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MoeGamer

MoeGamer

The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today. It's pronounced "Mo-ay-gay-mer"

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24d agoLast active

Big Walk: social gaming done right

I have long been resistant to so-called "friendslop" -- games that are designed to primarily or even exclusively be played in cooperation with other people. There are numerous reasons for this. Chief among them is, quite simply, the fact that I have never really felt like I have many (or any) people to play them...

big walkcooperative game

Truxton Extreme: a classic brought right up to date

The original Truxton is an all-time classic of the shoot 'em up genre. Released in 1988 by Toaplan, it's a notoriously challenging example of the vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, and widely beloved in both its arcade and home console incarnations. Many of the original members of Toaplan have, in more recent years, reformed under...

arcade gamesmasahiro yuge

Terranigma: humanity’s second chance

An interesting question that some games, particularly RPGs, occasionally ask is whether or not the world you're trying to save is actually worth saving -- and perhaps by extension, if it's even possible to save it after it reaches a certain point of decay. Terranigma, the third entry (after Soul Blazer and Illusion of Time)...

Action RPGheaven and earth

Splatoon Raiders: thank cod it’s not a roguelike

I'm sure it was exceedingly tempting for the team behind Splatoon Raiders to make the game into a roguelike. After all, the very design of the game arguably lends itself particularly well to what we today understand as "the roguelike formula"... even if that has, over the years, somewhat diverged from the original meaning of...

Action RPGlooter shooter

Illusion of Time: darkness and light

After 1992's excellent Soul Blazer, Quintet followed up with a spiritual successor a year later. Illusion of Time, known as Illusion of Gaia in North America and Gaia Gensouki in Japan, was not a direct sequel to Soul Blazer, but rather a game that tackled similar themes, albeit from a different perspective. This time around,...

action adventureAction RPG

Soul Blazer: all things bright and beautiful

I'm not a religious man, but I do have some enduring memories of my time attending a Church of England primary school. One of those was, presumably as part of our government-mandated Daily Collective Act of Worship, hearing stories of what God, Jesus and friends had been getting up to in Olden Times, but presented...

Playing Final Fantasy XI for the story: Part 1 – The Zilart Saga

I have been meaning to play through Final Fantasy XI's story for literal decades at this point. Ever since I first tried it, shortly after its original English release, I was fascinated by this game, but never managed to make much progress through it. On its original launch, this was down to how deliberately slow...

chains of promathiaffxi

Thank You For Your Application: a depressing, poignant look at a future that isn’t far off

Few phenomena in video games are more curious than the advent of the "work simulator" -- games where you do a job that is rather tedious, and which you would probably complain about if you were doing in real life. However, I can't deny that there's something quite comforting in games like this -- and...

icelemontea studioindie games

I am furious about the state of my hobby

This week may well go down in history as one of the bleakest the world of video games has ever seen, with the biggest news being the impending record layoffs at Microsoft, and Sony announcing that it is both closing the digital PS3 and Vita stores and stopping the production of physical discs. These are...

business idiotscapitalism

Star Fox 2026: a refreshing throwback

Star Fox is back! Again. And this time, people, for the most part, actually seem to like it. This is more than can be said for the past attempt to bring it back -- which, for the record, I still feel was vastly underrated and completely misunderstood. The most common criticism that has been going...

3d shoot 'em upLylat Wars

You just don’t fuckin’ need generative AI, man

Just recently, Sega announced that it would be bringing back the beloved Crazy Taxi series with a new entry: Crazy Taxi World Tour. Hooray! Then they went and put a somewhat-ambiguous generative AI disclosure on their Steam page. Boo! I'm going to be absolutely clear and completely fuckin' up-front here: I will not be buying...

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