Slime Rancher this adorable, feel-good, sunshine-y atmosphere that likens the experience of playing it to receiving a warm hug. And possibly the most notable contributor of all to this feeling is that there’s next to no violent confrontation in the entire game.
And after iteratively improving itself over the course of the following decade, Monster Hunter has turned out to be the seven-million-players-and-counting hot juggernaut of this year’s first quarter. That’s something that honestly never would have happened if the game’s designers weren’t going back to the drawing board with each release, weeding out the problem points for players, and expanding their scope in include better approaches and new tools. And that, in its way, is amusingly on-brand for the series.
During its relatively brief existence, Amazon’s Anime Strike “channel” (now rolled back into the rest of their Prime Video offerings) had a knack for consistently snatching up the license for a poignant, would-be sleeper-hit anime of each season. , Inuyashiki Last Hero gave all of the joint Netflix-Marvel projects a run for their money, if not frequently one-upping them.
Asian pop is catchier than the measles. To be fair, you could say that about just about any variety of popular music. But there’s something about Asian pop music in particular that feels like the strong elements of the medium have been reverse-engineered in a way that new compositions can have as wide an appeal as possible, making it stand out from almost anything else in the medium.
Keijo!!!!!!!! gives off a very strong impression from the word “go”. If only that same front lasted throughout the entire series.
Kino’s Journey is one of those shows that, despite appreciating it very much, I watched just a sampling of and only finished up some months later. But coming back felt in every way like I never missed a beat, which is exactly the right effect for this sort of show.
But to be quite honest, I barely even recalled the premise underlining I Am Setsuna by the time I finally played it on the Switch. But that was enough to get me in the door.
Some of the most enduring games - and some of my personal favorites – are those that set their sights on a single idea and build the rest of their design around that one nugget. Blue Reflection is frustratingly close to following in that vein.
This Thing Is Neat 