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1 week ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
Breath of the Wild was the swansong for Wii U and the killer app for the Switch. Being made on withered hardware for its day, it still managed to stress the next generation Nintendo console at the time. Its Ghibli-inspired art style will keep it looking timeless, but there was always a sense that it could look and run better. On original hardware, Breath of the Wild ran mostly stable at 30 frames per second at 900p while docked, and 720p while in portable mode.
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2 weeks ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
Video games used to live and die by “scrimblo” or mascot-like characters. They’ve always been around, but Sonic the goddamn Hedgehog was when mascots exploded. In the 1990s, there was no escape from the mascot craze. Every other game coming out had some cartoony animal or creature with attitude designed to cash in on the marketability of the appeal. When gaming began transitioning to 3D graphics and players got older and tastes evolved, there were fewer scrimblo games.
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2 weeks ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
When Mario Kart 64 came out, it was a game-changer for Nintendo. It’s still one of the best games of its time, and gamers today can play it together and still have a lot of fun. When I played it, I was blown away by the expansive 3D maps. While they were severely limited and you couldn’t go off course, the “implied bigness” captured my imagination. The Royal Raceway course in Mario Kart 64 was especially captivating for its scope and how it felt like one big lost level from Super Mario 64.
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3 weeks ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
Despite the insane popularity of Oblivion and Skyrim, one would think there would be more imitators on the market. For decades, if gamers wanted similar experiences, their only other options were the Fallout games. The fact is that these kinds of massive open-world RPGs are not easy to make, and even the best examples come with some baggage due to their immense scope.
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3 weeks ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
Many RPGs have mediocre gameplay but are carried by an excellently told story. Sometimes it’s the opposite, with a dull story carried by compelling gameplay. While it’s always preferable to play an RPG that balances both perfectly, sometimes you gotta take what you can get these days since classic turn-based JRPGs are a rarity. These days, JRPG maniacs can’t always depend on the usual suspects to deliver the goods consistently and seek out indies.
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4 weeks ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
If you’re going into Death end re;Quest Code Z without playing Death end re;Quest 2 or the first game, prepare to be hopelessly lost and confused. These are games known for dark, psychological horror elements, graphic death scenes, and a meta-narrative blending virtual and real-world stakes. The first two games alternate between turn-based RPG combat, emphasizing knockback, and visual novel segments where player choices can lead to story progression or grisly bad endings.
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1 month ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
Ever play Grand Theft Auto 2 and wish you could do more damage? Everyone has. Running around and shooting up the streets is fun, but the real joy is running over pedestrians and smashing through obstacles in blazing glory. It may suck to die and respawn and frantically look for another fast car for ten minutes, but the adrenaline rush was transcendental, bordering on mystical, yet not enough. Something Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row can only go so far with their levels of destruction.
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1 month ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
For a while, it looked as if Mercury Steam would only be known for their mediocre Castlevania reboot trilogy until they got the keys to Metroid and did an okay-ish Return of Samus remake and the superb Metroid Dread. Coming off of Dread has set expectations high, and the big question is whether it was a fluke. Mercury Steam may have had a breakthrough with a 2D metroidvania, but their bread and butter has always been barbaric 3D hack and slash.
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2 months ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion came out in 2006 on the Xbox 360 (and later on PlayStation 3), it was a landmark title for Western RPGs. Morrowind was already a cult hit, but limitations of the original Xbox made it more of an interesting curiosity than anything that could be a mainstream success. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss may have done it first in 1992, but Oblivion is the one that got the normies’ attention.
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2 months ago | 
nichegamer.com | Fingal Belmont
Benoît Sokal was a comic artist turned video game designer best known for his distinctive storytelling and atmospheric world-building. Across all his works, his stories often center on physical and emotional journeys through mysterious, forgotten, or remote lands with dreamlike qualities. His first game, Amerzone was wrought with a sense of faded grandeur, focusing on a journalist’s journey to follow the footsteps of a prior explorer and uncover a mythical flying bird with no legs.
