2019-03-08 17:04
There’s a temptation among game enthusiasts to judge all games within a greater context, stacking them against other titles of similar genres in order to determine whether they succeed… Read More
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chrono cross retrospective
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chrono cross
unicorn
ulfrstorr boss fight
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stalker trials
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Killa Penguin is devoted to game reviews, from old Super Nintendo games to current-gen, graphic-card-melting powerhouses.
2019-03-06 18:58
Eternity: The Last Unicorn is a delightfully challenging game, but there are a handful of occasions where a confluence of circumstances causes this brutality to become a bad thing. Boss figh… Read More
2019-03-05 23:30
It would be disingenuous to say that Eternity: The Last Unicorn is exactly what I expected it to be considering how many of its inspirations and design choices caught me off-guard within the… Read More
2019-03-04 19:13
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince isn’t just another title in the well-received Trine franchise, but also a return to form after Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power took the series from its tr… Read More
2019-03-02 22:37
Much like when we obtained access to Korcha’s boat in Another World, getting the boat in Home World opens up a number of opportunities for wandering around and discovering things on an… Read More
2019-03-01 18:05
The Nintendo Switch didn’t have a whole lot of games available when it first came out, meaning early adopters were a captive audience with little choice but to delve into indie selecti… Read More
2019-02-28 18:21
There’s something really special about this part of Chrono Cross, because while it gets pretty crazy, that craziness serves the underlying goal of making areas that were previously saf… Read More
2019-02-27 18:51
I’ll admit to being a little surprised when I loaded up Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden for the first time in months and wasn’t prompted to go online to activate it; every time th… Read More
2019-02-26 21:39
Overcome‘s store page describes it as an extremely difficult platformer that serves to express the developer’s experience with cancer and heartbreak. Personally, I was drawn to i… Read More
2019-02-25 18:34
One downside of the Let’s Play format is that the context of any header image that I put up is destined to be filled in eventually, whereas it’d be more amusing to leave the imag… Read More
2019-02-24 20:59
It’s been awhile since I’ve had the time to revisit a previously reviewed game to see how it’s been improved through patching (provided that it’s actually received a… Read More
2019-02-23 17:37
Normally, this is the part of the game where I’d start bulldozing my way through Chrono Cross‘ story without a second thought. It’s no wonder that I continually found mysel… Read More
2019-02-22 18:45
There are a handful of things about Rending Sky that set off some alarm bells in my mind. For one thing, the developer might as well not exist as far the internet is concerned; trying to fin… Read More
2019-02-21 18:12
Some things about this Hydra Marsh part of Chrono Cross are incredibly familiar (such as the soul-crushing difficulty spike), but my discomfort with the idea of potentially destroying an ent… Read More
2019-02-20 20:08
I hadn’t heard of Eternity: The Last Unicorn before today, but there’s something about it that feels immediately familiar. Part of that no doubt comes down to my experience with… Read More
2019-02-19 23:27
Part of the reason why I started this Chrono Cross retrospective (beyond refreshing my memory of it) was that I was having trouble getting my hands on review keys for new games during Januar… Read More
2019-02-18 22:21
Back before Wargroove was released, there was a lot of talk about how it combined elements from the Fire Emblem and Advance Wars series, and that caught my attention since I’ve finishe… Read More
2019-02-17 00:06
Degrees of Separation is a charming puzzle-platformer, though that charm occasionally gives way to devilishly challenging puzzles designed to prey on your expectations and force you to think… Read More
2019-02-15 03:39
It’s fitting that a game centered around the interplay between two characters would release on Valentine’s Day, but don’t take that as an indication that Degrees of Separat… Read More
2019-02-14 06:25
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was one of the first games I ever played, and it left an indelible mark; its story proved unexpectedly deep and abstract, while its gameplay was s… Read More
2019-02-13 22:43
The recent Nintendo Direct announced a handful of things such as Super Mario Maker 2 and a bunch of other generic titles like those Nintendo has coasted on for years, but I sat through the p… Read More
2019-02-13 04:28
Airheart – Tales of broken Wings is an eloquent, if confusingly capitalized, title belonging to one of the strangest twin-stick shooters I can recall experiencing. Originally released… Read More
2019-02-12 00:01
Arcade Spirits is a visual novel taking place in an alternate timeline where the video game crash of the 1980s never occurred, though its story is primarily centered around an aimless and un… Read More
2019-02-10 16:08
A lot of time is spent around games of varying types while running a site like this, spanning all genres and levels of quality, and yet even then it’s rare that a game can be said to b… Read More
2019-02-07 01:23
Robothorium (alternatively known as Robothorium: Sci-fi Dungeon Crawler) is a game that combines deceptively deep turn-based combat with randomized maps nonetheless balanced to inspire frequ… Read More
2019-02-05 18:49
Summer in Mara is a game inspired by Wind Waker and Stardew Valley that’s tentatively releasing in September 2019 for the PC, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch. Developed by Chibig, w… Read More
2019-02-05 02:46
Robothorium: Sci-fi Dungeon Crawler is an odd game to be sure, marrying surprisingly deep turn-based combat with random elements more reminiscent of a roguelike. There are also choices to be… Read More
2019-02-03 20:40
Euclidean Skies is a tricky puzzle game about spatial awareness that’s not dissimilar to a Rubik’s Cube, even once the levels eventually evolve past simple cubes and begin incorp… Read More
2019-02-02 20:55
I’ve played a sizable number of puzzle games of varying stripes, but never anything like the PC/Steam release of Euclidean Skies. According to its Steam page, this PC release is a diff… Read More
2019-02-01 19:42
Thea: The Awakening is a strangely compelling combination of 4X strategy, card game, and choose-your-own-adventure that first released on PC back in 2015. From there, it made its way to the… Read More
2019-01-31 00:38
My RSS feed reader has been bursting at the seams with game news lately, so I pored over some recent press releases in the hopes of finding something interesting and came across Windscape, w… Read More
2019-01-29 17:48
My original plan was to begin and end each part near one of Chrono Cross‘ save points, relying on in-game saves rather than emulator save states for a more authentic experience, but th… Read More
2019-01-27 22:18
Chrono Cross is easily one of my favorite games of all time, and yet I can’t remember the last time I played through it from the beginning; the last time I sat down and completed the e… Read More
2019-01-22 18:45
Some of FutureGrind‘s trickier achievements require finishing a track after fulfilling certain conditions, with the hardest three being Cool Your Jets, Motion Sickness, and Big Points… Read More
2019-01-22 17:00
FutureGrind is one of those special games that’s easy to learn, simple to control, but an absolute devil to master. The main goal is to balance landing your colored wheels on rails of… Read More
2019-01-22 17:00
FutureGrind can be a lot of fun, but the hacker levels that require finding and running into a hacking artifact placed along or near the track can become difficult to figure out toward the e… Read More
2019-01-22 17:00
It’s safe to say that I went a bit crazy with futuristic sports game FutureGrind, as I obsessed over obtaining the top score on all 30 tracks ahead of release. Historically, being the… Read More
2019-01-20 06:18
At first glance, She and the Light Bearer‘s unique blend of genres appears to be the most unique thing about it, but its devotion to an underlying mythology just vague and evocative en… Read More
2019-01-18 22:38
She and the Light Bearer is a visually stunning game that’s billed by its store page as a combination of point-and-click and music album, which intrigued me while raising some question… Read More
2019-01-18 07:54
Over the past year or so, I’ve made little secret of my adoration for indie adventure game Foxtail. If the recently released and endlessly charming second chapter is any indication, it… Read More
2019-01-16 04:13
It’s been around two years since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild first released, which is always an interesting time to come into massively hyped games as a new player, especia… Read More
2019-01-13 20:59
I have a habit of eventually becoming bored with Early Access games (likely because the sense that anything can change for the better or worse at any time imparts a bitter impermanence to th… Read More
2019-01-12 23:24
Based on video upload dates, I can say that I started Tales of Vesperia at some point prior to August 27th of 2018. Back then, the only Tales games I had any meaningful experience with were… Read More
2019-01-09 21:40
I’m rapidly closing in on my 400th game review, and yet I can’t recall ever going into depth about how I judge game music for said reviews, or what the difference is between good… Read More
2019-01-05 18:52
After two years, it’s natural to expect important details from a massively popular game to leak out into the public consciousness to the point where even non-players have a sense of th… Read More
2019-01-04 19:57
The excellent Hitman series can be roughly divided into three eras: the “classic” era that includes the janky first game and its three sequels (Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman:… Read More
2019-01-03 18:38
First things first: I’ve been on a well-deserved vacation over the past week or so due to a combination of the holidays, frustration over Google’s infuriatingly vague news standa… Read More
2018-12-28 06:45
GRIS seems like the result of some people playing Journey and wanting to do even better, and it is better in every single conceivable way. The problem is that Journey is a massively overrate… Read More
2018-12-25 07:53
First and foremost, a disclaimer: if you’re sensitive to flashing, don’t watch any of the embedded videos below. While HEVN has been improved in a handful of areas, its wonky phy… Read More
2018-12-24 03:38
I ended up missing updates for several games during the week I spent updating the site, and there’s really no better place to start catching up than Depth of Extinction. As a refresher… Read More
2018-12-22 22:41
Foxtail is an adventure game that won me over in a big way, and it received a teaser for its second chapter a couple days ago while I was working on upgrading the website. For anyone who&rsq&hell…Read More
2018-12-22 09:21
As you can probably see, Killa Penguin has gone through some pretty major changes. This site originally sported a distinct look that I settled on when starting out in March of 2012, but web… Read More
2018-12-15 06:09
It’s the season for making unnecessary and utterly subjective lists about 2018, and it’s always felt like a missed opportunity not getting in on that action being that a lot of w… Read More
2018-12-14 22:19
The most obvious addition to today’s Override: Mech City Brawl patch is Stardust, the new unicorn character you can play as if you have the season pass (or purchase the character indiv… Read More
2018-12-14 00:43
After playing Override: Mech City Brawl for a couple of hours, I was confident that I’d be able to unlock absolutely everything without much of an issue. Upon realizing that you can un… Read More
2018-12-13 22:52
I’ll occasionally be put on the spot to explain gaming to someone in real life, which never ceases to be an uncomfortable experience. The industry is simply too large to be viewed as a… Read More
2018-12-10 16:13
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden doesn’t exactly put its best foot forward, and it’s easy to become paralyzed by uncertainty about how things work and settle into a single play sty… Read More
2018-12-07 20:22
I’m going to be covering this chronologically, because while cutscenes and menus are occasionally prone to slowing down or locking up, it’s still technically possible to play Mut… Read More
2018-12-07 03:56
It’s been a rough few weeks as far as finding good games is concerned, but the aptly-named Override: Mech City Brawl is everything I hoped it’d be and more. Basically, this is a… Read More
2018-12-05 22:12
As I made my way through Incredible Mandy‘s last few levels, I was convinced of two things: first, that the underlying clunkiness of its gameplay was the single biggest obstacle to enj… Read More
2018-12-04 20:44
Right now I’m something like halfway into Incredible Mandy, and it’s fair to say that its visual style and music are uncommonly good. There’s just something inherently whim… Read More
2018-12-01 18:37
Valkyria Chronicles 4 isn’t a strategy game, or at least that’s the case on your first run through each level. Granted, it’s a game that you can apply strategy to for bette… Read More
2018-11-30 07:20
That’s not a typo in the title—every named character in Claude and Minerva’s ranks can be resurrected by spending money once you finish the game, including Raz (once you do… Read More
2018-11-29 07:19
Way back when I covered the prologue and chapter 1, I mentioned that setting Valkyria Chronicles 4 in the same time period as the original Valkyria Chronicles was a dumb move because it mean… Read More
2018-11-28 19:03
Chapter 15 of Valkyria Chronicles 4 consists of a whole lot of guessing, or at least that’s true of its second half; enemies are randomly immune to certain attacks, have weak points th… Read More
2018-11-27 07:28
Let’s be perfectly honest—most of the game up to this point has been filler designed to shepherd Claude’s Squad E onto a secret battleship where they cross paths with a mys… Read More
2018-11-26 03:02
Compared to chapter 10, chapters 11 and 12 of Valkyria Chronicles 4 are manna from heaven. That’s not to say that they’re anything resembling good, mind you, as one embraces the… Read More
2018-11-25 00:23
Chapter 10 is a mess where you’re not sure how the mission ends, invisible walls make it difficult to climb up to vantage points and hit enemies, snipers need to be stationed in exactl… Read More
2018-11-23 20:39
Most of us are familiar with time. You know, that emergent phenomenon that allows for things to play out as a linear sequence of events? It’s pretty much taken for granted by most peop… Read More
2018-11-22 22:47
Another chapter down, another unspoken rule shattered by Valkyria Chronicles 4‘s insatiable lust for gimmickry. This time around, it’s enemies’ inability to change the batt… Read More
2018-11-20 20:37
Valkyria Chronicles 4 released less than 2 months ago and is already receiving a 50% off sale, underlining just how abysmal the game’s sales were. I wouldn’t recommend it even at… Read More
2018-11-19 19:32
You’re not able to use the APC in chapter 5 of Valkyria Chronicles 4, but you haven’t been paying attention if you think that the map is carefully designed for strategy rather th… Read More
2018-11-18 21:22
Grenadiers are Valkyria Chronicles 4‘s notable addition to the franchise, and I despise them. I’ve seen it argued that they discourage sending your scouts to finish off levels in… Read More
2018-11-17 03:27
I still hate Valkyria Chronicles 4‘s story (though I’m beginning to warm up to one or two characters—not the main ones, sadly—because of their usefulness in combat)… Read More
2018-11-15 02:40
I didn’t make any secret of the fact that Of Gods and Men: The Daybreak Empire hit all of the right strategy-game notes for me, nor did I dance around some of the unfortunate bugs and… Read More
2018-11-14 03:19
It’s safe to say at this point that Valkyria Chronicles 4 was a disappointment, managing to sell marginally more copies than the abysmal Valkyria Revolution. Personally, I found the ch… Read More
2018-11-12 20:05
TSIOQUE‘s store page lists several inspirations such as Dragon’s Lair and Heart of Darkness, but I continually found myself reminded of 1996’s Fable (that is, the adventure… Read More
2018-11-10 11:33
Of Gods and Men: The Daybreak Empire is basically Fire Emblem mixed with what King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame would look like if it had released on the Game Boy Advance, which is a fan… Read More
2018-11-08 17:59
Last time I talked about Noahmund, I mentioned that I was stuck on a reproducible softlock and beginning to come to the realization that this game would never become adequately playable. Des… Read More
2018-11-07 22:29
There’s nothing more exciting to me than coming across a turn-based strategy RPG, and I’ve been fortunate enough to stumble across several such games over the past few months, bu… Read More
2018-11-05 23:12
Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?! is the latest game in Daylight Studios’ Holy Potatoes management game franchise, with previous games sticking its anthropomorphic, pun-slinging spuds in a… Read More
2018-11-02 22:52
I first covered Galaxy Squad a month ago, and it had a lot of promise as an XCOM/FTL mix of strategy and randomness. It was also incredibly early in development, so I resolved to put it asid… Read More
2018-11-01 20:01
Soulcalibur VI is a game that succeeds and fails in many different ways, with problems appearing and disappearing depending on the mode you’re in, character you’re using, and pla… Read More
2018-10-29 21:46
Having covered several Soulcalibur games in the past, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was getting less done in Soulcalibur VI for how long it was taking. At first I chalked this up… Read More
2018-10-27 20:31
I was confident that my list of things that are horribly wrong with Soulcalibur VI‘s abysmal “Libra of Soul” campaign avoided leaving anything significant out, but it has a… Read More
2018-10-26 03:12
I have recent experience with Soulcalibur Legends and can attest to it being the worst thing to ever happen to the series, so it’s truly saying something that Soulcalibur VI‘s Li… Read More
2018-10-23 23:55
Party Hard 2 is an incredibly strange game full of pop culture references, tinyBuild cross-branding, and persistent police whose relentlessness puts the officers from the original Party Hard… Read More
2018-10-20 21:14
I was incredibly worried about Soulcalibur VI‘s state given its wonky multiplayer beta, and the early moments of the full release didn’t exactly fill me with confidence; the swit… Read More
2018-10-18 23:40
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey isn’t even close to being the worst game that I’ve ever played. It’s important to get that out of the way early because the sheer volume of c… Read More
2018-10-16 20:50
SaGa 3, or Final Fantasy Legend III as it was retitled in North America to capitalize on that series’ momentum, is one of those games from my childhood that left an indelible impressio… Read More
2018-10-14 13:43
When I last covered Finding Light, I mentioned that I was definitely going to finish it, but that declaration has been tested once or twice. Its enemies’ tendency to use status effects… Read More
2018-10-14 02:14
Awhile back, I got sent a key for procedurally-generated space aRPG Between the Stars‘ demo. It’s taken awhile for me to get around to it, mostly because it’s currently in… Read More
2018-10-12 00:15
Before, I was merely annoyed with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey‘s lack of inspiration and tendency to stretch itself out, but that’s since boiled over into full-blown loathing… Read More
2018-10-10 03:18
Writing about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is surprisingly difficult. Even finding some hyper-specific facet of the gameplay or story to focus isn’t a sure thing, and that boils down… Read More
2018-10-09 00:18
At this point, I’m mostly just playing through Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to see how bad it ends up becoming. Part of that has to do with reading unqualified praise for it from oth… Read More
2018-10-08 02:29
If Soul Calibur Legends‘ levels keep getting worse like this and mandating going through them with Siegfried alone, it’s very likely that I won’t make it to the end. This s… Read More
2018-10-07 06:06
After playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for several more hours (thanks to being hopelessly stuck in a room with a virtually impossible boss in Finding Light), I can definitively state t… Read More
2018-10-06 00:27
I really wanted to title this “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a game about cutting off The Witcher 3‘s face and wearing it as a mask,” but that’s long enough that… Read More
2018-10-04 21:25
I had a visceral reaction to Finding Light when it first caught my eye, immediately realizing how much it shared in common with Game Boy classic SaGa 3 (or as it was retitled in North Americ… Read More
2018-10-03 03:06
As a reminder, I found The Surge to be decently entertaining, or at least that was the case until the developer Deck13 patched out your ability to generate infinite energy and snipe enemies… Read More
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