ZCW Reviews

  Deja Vu...-An Inertial Drift Review The arcade racing genre of games has become one of my interest ever since I went back and gave ridge racer type 4 a shot a year or so ago. Ever since, I've intermittently played new offerings that have cropped up (mainly because the ridge racer series is completely in the water at this point) regardless of popularity. When Inertial Drift came up in my steam recommendations a few days ago, I knew I had to give it a shot and look into its offerings (not to mention the title being an homage to Initial D, an anime I particularly enjoy).  Arcade Drifting with a Different Approach In most of these games, controls are fairly simple. You have a gas button with a corresponding brake button, sometimes even a separate handbrake button, and you use the left stick to steer in the event you are using a traditional controller.  For Inertial Drift, however, you still have access to those brake and gas buttons, but you instead use both sticks to fully...

  Shockingly Deep-An ElecHead Review In another example of games I initially found out about early in development and forgot about till their release, ElecHead launched just a month ago! From what I can remember back from what I saw on twitter, the game had a very neat main mechanic that I was interested in seeing delved into into. So just how does solo developer Nama Takahashi (alongside the help of composer Tsuyomi) handle this interesting mechanic? Losing your head...playfully! In ElecHead you traverse various platforming puzzles as every platform you step on lights up as long as you have your battery pack head on tight. In addition to this, you can also throw your head in three directions to light up a far away platform and remain without a charge yourself (you can only be in this form for 10 seconds). Its extremely simple, and yet there are so many nifty uses of the mechanic that it felt like Takahashi found every single way possible to deepen it.  Just take a look at the...

  Rolling All Over Again-A Katamari Damacy Reroll Review The Katamari Series is one I'm quick to reference when I enjoy the relaxing, trance-like aspects of certain titles. Surprisingly, outside of a small indie title in Donut Country which wasn't necessarily similar, I have yet to see the formula of Katamari looked at outside of the original series, so let's take a look at what made these games so special.  Simply Outstanding In Katamari Damacy you just...roll stuff up. This is the unbreakable foundation that these games build upon. As something I've harped on a million times, I have always preferred when game designers use the environment to create complex situations instead of adding more mechanics. As such, Katamari is entirely revolved around (1) its unique control scheme and (2) its diverse environments. For example, while the main mechanics don't shift, your objectives do-look at the levels revolving around specific star signs, where you are tasked to collect...

  Revitalizing the Formula-A Mario Kart Double Dash Retrospective Having grown up in my formative years with the Game Boy Advance and, more heavily, the DS, Mario Kart was a series I enjoyed more on the mobile Nintendo consoles than mainstays growing up. In that time, I had tried out double dash on a friend's GameCube and didn't quite enjoy it-I was somewhere around 9-12 at the time-so I wanted to return to the game years later and see what I had dismissed earlier.  In all honesty, I can't believe I had waited so long to give it a revisit. Not only is double dash the most unique take Nintendo ever took on the franchise as a whole, it is also-in my opinion-the most enjoyable and depth filled entry they produced. It is almost astounding Nintendo failed to return to this formula, and instead has kept it safe ever since (something you don't see in series where taking chances failed them, like Paper Mario). So what exactly made this entry so enjoyable? Depth of Driving... Th...