Ever dream about building an army of unicorns? Me neither. But if you did, or if the concept of doing just that sounds interesting to you, the Unstable Unicorns card game is here to save the day! Players race against each other in order to be the first to complete their army, while also attacking other players in hopes of keeping them at bay. Beyond it’s silly concept and cute art, is it worth waging war in this rainbow battlefield?
From being the first fighting game to go mainstream, to being the franchise that brought the genre back from the dead in the late 2000s, to the cultural impact the franchise has had on society as a whole over the course of three decades, the impact that Street Fighter has had on the world is immense. To celebrate the franchise’s 30th anniversary, Capcom released this collection of 12 games that span every major iteration of the game from the original to 3rd Strike. Does this collection score the perfect victory?
Pioneered by Team Fortress 2 and popularized in the mainstream by Overwatch, the hero shooter is gaining momentum as a force in the gaming space. Unlike modern fare such as Call of Duty or Battlefield, these games place a heavy emphasis on teamwork, as specialized characters with pre-baked looks and personality are designed with distinct strengths and weaknesses. If you work as a team, you’re able to bring out the best in each member while hiding each other’s deficiencies. On top of that, games like Team Fortress and Overwatch have succeeded in making characters that people care about, even if they do little more than kill for sport within the context of their respective games.
Paladins is the latest game in the genre, available now on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch. Using Overwatch in particular as its foundation, it adds a MOBA-inspired upgrading mechanic that allows players to improve their character to their liking over the course of the match. On top of that, this one is free-to-play. Does this squad of medieval heroes have what it takes to give the futuristic frontrunners of Overwatch a run for their money?
Jaipur was a game that entered my radar very early on in my board gaming journey. However, time-and-time again I’d pass on it. In a classic case of judging a book by its cover, it was a game that didn’t appeal to me due to it being a game about merchants selling goods, which is a theme that failed to pique my interest. Years after the fact, I finally gave the game a chance to see what the hype was all about.
I missed Lumines in its 2004 heyday. While I have since grown up to embrace a platform-agnostic lifestyle, this game came out during a time when I was a fierce Nintendo loyalist and wanted nothing to do with anything associated with the PlayStation brand. So much so, that I actually got a PSP for free and sold it a few days later before even opening the box. Despite seeming to be a game right up my alley, this was caught squarely in the crosshairs of my overzealous fandom.
Fast forward to 2018 and Lumines finally makes its way to a Nintendo console, among other platforms to receive Lumines Remastered. Not to say that I wouldn’t have played it on something else, but the Switch seems like a great place to play this specific game due to its pick-up-and play nature and how well it could work as a portable experience. Does this blast from the past still shine in modern times?
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In this modern era of fighting games, the subject of accessibility has been one of the community’s hotly-debated topics. It’s no secret that the genre is impenetrable for most due to an inherently steep learning curve created by complex inputs, game design that greatly rewards skill and knowledge, and a seemingly endless wave of players locally and online that are ready to stomp newbies out until they give up. From masher-friendly auto combos in Dragonball FighterZ, to more lenient input timings in Street Fighter V, to the most extreme simplification of the genre in Divekick where each character only has 1 move, developers have and will continue to search for ways to bridge the skill gap without compromising what makes fighting games fun in the first place.
Combining a Neo Geo Pocket aesthetic with a two-button interface, simplified special move inputs, and a wallet-friendly price point, Pocket Rumble from Cardboard Robot Games is the genre’s latest attempt at accessibility. Does this game have what it takes to bring the joy of fighters to a larger audience?
Mario Tennis on the Nintendo 64 has proven to be a very difficult act to follow. Released in 2000, Nintendo found the sweet spot between simulation and arcade action that made that game a master-class title. To this day, if you play any of the Mario Tennis games released after this one in “Classic” or “Simple” mode, you’re essentially playing the same game that was conceived almost 20 years ago.
Later installments of the franchise would try really hard to make meaningful additions to its seemingly-iron-clad formula with little luck. Mario Power Tennis on the Gamecube undermined the skill-based action of the original with silly power shots and even sillier courts that were so cluttered with crap that it was hard to discern what was even happening. As for Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash – besides being an overall lackluster product – also failed to build on the core formula, as it simply made standard power shots more powerful through jumping and added a mega mushroom that essentially gave you power shots all the time.
It may have taken almost two decades to get here, but Nintendo has finally found a way to make Mario Tennis better.
Historically, my relationship with the BlazBlue franchise has been strained at best. Initially wowed by its visual splendor, its gameplay complexity was impenetrable to me. As they had done previously with the Guilty Gear franchise, they stacked character-specific mechanics on top of an already steep list of system-level mechanics onto BlazBlue, making for a game with an incredibly steep learning curve. Even now, as someone with almost a decade of serious fighting game experience under my belt, mainline BlazBlue is too much for me to handle.
When news of a BlazBlue tag-team spinoff arose, I didn’t bat an eyelid. Having been burned by the first two entries in the series, I wasn’t ready to try again. However, after having spent some time with the demo, I realized that this wasn’t the same type of BlazBlue game that didn’t work for me back then.
Inspired by Potugese ceramic tiles, Azul is an abstract strategy game in which players create decorative walls in order to gain the most points. As someone who can take issue with some of the more banal themes behind European-style board games, just hearing the concept for this one made my eyes roll into the back of my head. After having played a few times, the theme still doesn’t excite me at all, but the game sure is fun to play.
Somewhat overlooked in the hype created by the Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee reveals, Pokemon Quest was revealed and released on the eShop on the same night. As the latest spin-off game in the franchise, you venture off Tumblecube Island; a world where the land and its inhabitants exist in voxel-form. Based solely on the game’s free-to-play premise and quirky art direction, I was ready to outright dismiss this game without even giving it a shot. Many hours of gameplay later, and I’m glad I gave this a chance.
In Third Person 