Beautiful, elegant, minimalist: those are the traits of Cipher Prime, makers of acclaimed puzzle games such as Auditorium. All of their works follows those three tenants, both in gameplay, visuals, and music. In Auditorium, you manipulated colored streams of sound that produce symphonic music once directed to corresponding canisters. A grey background and a few…
In the ten years the Ratchet & Clank series has been around for, developer Insomniac perfected its formula. With the series distilled to an exact science, where do they go next? How do they keep the series fresh? The answer: tower-defense. Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault is a multiplayer-centric entry in lieu of 2005’s…
High definition visuals are exactly what Okami needed. The original PlayStation 2 release was and is still gorgeous; time hasn’t harmed it in the slightest. But the move to current-gen consoles breathes new life into Okami. Developer Hexa Drive took an already strong foundation and fortified it to the point of flawlessness. Okami HD is easily the definitive version of Okami and one of…
A few months ago, I played Limbo, Playdead’s gloomy, award-winning platformer. It was going swell at first. Traversal was simple, the atmosphere was appropriately thick with tension and mystery, and the visuals were beautiful. Unfortunately, the game was riddled with nigh-unavoidable “gotcha!” deaths — seemingly scripted death sequences that can’t be dodged without prior knowledge…
Dustforce is about cleaning in the most stylish, productive way possible. As one of four acrobatic janitors, this seemingly simple concept transforms into an exercise of patience, skill, and frustration. It demands you learn the nuance of movement, the pin-point accuracy in timing button/key presses, the idiosyncrasies of each character. It’s a long, hard road, but…
