One of the more consistent dilemmas that surface in whatever long-running property you feverishly consume is the problem of staving off becoming stale. For every book series that has tens of entries from the likes of James Patterson or Janet Evanovich, for every tired comparison to the MCU and its plethora of shows and movies,
If there’s anything to be said about game preservation and the prevalence of digital media, Scott Pilgrim generally tends to be at the top of most people’s minds. Honestly, who could blame them? It dropped in conjunction with the release of the 2010 film, only to be delisted from the PlayStation Store and XBox Live
I have some fond memories of playing the wide range of beat-’em-up games available in the arcades in the late 1980s and early 90s. Some of my favorites of the arcade era being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, X-Men and The Simpsons. These all boiled down to being incredibly simple; just walk from
After 26 years (!!) without any entry in the series, you would think that fans of the long-forgotten Streets of Rage/Bare Knuckle franchise would have to resort to relishing in the glory of the Genesis/Mega Drive heydey with the first three titles with little hope for any sequel. While the hope was kept alive that
In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by three separate but equally important groups: the slow-moving grappler who bodyslams street punks, the quicker but weaker character who is almost always a woman, and the average character who does a little bit of everything competently. That would be Law & Order: Belt-Scrolling Brawler Unit,
Ahh, Koei Tecmo’s Warriors franchise. Ever since Hyrule Warriors (my first Warriors game) I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for you. While you don’t change a whole lot from one iteration to the next (most of the time), you never fail to deliver a great way to kill a few hours bashing through
When we think about a remaster of our favorite games, what comes to mind is probably the obvious – enhanced graphics and quality of life fixes. The reality is, without a total remake, there isn’t much more you can do to make a story more impactful, characters feel more alive, or the world feel more
Let’s be honest here. Were it not for writing for Gamer Escape, I probably wouldn’t have fell as hard for the Yakuza franchise as hard as I did after I started off with 0 and had the chance to review Kiwami afterwards. Mind you, it’s obviously not my first exposure to open world games or
It’s no secret that mobile games are a massive industry. It seems like we can’t go a day without some news story talking about how Fate Grand Order or Fire Emblem Heroes has broken some new user count or profit record. Putting aside the money-making-machine aspect of many of them, just the fact that they’re
By now, it goes without saying how eager SEGA is to bring the story of the Dragon of Dojima to the masses as much as possible on PS4. With the release of Yakuza Remastered Collection, players can now play the entirety of the story of Kazuma Kiryu from his humble beginnings in ’80s Kamurocho to
At first glance, Dusk Diver looks like a pretty decent anime beat-em-up featuring a female protagonist. This is incorrect. It is a beat-em-up, but it actually comes from Taiwan, with one of its big call-outs being that it has accurately modeled a popular shopping section of Taipei down to even replicating some of the businesses
Dig if you will, a technological flashback. Arcades were the gold standard for graphical fidelity, game prices were extremely erratic, and swaths of beat ’em ups lined these same arcades during the heydey of this genre. Personally, I dipped my toes into titles like Streets of Rage, X-Men Arcade, and The Simpsons to name a
Team Fortress 2 as a side-scrolling, beat-em-up arcade game. Yes, it looks awesome. And yes, it’s authentic. The title will be available for free on Steam (of course) by the end of the summer, or at least that’s the goal. It certainly has the feel of Double Dragon mixed with TMNT/X-Men style arcade classics. Great
