Virtua Fighter 2 is one of those rare sequels that arrives carrying both a crown and a suspiciously heavy toolbox. It is not merely a fighting game sequel, it is a proof of concept wearing gloves: proof that polygonal fighters could move with grace instead of awkwardly clanking around like supermarket mannequins, proof that Sega […]
Virtua Fighter 2 (PC, 1997) – Review Read Post »
Wetrix is one of those games that looks, at first glance, like somebody took a very sensible puzzle premise, dropped it down a stairwell, and then watched it come up somehow smarter and more annoying than before. I mean that as praise. On the PC version I am focusing on here, Wetrix is not interested
Wetrix (PC, 1998) – Review Read Post »
X-Change, in its original 1997 PC form, is the sort of adult visual novel that arrives already carrying its own argument. It is not trying to be subtle, and it is not trying to be respectable. It is trying to make a very specific premise do as much heavy lifting as possible: a high school
X-Change (PC, 1997) – Review Read Post »
The PC version of X-Men: Children of the Atom is the sort of fighting game that arrives with its fists already clenched. It is a direct arcade translation of Capcom’s 1995 X-Men fighter, and that is both its great virtue and its main problem. Virtue, because Capcom was in one of those suspiciously efficient moods
X-Men: Children of the Atom (PC, 1997) – Review Read Post »
Is Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis bizarre or classic? It’s the type of classic that feels bizarre when you first touch it, like opening a pristine NES cartridge and finding a hand-annotated field manual inside. Underrated or overrated? By popcorn-shooter standards it’s perennially underrated; by the standards of people who can identify an A-10 silhouette at 200
Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (PC) – Review – The Cold War You Can Feel Read Post »