Author: John Linneman

Remember the days where you’d hear about an amazing new game, only available in Japan? And when we’d eagerly await news on a North American and European release? I’m trying to channel that kind of excitement into this piece about Ys X: Nordics – the latest entry in Falcom’s long running Ys franchise. Put…

With Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, UbiSoft has completely eschewed its typical open world formula, instead choosing to narrow its focus building a side-scrolling, exploration-driven platform game – and it might just by my favorite thing the publisher has released in the last ten years. The Lost Crown is not pushing cutting-edge visuals,…

As 2023 comes to a close, I think it’s fair to say that the fighting game genre is in a great spot. Capcom and NetherRealm both launched stellar new entries in their respective franchises this year, with Street Fighter 6 in particular righting the wrongs of the previous numbered entry. In January of 2024, Bandi-Namco…

This is Forza Motorsport vs Gran Turismo: The Revenge, as Turn 10 and Polyphony Digital’s latest works return to Digital Foundry for a proper face-off six years after our first comparison between the two racing franchises. With the power of new generation consoles and years of meticulous work behind them, Forza Motorsport (2023) and Gran…

Nestled deep in the heart of virtual Yokohama down an ordinary alleyway lies the Sasaki Game Center – a virtual playground celebrating Sega’s arcade heritage. The arcade has become a staple of Sega’s Like A Dragon series but with the latest series entry, we’ve reached a new milestone – Sega has finally, for the…

Virtual reality has come a long way since its resurgence in the last decade but two problems remain: image clarity and field of view. There’s always the feeling that you’re looking through a pair of binoculars, your view limited by the screens placed directly in front of your eyes. This is the problem the Pimax…

Arriving later on in the Super NES’s lifecycle in 1996, Super Mario RPG from Nintendo and Square found huge success – and while it went on to inspire games such as Paper Mario, this unique Mario role-playing experience remained sequestered away on Nintendo’s 16-bit hardware – until now. Super Mario RPG returns on Nintendo…

It’s interesting to see what Sonic Team and Arzest have come up with with Sonic Superstars – it’s a game that pays tribute to Sonic’s past while exploring new concepts along the way, but it’s also a title with some curious design choices and fascinating technical decisions. Today we’ll explore this Unity-powered platformer from both…

Marvel’s Spider-Man for PlayStation 5 lands pretty much exactly where we hoped it would. Insomniac Games has delivered another new game for the console that pushes back technological boundaries, which a denser, richer representation of New York City, expanded to include Brooklyn and Queens, while the core rendering itself features dramatic improvements in ray traced…

The original Super Mario games stand amongst the most important and influential video games ever created, but after the series shifted to the third dimension, Mario’s side-scrolling adventures never quite reached the same heights. Now, for the first time since 1995, at least in my opinion, the magic of 2D Mario lives again in Super…