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Tag: NAMCO HIGH

  • So long, ShiftyLook: Namco shuts down a very cool side project
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    So long, ShiftyLook: Namco shuts down a very cool side project

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    Back in 2011, Namco had a very bright idea: create a team to breathe new life into some of their long-forgotten franchises and characters. ShiftyLook was born out of this idea, and through a series of webcomics (and games and other media), they succeeded admirably at their mission.But now, like the characters they were tasked to resurrect, ShiftyLook is destined to fall into obscurity; a soon to be distant memory."Now that we have successfully revived so many franchises," reads the latest update on the ShiftyLook website, "the heavy lifting is completed - and so is our work. We battled the video games abyss and won, which means it's time for us to move on and let the hit-makers play with some new toys."The early retirement of ShiftyLook spells a similar fate for many of its creations. Namco High, a fantastic dating sim/interactive fiction release that earned a near perfect score in our review last year, will have its servers shut down on Jun 30, 2014. Their mobile game BRAVOMAN: Binja Bash! will be suffering a similar fate, disappearing from iTunes, Google Play and Amazon at the end of this month.
  • Reviews
    • PC
    Namco High Review

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    Namco High is the latest video game to come from ShiftyLook, the online branch of Namco Bandai which reinvigorates several of the company's various, more latent intellectual property as webcomics and cartoons. It's only fitting, then, that in this browser-based dating simulator from the creator of Homestuck, you get to pal around with various characters from ShiftyLook's comics and beyond.Well, they tout it as a dating sim, but from what we've played, that's a little bit of a misnomer. You get to engage and interact with numerous characters (15 on the Namco side, three from Homestuck), but things never get deeply romantic. They do, however, get rather humorous in a way which feels rather reminiscent of Capcom's Ace Attorney series—which is never a bad thing.You take on the role of a gender-neutral Cousin from Katamari, which you can rename anything you like, and you find yourself in detention with the odd crew of what Principal Dig Dug and his detention supervisor, King, call a group of "delinquents". Before long, though, you come to find out that your fellow captives aren't so bad after all.