Iconoclasts Review

On very rare occasions, every half-decade or so, when the planets and stars align, there comes a game that is so excellently done in its every aspect that it’s near-impossible to criticize.  These games are usually ones with fancy current-generation graphics by huge companies with the best voice actors and motion capture money can buy, such as the case with the recently-released Psychonauts 2, Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles.  Imagine how bizarre it is that this new game in the pantheon is a $20 2D indie game made by one man.  Call me an elitist, but I generally look over indie games because they run out of game too fast and don’t have the big expansive worlds or the Crispin Freeman like the big boys, yet here we are with Iconoclasts, a game that manages to reach the heights of its strongest peers.

Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace Board Game Review

Readers of this blog will remember I very much liked Steamforged Games’ Resident Evil 2 board game. I think it was very true to the license and I love all the little details it was crammed with while still being a fun board game in its own right. Since then I also got the Survival Horror Expansion, which adds even more detail and some PVP modes based on plot points only mentioned in files and flashbacks. Interestingly, those PVP modes play sort of like precursors to the multiplayer game Resident Evil: Resistance over a year before that game was made. I regretted missing its Kickstarter by a mere week.

I did not make that mistake again with their Devil May Cry board game, nor their RE3 one, for that matter. After several delays due to the pandemic, Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace and all its expansions came into my possession. Unfortunately, also due to the pandemic, I couldn’t find people to play it with to write this review sooner. It has a solo mode, but I don’t consider it a thorough review without knowing how it plays with others. Having now played with some others and by myself, I can confidently give my full thoughts.

But does it feature Dante from the Devil May Cry series?

The Wonderful World of King of Fighters Ports

The King of Fighters is my all-time favorite fighting game franchise hands down, but I’ve never been what some would call a purist. Some fans spend a fortune trying to get original Neogeo hardware to play games on, but I have always played pretty much anything but the original hardware unless I come across it at an arcade.  KOF 11 has a great PS2 port and 13 and 14 have solid multiplatform releases, as KOF 11 is when SNK really started upping their game in bonus content for home versions.  The games before 11, however, have been all over the place over the years, with many different ports that can give a player a noticeably different experience and range of content despite the core games remaining, be it in presentation or bonus features.

I very much want people to play all the KOF games that don’t make you want to ram a nail through your skull (i.e. not KOF 94 & 95) and there are so many different ways to get them now that it can be tricky to know which ones gives you your money’s worth and is the best way to play them.  For the sake of helping with such decisions, and for an interesting little look at the differences, I have written this little guide on a few of the different ports available for the KOF games before KOF 11.

The Fighting Game Character Shonen Otaku Awards

Characters are the lifeblood of a fighting game.  They are the means by which the players engross themselves in the game through their varying fighting styles and personalities as they clash in combat. From Mexican wrestlers to masked karatekas to flawed super soldiers, the guys you see in fighting games get wild.

Fighting game characters often shine in their own particular way.  Some are made to look cool first and foremost, some are meant to be the most fun to play with and others are made to be extremely difficult to use, but incredible in the right hands.  Over the years in the many many different fighting games I’ve played, I’ve identified some fighters that excel in certain ways that no other has ever matched.  To recognize those standouts, I’ve made this list of awards to celebrate the best of the best in fighting game history, the Shonen Otaku Awards!

The only criteria I have for these awards is that they cannot be from fighting games based on a license.

Shonen Otaku Plays Dead by Daylight