Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was one of 2024’s best games, earning SmashPad’s #6 spot on our Top 10 Games of 2024. It originally released on the PlayStation 5, eventually seeing a PC release in January of last year. But this June, both Xbox and Nintendo gamers will get the opportunity to play the gargantuan Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy’s sophomore outing. I recently had the opportunity to test the Switch 2 version of Rebirth for about half an hour, and even chatted digitally with game director Naoki Hamaguchi about porting the game to Nintendo’s handheld hybrid console, the concessions made, and what we can expect in the future.

Over the years, I’ve caught glimpses of these small, round creatures with gentle eyes and every time I’ve thought to myself, “That’s a Moomin. I don’t know how I know this, but I do.” I wasn’t aware of the fact they had been around since the 1940’s. Or that were created as a form of escapism and fear during World War 2 for Finnish author and painter, Tove Jansson. While playing Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, I felt like it was finally time to learn about the history and lore behind the Moomin’s. Now, after doing so, every heart warming emotion I felt playing this makes so much more sense. This review will be spoiler free so you can still experience this cozy game with fresh eyes. 

What is Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream? To me, it’s the experience of watching the man of my Mii’s dreams go back and forth on whether he’s going to ask them out. My Tomodachi Life is about the adventures of a giant praying mantis bonding with his roommates over their shared love of night terrors. It’s about watching a man in a hamster suit scream about golf clubs at the ocean. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is whatever you want it to be.

While it may be Falcom’s current longest-running series, the history of the Ys’ series is cloudy at best. Thought of by many to be a return to form for the series, “Ys IV” was actually made up of two games; there was Ys IV: Mask of the Sun for the Super Famicom and The Dawn of Ys for the PC Engine. Both games were sort of combined into one and remade into what later became Ys: Memories of Celceta, which came out on the Vita in 2013 followed by later releases on the PS4 and PC. Now, under the Ys Memoire label, the game is finally available on the Switch in the form of Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta.

itman is a decade old and successful, but not many studios have really done much with what makes it great. The dense, immersive sandbox environment made for such an amazing comedic stealth game with a ton of content. Nobody did much with it… at least, not until Snap & Grab from the fun indie developer No Goblin.

Those who know me on a personal level know that I’m really proud of my Filipino roots. I spent over a decade helping develop and lead youth programs geared toward Filipino-Americans and eventually parlayed that into a job with Ayala Land, one of the biggest and most respected real estate developers in the Philippines before I eventually landed in the gaming industry. That said, Jollibee is something my family helps itself to more than occasionally.

And then there’s Final Fantasy.

I was made aware of Titanium Court when a colleague posted a link to the trailer earlier this year. It was a most intriguing presentation, one which extolled the myriad reasons why no one should even consider playing the game. Thus, as I sit in my home office ruminating over my final verdict for this most unique of releases, it seems only proper to also evaluate the claims made in the video and verify their validity.

GDC was an eventual five whole days of nothing but video games and sometimes it feels like I’m still recovering. As we were gearing up for the week a special surprise hit our inboxes and Xbox was kind enough to invite us to their own preview event in San Francisco to play several “ID@Xbox” demos. One of those games I got to play was Screenbound, a neat platformer that had me multitasking like I never had before.

They say that food is a universal love language, and that’s a statement taken in different directions in Dosa Divas, the latest game to come out of Outerloop Games of Thirsty Suitors fame. Much like Thirsty Suitors before it, Dosa Divas is a quick romp with nods to other great games, but the story in this game is a more personal one connected to food. Unfortunately, once you figure out the game’s core loop, it becomes easy to coast no matter what flavors the story throws at you to spice things up.

Damn, poncle’s done it again. Vampire Crawlers is a wickedly-crafted, addicting, original game with enough potential depth to rival the Mariana Trench.

WonderCon does not need video games to become the biggest thing at the convention. It just has an opportunity to make them a more fully realized part of what the weekend offers.

The Day I Became a Bird is a short, yet adorable storybook inspired adventure. Don’t expect in-depth gameplay though.