Onelargeprawn
Detective Pikachu for Nintendo 3DS piqued my interest when I first saw the trailer, mostly because it was unlike anything else in the Pokémon universe of games. A Pikachu with a grumpy, old-man personality? A Pikachu that’s a bit of a lech? It’s weird enough to prompt a closer look at the whodunit game from developer Creatures Inc. Will we solve the case? I grab my magnifying glass and don deerstalker hat to find out.
I had to go back and check, but it turns out that Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy is the first Layton game we’ve ever reviewed, despite there being a veritable slew of Layton games in existence. Okay, not a slew…more like…six, or seven if you include this one. Nine if you include spin-offs. And one movie. I’ve played Layton games before, but this one takes things in a slightly different direction, so let’s grab our magnifying glasses and get sleuthing for this review!
Captain Olimar is at it again, gathering Pikmin and ordering them about like some sort of space general in the latest game in the Pikmin series, Hey! Pikmin. And the Pikmin, being Pikmin, and jumping at his every whistle and command. To top it all off, they’re now flitting between the two screens of your 3DS, so that’s…double the trouble? Quadruple the trouble? I can’t keep proper count anymore, but let’s just dive into this review and hope we don’t lose any more of the Pikmin as we meander our way down to the inevitable score at the bottom of the page.
Among the Innocent: A Stricken Tale is a new game by a new studio, Zero Degrees Games. The game is a first-person puzzle-horror-ish hybrid, and takes place in the Free State, South Africa back in 2001, before cellphones became common enough to live everyone’s back pocket. Let’s head down to the farm and see what this review holds for us.
Puzzle fans, have I got a game for you! We’re going to be reviewing Picross 3D Round 2 for the Nintendo 3DS today, so get your thinking caps on and let’s get going!
Level 22 from Moving Player Games is a stealth game with a twist. No saving the world here. No Earth-shattering meteors. Not even a mighty megaweapon to disable. Just Gary. And he’s late to work. Hide under the cardboard box with us as we review this unusual game of trying to get to the desk before anyone notices we’re gone.
The newest game in the Legend of Zelda series, subtitled Tri-Force Heroes, is the eighteenth game in the series since its inception 29 years ago. Link has come a long way since that first adventure (well, they’re all different incarnations of Link, really), and now we have three Link characters all playing cooperatively together in the same adventure. Does it work well? I don my green Hylian garb, grab my bow, bombs, boomerangs, (Ed: And my axe!) and master sword, and head out into the Drablands to see what’s up.
Submerged is a PS4 game from the same team of developers and artists who worked on Bioshock (but not the same studio). The game’s claim to fame is that you can go about it at your own pace. I paddle about a sunken city and climb some buildings to bring you this review.
We all know the story of Little Red Riding Hood and how she went flopping through the forest woods on an errand for her grandma who lived in a house made of gingerbread. On the way, she met a wolf who had just killed and consumed three large hams, and was looking for a dessert with a strawberry-caped topping. And then Red Riding Hood picks up a stray Kalashnikov rifle and goes ape. I think that’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Anyhow, there’s a puzzle game about it by South African indie devs, RetroEpic. Without the Kalashnikov, of course. And this time, Red doesn’t know precisely which cottage is her Grandma’s. And off we go, a skipping through the woods.
Platform puzzle games are a darling of the Indie development community for a good reason, among them being the nostalgia effect. They’re difficult to do well, however, and an improperly-implemented puzzle mechanic can come over as boring, fiddly, or even ostentatious. Does Nihilumbra (“nihil” from the latin word for “nothing”, and “umbra” from the latin word for “shadow”. Don’t say I never teach you anything) for the Wii U suffer any of these problems or does it bring a spot of colour to a dark world? Let’s find out.