kotaro uchikoshi

Review | World’s End Club – 12 Friends at the End of The World (startmenu Preview)

/ Michael Beckwith / Leave a comment

Back in 2017, a group of Spike Chunsoft employees left to form their own company, Too Kyo Games. Among its founding members were Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, the respective creators of the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series. Given the similarities between both their series, it’s honestly surprising that it took until 2020 for the two to actually work on a project together. Released last year as an early access Apple Arcade title, World’s End Club is the two’s first proper collaboration, with Uchikoshi as director and writer and Kodaka as creative director.

The full game was recently released on the Nintendo Switch and expectations were certainly high for it. Danganronpa and Zero Escape are well-known and beloved by their fans for their complex mysteries, larger than life characters, and off-the-wall humour, so many assumed that World’s End Club would follow in their footsteps. And while in some ways it does, it is a very different beast compared to anything in either series.

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Ten of My Favourite Games of the Decade

/ Michael Beckwith / Leave a comment

I know I’m late in saying this but, damn, this really is a new decade, huh? I never even considered it until it was pointed out to me. A lot has happened in the last ten years, and after looking at some good-looking games that are coming in the future, I’d like to reminisce about all the awesome games from the past. And, boy, there were a lot.

So, since everyone else has done it and I apparently have as much originality as a live-action Disney remake, here’s a list of some of my all-time favourite games to have been released throughout the 2010s – one from each year (I’m using the European release dates BTW). Continue reading →

Zero Time Dilemma – It All Began With a Snail

/ Michael Beckwith / Leave a comment

zero-time-dilemma

In another timeline, this game does not exist. Due to the poor sales of Virtue’s Last Reward (which I wrote a review of previously), the third entry in the Zero Escape series was pretty much dead in the water. The odds of it ever being made were virtually nonexistent. Fortunately, this is not that timeline and thanks to outcry and support from a dedicated fan-base, director Kotaro Uchikoshi was able to bring this project to life and properly conclude the series.

This was one of my most anticipated games of 2016, but I held off playing it due to hearing rumours of a re-release of the first two games being made. Those rumours were true but I wasn’t able to actually play it until late 2017 when the Vita version finally got released in the EU. With those games under my belt, I immediately went into Zero Time Dilemma with high expectations and plenty of concerns. While reviews for the game were mostly positive, there were still a tonne of fans that outright hated it, even claiming it retroactively ruins the entire series. And after playing it… well, it left enough of an impression to make me write this review.

So is Zero Time Dilemma the worthy conclusion it was hyped up to be? Or would it have been best if it never existed at all? Continue reading →