Tag Archives: Third-Person Shooter

Quantum Theory: Tower Toppler

The longer I run this site, the more it becomes clear that immediate, embargoed, day-one reviews of video games haven’t been doing a lot of titles justice for a very long time now — right back to the PlayStation 2 era at the very least, and probably beyond.

The trouble is, thanks to the Metacritic-fuelled world we live in, if a game scores poorly in those initial reviews, in most cases it is doomed to languish in obscurity, even if there are interesting things to say about it. There are occasional outliers — the wonderful Nier is probably the best example — but for every game that manages to claw its way out of the darkness to get some degree of recognition, there are myriad others destined to be forgotten.

Which brings us to Quantum Theory, a third-person shooter developed by the people behind the Project Zero series. Almost universally panned by Western reviewers on its original release in 2010, this is not a game that anyone looks back on particularly fondly — or at all, in most cases. But I thought it sounded interesting. And you know what? It is. Let’s take a closer look.

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short;Play: Quantum Theory

What might it look like if the creative minds behind the masterful Project Zero series of ghost-hunting survival horror games made a third-person shooter?

A lot like Quantum Theory, as it happens! Released in 2010 as the work of Project Zero creator Makoto Shibata and Koei Tecmo’s Team Tachyon development department, Quantum Theory was not well received by press or public alike. Checking it out ten years later, though, it turns out there’s a lot of interesting — and visually arresting — stuff to explore in this game.

So let’s do that in the video below! Don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more when you’re done.

short;Play: The Club

The dearly departed Bizarre Creations were best known for their racing games — Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast, the Project Gotham series on Xbox platforms and the wonderful game that would, sadly, turn out to be their death-knell: Blur.

But throughout the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, they actually fiddled around with quite a few different styles of game. They made a James Bond game, for one — you better believe that will show up at some point in the near future — as well as the delightful “techno-classical” rhythm game Boom Boom Rocket.

Today we’re taking a look at The Club, a Sega-published game that combines gritty third-person shooter action with arcadey scoring and racing mechanics; a modern-day (well, late 2000s) Outtrigger, in many ways. Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Bullet Girls Phantasia: Enlisting for Duty

shadeheader-3172714This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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When I started this Cover Game feature, I figured that these two games by Shade would be fairly similar to one another.

After all, they’re both third-person shooters featuring cute girls and a certain amount of fanservice to enjoy. Taking games with what I assumed to be a similar “feel” to them as a guideline, I estimated that they’d both be reasonably short affairs that I could romp through quickly.

After 45 hours of pursuing all of Gun Gun Pixies’ endings, I realised that I might have been wrong. After starting the rather more mechanics-centric Bullet Girls Phantasia, I confirmed that yes, indeed, I was very wrong. And, as such, because I want to do a proper job of this… it’s going to take a few articles to do the latter justice. So let’s begin today with a look at how it plays.

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Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash: No Shirt, No Shoes, All Shinobi Shooting

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It’s understandable that some people approached Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash with a certain amount of trepidation prior to its initial release.

After all, here was a series that was supposedly about ninja girls fighting an unseen battle against the otherworldly youma forces, and yet their next game seemed to have them all clad in bikinis having water pistol fights with one another. Sure, the fanservice angle had always been part of the series… but surely, surely we were going a bit off-piste now, right?

Two things. Firstly: Bon Appétit would like a word about going “off-piste”. And secondly: Peach Beach Splash is absolutely a worthy sequel to Estival Versus that sets the series up for what will hopefully be an apocalyptic, climactic finale. In the meantime, though, yes, water guns.

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Daemon x Machina: Exploring the Prototype Missions

I’m no expert on mech games — or indeed the mecha “genre” in general — but Daemon x Machina had me intrigued from the moment Nintendo announced it.

And it’s certainly a game that is worthy of your attention, regardless of whether or not you have an interest in giant robots blowing things up; the sheer amount of pedigree attached to the project makes it immensely intriguing.

With that in mind, then, I decided to give the Prototype Missions demo that launched on Valentine’s Day a go. Read on for some impressions!

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Switch Essentials: Splatoon 2 (Part 1 – Single Player)

Splatoon was not only a great game, it represented Nintendo successfully giving a rather pointed middle finger to everyone who thought it relied too much on its old franchises.

Despite being on the Wii U, one of Nintendo’s least successful pieces of hardware, the game went on to perform extremely well worldwide, proving popular in both its native Japan and the rest of the world. By the end of December 2017, it had sold around 4.91 million copies — a pretty healthy proportion of the console’s entire user base, which stood at a little under 14 million as of December 2016. That means approximately one in every three Wii U owners had a copy.

A new generation of hardware was an ideal opportunity to explore the franchise further. And with the Switch performing much better in terms of sales than its predecessor pretty much from launch onwards, more people than ever before would be able to enjoy the experience of being a kid, then a squid, then a kid, then…

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Wii U Essentials: Splatoon

Multiplayer online shooters are notorious for being incredibly popular, but not particularly welcoming to newcomers.

Doubtless most of you reading have experienced at least one occasion where, while attempting to learn a new game, you were berated for being a “noob”, or utterly dominated by an experienced player taking advantage of the “fresh meat” on the map. With determination, you can push beyond this, of course, but it’s not something that everybody finds particularly palatable or fun.

Which is why Splatoon is such a wonderful piece of game design from Nintendo. By shifting the focus away from attacking other players directly while simultaneously removing the most common ways for people to be jerks to one another — i.e. voice and text chat — it created one of the most accessible, enjoyable takes on the multiplayer shooter ever created, and a game that even people who typically dislike multiplayer shooters can enjoy.

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