Starfield PS5 Review
Were I marooned on an island with convenient access to electricity and just enough internet to download a Day One patch, games like Starfield or Crimson Desert or Baldur’s Gate 3 would be enough to indefinitely sustain my need for entertainment. The allure of an all-encompassing video game is perhaps too hard to ignore. Why else has Bethesda cemented its legacy with the one-two punch of Fall...[Read More]
Bubsy 4D Review
Bubsy is one of those characters that was always in orbit around the galaxy of games that have been in my life since the late 1980s. He just never found a way to land on a console I was playing at the time. If I scrape at the bottom edges of my memory, there’s probably a time where I played a Bubsy on a SNES emulator. But I did that for hundreds of games. (Shh, please don’t tell the po...[Read More]
Luna Abyss Review
Luna Abyss bombards the player with a cacophony of stimuli. Colorful pulsing particles. Grotesque creatures. Bizarre liminal spaces. Cryptic text. Thrumming music. In a matter of hours the game morphs its definition, congealing mechanics it has pulled from other discernible places. At first it’s a work of horror. The player finds themselves in an impossible prison of infinitely high walls, s...[Read More]
Directive 8020 Review
“You should totally save scum,” my friend whispered as they watched me enter a potentially harrowing scene in Directive 8020. I felt the same way. Wake-up procedures hadn’t gone as planned for the first wave of the Cassiopeia’s crew. Two Sleep Technicians were supposed to wake them up as they closed in on the planet of Tau Ceti f’s orbit. This handful of scientists, p...[Read More]
Call of the Elder Gods Review
After wrapping up Call of the Elder Gods‘ first chapter, I went to the PlayStation Store and downloaded 2020’s Call of the Sea. Developer Out of the Blue had created a compelling enough universe and I didn’t want to miss any detail. I remembered Call of the Sea being highly regarded by many for its puzzles and its story. And upon starting Call of the Elder Gods, I felt a twang of...[Read More]
Dead as Disco Early Access Review
Please let me take Dead as Disco back in time with me to the early 2010s. You better believe I would have put the thousands of mp3s I had downloaded to work. Remember those days? Back when mp3 blogs just gave you ways to download songs that you could upload to your iPod. Or your laptop actually had an optical drive and you could burn a CD that would play in your car. Now everything is streaming an...[Read More]
Crimson Desert Review
When Fallout 76 released in October 2018, I played it for maybe 20 hours the first week or two of launch. Most of my Destiny friends got the game because we were all fans of Bethesda’s work and could enjoy one of its worlds together. Time so often being currency, I ran out early on. For me, there wasn’t enough meat on the bone at launch and at its heart, Fallout 76 was still a Bethesda...[Read More]
The Spell Brigade Review
Vampire Survivors is my most-played game on an airplane. It doesn’t need an internet connection. I can use its endless waves of Castlevania knock-offs to potentially lull myself into a restless slumber in a cramped seat. I can upgrade a random stat after a match and feel accomplished. I’ve done it for years. Since poncle broke the mold and created a fusion of roguelikes, bullet hells, ...[Read More]
Aphelion Review
Aphelion was so impactful because it felt honest and real. That’s not always a sentiment we often get from our science fiction games which frequently focus on profound exploration of far-away worlds or rescuing sentient life from unfathomable threats. I think of Outer Wilds or The Invincible, where meaning is sought amongst the stars and purpose is not always guaranteed. I suppose I shouldn&...[Read More]
Life is Strange: Reunion Review
Life is Strange has always been about Max and Chloe inasmuch as Life is Strange has always been about people. When Max first used her powers to rewind time to save Chloe from death in that high school bathroom, it was less about science fiction and more about being human. The choices I made a decade ago came from an honest place; to help Max unravel the mysteries of Arcadia Bay and foster her rela...[Read More]
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss Review
The well-tread depths of H.P. Lovecraft’s vast oeuvre have been iterated upon and translated into countless forms of media. And at the center of it all often looms the monolithic, tentacled god Cthulhu. The Great Old One. A cosmic horror. It is an indecipherable terror that infects the mind and draws lesser men into incomprehensible worlds for whatever sinister purpose. Cthulhu is so promine...[Read More]
Pragmata Review
Minutes into Pragmata, lead character Hugh Williams expresses his distrust for robots and AI. He and his team have been summoned to the Earth’s moon to establish contact with a massive lunar research facility. As suspected, everything goes to hell. But not before it’s established that on this base, AI automation is heavily used and a substance called lunafilament seemingly can 3D print...[Read More]