Mineko’s Night Market is the latest in a long line of life-sim games that are becoming quite popular as a genre these days. These are games that focus on the player spending time in a relaxing, non-threatening environment where there is little or no violence, and the gameplay loop is intentionally kept simple enough to play at the end of a long day without much thought. After the success of Stardew Valley in 2016, we have seen quite a few such games, but Mineko’s Night Market does add a few twists to the formula, some of which are quite welcome, and some which slow down the experience quite a bit.
Author: A.K.H.
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Video Game Careers – Part 2
In the previous episode, we talked about how all the video game careers can be categorised into two buckets – selling games and playing games. In this video, we will talk about the second category, which is playing games.
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Jusant: Review
Jusant is a breath of fresh air in the crowded gaming calendar of 2023, and I mean this literally, because the game asks you to climb a tower and get lots of fresh air along the way.
Coming from the creators of the critically acclaimed Life is Strange franchise – Don’t Not Entertainment – this short climbing adventure provides a relaxing journey that borrows heavily from the indie-game formula, but still manages to leave its own mark.
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Video Game Careers – Part 1
This has actually been a bad year to consider pursuing a career in the video game industry, since a lot of companies have been laying off people throughout the year. This is not too surprising, because 2023 has been bad for tech companies of all kinds, and video games studios are essentially software companies. But this doesn’t mean that pursuing a career in this industry is a bad idea, because downtimes are common in all sectors.
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Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name – Review
Over the years I have tried many times to get myself to play a Yakuza game from start to end, and have always failed, because I simply didn’t connect with the core gameplay loop of watching a long cutscene and then getting into a fight, with some mini-games sprinkled on the side. The series, now called Like a Dragon to match the original Japanese name, has only been growing, with multiple games coming out in a short span of time. With The Man Who Erased His Name promising a shorter story and launching day one on game pass, it felt like the perfect time to give this series a try again, and this time, I finally got a good understanding of this franchise’s formula, and even appreciated it a bit.
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The Video Game Market
The video game market offers a wide variety of choice not often found in other entertainment media.
In this episode, let us take a look at how this market works, and the various options consumers have for spending their hard earned money.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III – Review
I don’t see the point of reviewing a game like Call of Duty Modern Warfare III at launch, for two reasons.
First, Call of Duty has fully embraced the live service business model, and whatever game we have at launch is not going to exist in the same form a few months later. Also, there are a lot of things missing from the game right now.
Second, the core audience of the Call of Duty games doesn’t really depend on reviews. At this point, it is an annual ritual for them to buy the latest game at launch, and begin their grind to rank up as soon as they can. So this review is going to be of no use to them whatsoever.
Still, because I made the mistake of buying this game at launch with the intention of reviewing it, let’s get this over with.
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The People Who Make the Games
One of the reasons video games are popular is that they allow you to escape the worries of the real world by transporting you into a virtual wonderland. But for that to be possible, someone must actually build the game in the real world.
In this episode, we will take a look at the people who make the games. In other words, these are the people who bring the games into the market. And like any other industry, a few corporations rule over most of the market, while a smaller group of companies and individuals do their best to offer alternate choices to players who are not happy with the mainstream options.
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Forza Motorsport: Review
Forza Motorsport comes at a time when its spin-off franchise Horizon has delivered back-to-back hits, and the people who play racing games casually are asking themselves, “Do I really want to play this more serious sim-racing game when I can have more fun in Horizon?”
As one of those racing casuals, I have found little to like in the new Forza Motorsport, and a lot to dislike, in the form of an annoying bug that has stopped me from completing the game’s career mode entirely. Let’s get into the details to see what’s happening with Forza Motorsport.
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The Core Elements of Video Games
What makes video games enjoyable to play? In the early days, it all came down to one word – FUN. Is the game fun to play, again and again? Even today, game designers ask this question each time they make a game, but nowadays, there are other ways to make a game enjoyable, even if it is not necessarily fun to play all the time.