The Playstation was great for gaming...for a time, but nowadays, I believe SONY is complicit in a declining games industry and whilst not quite as damaging as Microsoft over the years, has still pretty much ruined gaming.

The substories in the Yakuza or Like A Dragon series are always top-notch, but what happens when the top-notch gets another notch above it? You get Like A Dragon Ishin's substories! The best in the series and a dive into Japanese culture, dialects, cuisine and most importantly...VEGGIES!

The original Resident Evil 4 came at a time when "dumbing down video games" was at the forefront of the conversation and it turned out that the worst was yet to come. Resident Evil 4 went on to be a masterpiece, which let the player dictate the action. Yet, the remake has made several missteps already, involving yellow paint and intrusive UI elements. Modern games simply don't trust the player with that kind of power. Here's why I think it's a big deal.

In 2001 the original Xbox was released to the world and a turning point was reached for the entire gaming sphere. Competing fiercely with the previous year’s Playstation 2 and releasing almost simultaneously with Nintendo’s Gamecube, Microsoft had their work cut out for them, especially as the only American company to produce a major console since the Atari Jaguar in 1993. If you believe the old saying that “competition breeds innovation,” you might believe that Microsoft did the industry a massive favour and fuelled a golden age of gaming, echoing all the way to the present day...but I don’t believe in dumb sayings like that.

Remember the days of browsing ign or GameSpot for all the latest video game news? Or maybe read a well-written review of that new Kane and Lynch game you saw an advert for? Well, the only ads we get nowadays are for articles on gaming sites whose sole purpose is to show you even more ads.

The Silent Hill lore surrounding Pyramid Head and his inclusion in Homecoming is a contentious point for fans of the series. Can the concept of death of the author help us discern whether the lore is broken, or are the words of creature designer Masahiro Ito, that James is the only character that could see him, absolute? Here I try to objectively look at the mythology of both Homecoming and Silent Hill 2.

Everyone deserves a refund for Cyberpunk 2077, but not for its excessive bugs and glitches. Cyberpunk's biggest problem is the features promised by CD Projekt Red before its release, features that are not likely to be patched into the game, ever.

In a recent video, game journalist Laura Kate Dale criticized Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7) for including stereotypes of homeless people. Is representation & inclusivity something that Yakuza gets wrong or has there been a misunderstanding of this Japanese RPG and the artistic intent of its creators? Let's critique the critique.

As a retro gamer, I don't often cover modern games industry news but the recent death threats on CD Project Red for the delay of Cyberpunk 2077 have shocked me enough that I feel I had to give my opinion on it. My Retro Perspective.

The thing about deep turn based combat is, it’s just as much about preparing for battle as it is about the battles themselves and Final Fantasy VII provides a unique and expansive tool to do just that! We’re talking about the fantastic materia system.

Is Project Athia a real game? With everything that's happened with the Luminous Engine, Square Enix had given the impression that Luminous Productions was defunct, but conveniently, when it comes time for a round of announcements (SE's favourite thing to do) they are suddenly back in business after using the Unreal Engine for all their recent high profile games.

Unreal Engine running on the PS5: "look at the state-of-the-art next-generation graphics" we hear Epic Games say....Yeah, that's nice but can we have some fun games now please? This PS5 tech demo reveals once again that when it comes to gameplay, the big developers are still out of ideas.

#Gamergate has had a sudden resurgence, with people posting the same old crap they've been posting for years, then being berated by others for being irrelevant. But is Gamergate still relevant in 2020 and what role has it played in the history of The Retro Perspective?

Modding has become more and more relevant in the modern gaming industry and a strong modding scene for a game means that it essentially gets better and better as time goes on. Developers like Bethesda have, in the past, garnered incredible goodwill and fostered a passionate community by encouraging mods and making available a suite of tools to make it easier for almost anybody to tweak the game to their liking. So why on earth are most video game developers outright ignoring the modding scene?

My personal picks for The Retro Perspective's top 10 video game soundtracks of all time! Featuring video game composers you've definitely heard of and some you may not.

When you think of Nintendo, do you think of Mario, Zelda, Metroid or Donkey Kong? Perhaps you think of the notoriously bad games Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Dragon's Lair or Fester's Quest? I don't. I think of Mother, not my mother, but the game series which some of you might know as Earthbound. In fact, Earthbound is perhaps the only one of Nintendo's many games that has resonated with me and left a lasting effect, long after its completion.

Mainstream media is having a field day with the sudden popularity of online battle royale shooter Fortnite. Once again the debate over video game violence, addiction & its effects on children & their brains are being misconstrued by the BBC & ITV. Here we take a look at Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan.  

Square Enix announced a run of DLC characters for Final Fantasy Dissidia NT and as I'm a huge fan of the lore, writing and characters of the Final Fantasy series, I thought I'd give my opinion on the best characters we could possibly hope to purchase!

To be honest, I haven't played many video games released in 2017 but I have played a lot of great games! So here's a list of 10 video games that impressed or surprised me this year.

Kingdom Hearts, what a unique video game franchise. Despite only having two numbered games in the series so far, Kingdom Hearts has a mind boggling amount of entries across an equally mind boggling amount of platforms many of which are essential to understanding the overarching plot. Kingdom Hearts 2.8 is the latest piece of the puzzle and all of it is meant to contextualise and precede the highly anticipated Kingdom Hearts III.....It’s also a load of old bollocks!

‘Fair use’ law is the backbone of the vast majority of gaming focussed channels on YouTube, so it stands to reason that there have been a whole lot of videos explaining just what fair use is...but unfortunately, sometimes it’s really not fair use.

Here's a list of 5 great games that kept us on the edge of our seats right up until their bad endings. Some of them not just bad, but utterly terrible.

Mortal Kombat managed to weave an engaging story between its gameplay which was continued in all of NetherRealms preceding games, it is right that the developer should receive lots and lots of praise. However, as good as this improvement is within the genre, it’s still not good enough. Because if we look back at the most feature rich fighters of all time we find that NetherRealm’s formula is tiny in scope compared to some brilliant features and gameplay systems that seem to be taken for granted nowadays.

Tom joins me once again to enjoy some tasty member berries. This time we play Acclaim's South Park first person shooter from 1999. That's when games were great! Video game journalism was just as bad though....

I know, I know. Another article about sexism, I'm as tired of it as you are but having just seen Ride Along 2 I was struck by a wave of inspiration. I found it surprisingly relevant to many recent events in the video game industry regarding censorship and representation. It got me thinking just to what extent Video Games are scapegoated and vilified as the cultural representative of "offensive" violence and sexism, while the film and music industries can do whatever the hel they want with not even a squeak of protest from the majority of people.

Previously in the series we took a look at Resident Evil 4 & Resident Evil 5 but nothing could have prepared us for Capcom's descent in to the pure madness that is Resident Evil 6. For the very first time we play the game and give our thoughts on one of the worst games ever created. Everything from the animations & textures to the characters & inventory, we lay it all bare in this in depth review. Resident Evil 6 truly is one of the markers of the decline in quality of Japanese games and things only seem to be getting worse. Whether by creative bankruptcy, laziness or pure greed, this game series has fallen from a true icon of the gaming industry to a broken, zombie corpse, shell of its former self. At the very least Resident Evil 6 is in fact the scariest game of all time...scary how horrifyingly bad it is.

Demon's Crest, a Ghosts & Goblins spinoff and a a game literally everyone should play. Because in the age when indie platformers are being thrown out left, right and centre and a "retro aesthetic" is seen as an instant positive as these indies attempt to be throwbacks to a better era. It takes us a trip back to play an absolute masterpiece (Demon's Crest) to realise that not many of these modern games have actually lived up to their influences. But enough cynicism, let's chat about Demon's Crest for the SNES!

Full disclosure, I am a Sony fanboy in recovery. There was a time I believed that Sony could literally do no wrong when it came to the video game industry. Even when they released their defective first model of the PS3 for a ludicrous £600 and removed backwards compatibility for the models that weren't destined for the dreaded yellow light of death. Now I know, Sony isn't perfect...but their E3 2016 conference was so perfect and I'm about to explain why.

Last week, the internet had not really been talking much about Mighty No. 9. That is, until a really bad trailer for the game came out on Wednesday, 25th of May. The trailer was so bad, it currently stands at 2841 likes to 20831 dislikes on youtube and when the youtube community dislikes something...it's usually pretty bad.