If you were an average nobody framed for a high-profile assassination, how would you clear your name? Would you let the police arrest you, then pray that your legal defense pulls through? Maybe you’d lay low and hire a hacker, certain that the true culprit left a trail of crumbs leading straight to your salvation! …
Out of all the “auteur” game developers that have bounced around over the last few decades, Suda51 (Goichi Suda) felt like he stood out. Sure, his latest work is more focused on titillation than anything else (how else do you explain a repeating minigame dedicated to ogling your character’s companions?), but back when Killer7 and …
For a game ostensibly meant to challenge both the player and their avatar, The Turing Test sets itself up to be evaluated in a field with its own high standards. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a scientist, joined by an artificial intelligence with questionable motives, journey through a series of first-person puzzle …
What standard should a VR title be held against when critically examined? We’re mere months into the life of a brand new format, and while many of its projects don’t share the complexity of your average first person shooter, the novelty of actually aiming down sights or painting with your own hands is undeniably potent. …
This is an article on the second episode of 2016’s episodic Hitman. Our piece on the introduction and first chapter can be found here. One way or another, the second level of Hitman 2016 was always going to be its breaking point. Traipsing around Paris as an impostor fashionista back in March was certainly a blast, but …
When I put time aside for a book or start a new show on Netflix, I tend to make the completion my actual goal. Sure, I’m there to be entertained and experience something special, but whether it happens to be an upcoming class or shift at work, my time has always been limited: why linger …
What if metroidvanias dropped the action-sidescroller roots of its genre and instead were almost entirely about traversal? Rather than the signature mix of blasters and and puzzle keys, what if we combined a Meat Boy-like laser focus on *making jumping feel good* with the kind of sprawling two-dimensional world progression these games have always been …
I often find myself disgruntled with retro indie games. Though the style’s significant titles revitalize their genre of choice with gorgeous visuals and minutely tuned mechanics, the story often gets left by the wayside. I’m not the kind of person who thinks every single game requires a tantalizing plot, but while I might have an …
It’s an average weekend evening, and I’m camped out in my friends’ living room, watching two teens edged ever closer to a steep drop by a pack of unruly elk. Everyone in the room is wound up: though we’ve all seen teen slashers of this ilk, we feel a tad more attached to this unlucky …