It was a few days before I was set to hop on a plane to travel across the country to Boston to attend my first PAX East. My schedule was set, and I was ecstatic to check out all the…

If there was ever a movie I wished that I loved, it’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. So many elements that would’ve made a great Mario movie are here, but the movie’s pacing is all over the place, and the plot is incoherent. It’s also lacking proper resolutions to the different storylines, and the movie’s emotional thread falls apart repeatedly.

So here we are, on the dawn of the return of many people’s favorite suck ‘n’ slash franchise dating back 30 years ago and it’s… not looking good. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance has a lot in its way when it comes to enjoyment of this eternal gang war between the human Sarafans and vampires.

So Marvel MaXimum Collection is tough to review. In terms of price point and variation of games included, it’s solid. The collection includes six games with 13 variations spanning 8-bit systems (including handhelds), 1-bit systems, and the arcade. The collection…

At PAX East, I was given an opportunity to meet with the team at Seismic Squirrel to preview their debut title Aether & Iron ahead of launch and talk to the studio leads about what went into the making of their narrative-driven tactical RPG.

I was able to get about half an hour with Fractured Blooms, and came away quite impressed. I’m not typically the biggest farming sim gamer, but I am SmashPad’s resident horror guy, and the spooky vibes here were immaculate. From what I’ve played, the farming sim mechanics are as crucial to the game’s overall loop as the esoteric, psychological horror themes, and the blend of genres works well in a way I wasn’t expecting.

While it was also available to play on the show floor, the only offsite demo appointment I had during PAX East this year was to play Rain98, and it was more than deserving of it. It was a good thing I had time to chat with the game’s director, because boy, did I have questions! Luckily, the director of C#4R4CT3R, the indie studio responsible for developing the game, was there on-hand to chat after I completed the demo.

Good Story Guild returned to PAX East with a new demo for Cat Secretary, a game I’ve been highly anticipating since I first tried it last year. Cat Secretary is a cozy 3D job sim that has you working for a massive corporation, and it’s your duty to uncover the secrets work wouldn’t want the world to know while keeping everyone happy… but as a cat, of course.

During PAX East, I was given the opportunity to sit down and play through a demo of Grave Seasons and talk with Emmett Nahil, the game’s Narrative Director. While the demo was a bit shorter than I would have liked, I absolutely came away with positive impressions of this title ahead of its August release. Grave Seasons takes the tried and true relationship building and farming elements of the genre and adds a new layer of narrative-driven complexity to keep players invested in the world around them.

At its core, High Times is a visual novel where all you really have to do is make donuts for your customers. It definitely has vibes similar to Coffee Talk, but the main difference is Coffee Talk is really all about you playing your role as a café barista while listening to everything your clientele has to tell you. In High Times, your customers expect you to make them feel better with the donuts you serve them.

While I would stop short of saying you should go out and buy the $80 physical release for the Switch 2 right now if you don’t already own the game, there’s enough here to recommend paying $20 to get the DLC. While I would stop short of saying you should go out and buy the $80 physical release for the Switch 2 right now if you don’t already own the game, there’s enough here to recommend paying $20 to get the DLC.

PAX East never ceases to impress me with the sheer amount of indie titles on the show floor, and one of those that caught my attention was a dinosaur-themed Metroidvania called GNAW from Redstart Interactive. I was fortunate enough to play the demo for a half hour and talk with the developers about what compelled them to create this prehistoric adventure, and in the process, I was quickly taught how rusty I am with the genre.