When you want to be able to read our thorough breakdown on a game because you just can’t stand our voices, this is the place to go! Rich (and sometimes the other guys) get into the meat of a game and give you a recommendation on whether or not it’s worth purchasing.
Do you know what's cool? JRPGs, also Sailor Moon, also Shakspeare. Do you know who else is having these thoughts? The team at Zeboyd games. This Way Madness Lies is a mashup that I’m pretty sure no one asked for that fires on all cylinders to make an old-school RPG that is truly unique, entertaining, and incredibly engaging.
I think it was this 2015 article from Kotaku that first got me interested in The Legend of Heroes series. Jason Schreier sold it as an RPG for people who like to read, and it piqued my interest with that. Boy did it deliver, as a PSP game with a simple, but compelling story and a battle system that was easy at first, but layered depth as the game went on. It was not a perfect game, and it can lean into some problematic tropes as anime-style things can often do, but this was a great jumping-off point to a series that is now spanning I think 11 games in a series of separate, but connected story arcs.
There was a point in gaming history when many games didn’t take themselves too seriously. Instead of opting for top-tier graphics or inventive mechanics, there was a greater focus on creativity and humor within video gaming. When Zombies Ate My Neighbors came out, a fun co-op experience that was reverent to horror movies of yore was released to the world. Its sequel, Ghoul Patrol, was released a year later. A collection of the two games was released midway through last year. While there is certainly some fun to be had in reminiscing on what games were, the collection released in 2021 showed what limitations the genre had at the time and how far the medium has come.
I have no idea why I started to play this game. I think I wanted to justify the insane amount of games I have on my Anbernic 351M, and play something that wasn’t just one of the greats. So I found Spawn on my list of GameBoy Color games and decided to give that a whirl. After playing this title, I can say...I made a mistake and wasted a lot of my time. This is a bad game, and really there is no reason for anyone to play this.
