so will allow them to add another thousand or two kills to their respective counts… but they didn’t count on the presence of a mysterious and very hungry young woman.

Horo, of Toukiden fame, is ready for action… and dinner. Can our heroes keep up with her?

Videos, Warriors All-Stars, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: Barking Up the Wrong Tree – Warriors All-Stars #9

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Oh dear, Darius. You don’t know about Arnice, do you? That would explain why you’re so relentlessly pursuing her, but I can assure you, you are most definitely… you know.

Yes, this time around we encounter Darius from Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time, a representative of the Demon Clan and an altogether mysterious individual. While everyone’s favourite lesbian vampire half-demon could be argued to be leading him on a bit with her girlish eyelash-fluttering and flushed cheeks, the sooner our mysterious hero understands his situation, the better.

Oh, also we fight some bad guys a bit. Hack and slash and hack and slash!

MoeGamer Awards 2019

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Best Dicking Around Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards I’ve devised in collaboration with the community to celebrate the sorts of things that never get celebrated in end-of-year roundups! Find out more here — and feel free to leave a suggestion on that post if you have any good ideas!

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Structured fun is all very well and good. Everyone likes completing stages, scoring points, levelling up, that sort of thing. But sometimes all you want to do is do your own thing, making use of the tools a game provides without any real “goal” in mind.

This sort of activity is typically associated with “open world” games — and indeed that kind of game is very good for just dicking around, seeing how the different systems interact with one another and working out exactly how much chaos you are able to cause within the constraints of the game’s ostensible “rules”.

But it’s not just open world games that are good at this. Today’s award, suggested by riobravo79, celebrates a game in which it’s fun — and relaxing — to just dick around and see what happens. And not a bandit encampment in sight.

And the winner is…

Continue reading The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Best Dicking Around Award →

Videos, Warriors All-Stars, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: Princess of Traps – Warriors All-Stars #7

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I’m clearly going to have to investigate the Deception series at some point. I mean, I was planning on doing so anyway, but this game is just reminding me of quite how behind I am!

In today’s missions, Rio and company spend a bit of time clearing out some smaller skirmishes before taking aim for their next potential ally: a rather dour young woman named Millennia, who seems a little too keen to get started on the whole “killing” thing. No-one told her we don’t kill people in Warriors games; we K.O. them!

Millennia hails from Kagero: Deception II, which is where the series really got rolling and established itself after the first-person first installment in the series. She has… a certain amount of stress to get out of her system, it seems — but as we all know, there’s no better place to do that than in a Warriors game!

Videos, Warriors All-Stars, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: The Mysterious Book – Warriors All-Stars #6

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Rio’s back in the leading role today as we take on a series of new challenges, culminating in the recruitment of Plachta from Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book.

Today’s missions provide a good example of how Warriors All-Stars’ quick, snappy pace and structure give it a markedly different feel from Warriors Orochi. Rather than long, drawn-out battles all the time, you can enjoy plenty of smaller-scale challenges to acquire specific goodies for your team, then take on more substantial missions when you want to advance the plot or unlock new characters.

I’m really enjoying this game so far… and there’s a lot of game to explore here, so I think we’re going to be here a while!

Cover Games, Shade

Bullet Girls Phantasia: A Tale of Three Worlds

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shadeheader-3172714This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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One of the things I find endlessly fascinating about Japanese popular media is how it blends disparate, seemingly incompatible things together to produce something altogether unique.

That’s certainly the case with Shade’s Bullet Girls Phantasia, a game which pops elements of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, military action, fantasy fiction and Norse mythology into a big bowl and then whizzes it all around into a fine, blended paste.

It works. It really works. So let’s take a closer look at what you can expect from the narrative, themes and characterisation of this unusual game.

Continue reading Bullet Girls Phantasia: A Tale of Three Worlds →

Videos, Warriors All-Stars, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: Her Name is Rio – Warriors All-Stars #5

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Arnice takes a back seat this time around as Rio decides to lead the party into battle.

We do our best to fulfil some of Kasumi’s unreasonable demands before moving on to face Laegrinna, star of Deception IV: Blood Ties. She does not want to go down without a rather sneaky fight, but surely the invincible Girl Power team of Rio, Arnice, Christophorous, Kasumi and Honoka will prevail, non?

Warriors All-Stars is, so far, doing a very good job of paying homage to its incredibly diverse source material through a combination of its playable characters, stages, music and overall game design. We’re in this for the long haul, I think!

Cover Games, Shade

Bullet Girls Phantasia: The Art of Erotica

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shadeheader-3172714This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
<< First | < Previous | Next > | Latest >>

There’s a distinct lack of nuance in a lot of modern video game analysis when it comes to anything even the slightest bit erotic, and, as we’ve previously discussed, this is something we could all stand to be a bit better at.

With this in mind, Bullet Girls Phantasia seems like an ideal candidate to look at closely from this angle: without tittering childishly, without knowing nudge-nudge-wink-winks, and, of course, without censure or shame for either what it is doing or the people who might enjoy it.

The reason for this is that Bullet Girls Phantasia represents a solid example of erotica done right: it stops short of being outright explicit pornography — partly for stylistic reasons and partly out of necessity due to its host platforms — but anyone playing it will be left in little doubt that a particular, specific side of the game is very much intended to provoke an intense sexual reaction in anyone engaging with it fully. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of there. So let’s explore it further!

Continue reading Bullet Girls Phantasia: The Art of Erotica →

Videos, Warriors All-Stars, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: Who’s That Girl – Warriors All-Stars #4

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You know sometimes how you see someone and you know that you know them, but you just can’t remember their name? Yeah, that.

How could I forget dear old Honoka, though? She’s become quite a high-profile mascot for the Dead or Alive series in various crossover collaborations — besides Warriors All-Stars she also had a guest appearance in Senran Kagura — but her name just fell right on out of my head for some reason.

Oh well. At least I remember her name once she’s said it a few times… and once she’s joined Arnice’s brigade of brave warriors!