Tag Archives: Hack And Slash

Blades & Battles Review: Hack-and-Slash Like It’s 1991

Posted on by

Every couple of months, an indie developer drops a game that begs one simple question: Do you miss feeding quarters into arcade cabinets at a pizza parlor while your fingers stick to the buttons?

QUByte Interactive clearly does.

Their latest release, Blades & Battles, is an unabashed love letter to the sword-and-sorcery brawlers of the early ’90s—think Capcom’s Knights of the Round collided directly with Sega’s Golden Axe. It trades modern open-world bloat for a straightforward 2.5D side-scrolling beat ’em up wrapped in chunky pixel art, heavy metal energy, and Arthurian folklore.

I fired it up on Xbox Series X, roped in a buddy for some couch co-op, and spent an evening hacking through Morgana’s monster hordes. Here is how it holds up.

Continue reading →

I Played Mexican Ninja on Xbox, and It’s Wonderfully Ridiculous

Posted on by

Every once in a while, a game surfaces on the Xbox Store with a title so absurd that your finger hits the store listing almost purely out of curiosity.

Enter Mexican Ninja.

Developed by Madbricks and published by Amber, this Xbox indie title makes zero effort to be subtle or self-serious. It’s an over-the-top, 2.5D roguelike beat ’em up where you slice through a futuristic syndicate dubbed the “Narkuzas” across the neon-drenched streets of Nuevo Tokyo.

If that pitch sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon brainstorm fueled by espresso and grindhouse cinema, that’s because it basically is.

Continue reading →

Suda51’s Romeo is a Dead Man: A Complete Gameplay and Performance Review

Posted on by

If you’ve ever played a Grasshopper Manufacture game, you know the drill: expect the unexpected, prepare for a lot of blood, and don’t try too hard to make sense of the plot. Romeo is a Dead Man, the latest brainchild of the legendary Goichi “Suda51” Suda, is finally here on Xbox Series X|S, and it is exactly the kind of beautiful, “bonkers” chaos fans have been waiting for.

After spending a dozen hours slicing through space-time fugitives, here is my deep dive into why this might be the most “Suda” game since No More Heroes.

Continue reading →