The Ramen Shop

Platinum Games are masters in creating unique, vibrant and exhilarating action games with many of their projects such as Nier Automata and Bayonetta being some of the best in the genre. Their games focus on intensive, stylish combat and Astral Chain not only delivers on that front but is also one of Platinum's most unique games to date with its dual-character gameplay. Astral Chain places you in the role of a detective in a special police task force known as "Neuron" and your goal is to protect the futuristic city known as "The Ark" from mysterious creatures known as Chimeras. Using the Astral Chain, you tie yourself together with different Chimeras of your own known as Legions and take control of yourself and your Legion simultaneously throughout the game. Astral Chain's presentation is gorgeous and the game is easily one of the best looking games on Nintendo Switch. The sci-fi anime art style is striking and while the game runs at 30 FPS, it does...

With Xenoblade Chronicles being one of my favorite games of all time, I am over the moon about the Definitive Edition coming to Switch next year. Not only is the game getting a major graphical facelift but new content will be coming to the game in the form of Bionis’s Shoulder which was a cut area that players found after data mining the game. I believe that we will be getting a lot more new content than just one area so here’s 10 of my hopes for additions and changes in Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. Event Viewer Many of the changes that I wish to see come from additions that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 implemented and this first hope is one of them. Event Viewer was added in a patch in Xenoblade 2 and it allowed players to rewatch any of the full-motion cutscenes from the story. The mode also lets players change the ti...

The Legend of Zelda is a series that has a dear place in my heart. One of my favorite aspects of the series is its phenomenal soundtracks; they are a large reason for me getting into music as a hobby and becoming a musician. Over the years I grew to love video game soundtracks and appreciate how they can be incorporated into the gameplay itself. This made me fall in love with 2015’s Crypt of the Necrodancer, an indie rogue-like where everything from enemy movement to player action had to be in time with the beat of the music. It became one of my favorite indie games of all time so imagine my surprise when I learned that the developers behind it, Brace Yourself Games, were not only creating a sequel but said sequel would also be a cross-over Zelda game. After playing through Cadence of Hyrule I can firmly say that it is both a monumental moment in indie developer history as well as an extremely enjoyable time for rhythm game fans and Zelda fans alike. ...

Video game adaptation films have notoriously been less than stellar throughout history. Because of that, Detective Pikachu as a concept is something that shouldn’t have worked on paper. Basing the first live-action Pokèmon movie around a spin-off game where Pikachu talks with a human instead of a traditional story around battling with other trainers is a huge creative dare. Despite this, Detective Pikachu makes the idea work more than well and proves to be an absolute delight for Pokèmon fans. Detective Pikachu is the perfect representation of real-world Pokèmon society. There are so many instances of Pokèmon interacting with the world in unique ways and the CG of the movie really helps sell the realistic versions of Pokèmon while staying true to each creature’s original design. The VFX doesn’t always hit the mark with the set pieces, with one scene, in particular, being noticeably lackluster but the Pokèmon themselves always look fantastic. Unlike ...