Cookie Cutter Review
Cookie Cutter‘s brazen attitude towards violence, sexuality, and legibility is one of its crowning strengths. Few games have insisted upon bathing themselves in such gratuitous displays without coming across as adolescent, edgy, or entirely thoughtless. But Cookie Cutter‘s carefully constructed aesthetic reminded me of such champions like Aeon Flux, Ghost in the Shell, Hotline Miami, a...[Read More]
SteamWorld Build Review
Whether it be theme park or simulated city, there is an allure to micro-managing hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of virtual people. For all intents and purposes, the player is a god. The capability of directly plucking a villager or a farmer out of thin air with a virtual hand or creating vast metropolises with a single sweeping motion has long been a gaming pastime. Yet SteamWorld Build is ...[Read More]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Review
Death and taxes. And Call of Duty. There are so few certainties in this brief life of ours. Perhaps with equal guarantee is the polarizing deluge of opinion surrounding the franchise which only grows more vocal each year. Since 2005’s Call of Duty 2 there has been a Call of Duty game released every single year. It feels like an impossible cadence but one a fleet of Activision-based developer...[Read More]
The Invincible Review
Unlike the open-ended, Delilah-less finale of Firewatch, I wasn’t disappointed when my choices made in The Invincible caused me not to cross paths with the indomitable, titular spacecraft. The red herring chase that was Firewatch‘s government conspiracies, murder mysteries, and star-crossed lovers all came crashing down in the final moments of the game. Any narrative expectations playe...[Read More]
The Expanse: A Telltale Series Review
Though absurdly unfamiliar with The Expanse television show, its praises have been sung multiple times by various members of my friend group. But shows are harder for me to dive into anymore, blame the thirst for binging or the mere fact that I’ve got too many games to play. However, I’m familiar with Telltale Games, both their triumphs and struggles. The Walking Dead is a seminal gami...[Read More]
Star Ocean The Second Story R Review
Earlier this year when I reviewed Sea of Stars, I couldn’t help but be transported back 30 odd years. Sabotage Studios’ tribute to a distinct era of RPG was both nostalgic and refreshing. The game evoked those most precious RPGs from the 16- and 32-bit era, where some of the most powerful gaming experiences originated from. But as developers experimented with better tech, two-dimension...[Read More]
RoboCop: Rogue City Review
RoboCop: Rogue City does not allow players to jump. For about an hour I would tap the X button on my DualSense trying to get former all-human cop Alex Murphy to hop over a railing or jump over a barrier. The simple act of jumping and mantling is such a creature comfort in any game that it was a shock to the system having the ability stripped from me. Despite the fact that I was a robot cop, likely...[Read More]
Payday 3 Review
The catastrophe that was Payday 3‘s launch will hopefully not be its enduring legacy. It can be quite easy to tear into a game because of an unruly launch period that may be rife with bugs and online issues. I couldn’t play Diablo 3 for hours when I bought it Day One. Years later, Blizzard transformed it. Baldur’s Gate 3 had a number of bugs but I could forgive those knowing in d...[Read More]
Wizard With a Gun Review
Wizard With a Gun‘s five-minute gameplay loop is a double-edged sword. Its quick runtime belies the complex mechanics that are front-loaded in the game’s opening hours. But it often can strip out the necessity for planning and the sensation of dread that comes with the looming threat of the world ending. As a Gunmancer, players are tasked with finding precious gears to install in the C...[Read More]
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Review
“Be greater.” Sony’s marketing slogan five years ago when Marvel’s Spider-Man launched on PlayStation 4 was a killer, succinct tagline for what would undoubtedly be one of the publisher’s most successful endeavors. But it also captured the web-slinger’s most noteworthy burden of great power and great responsibility. Spider-Man has shown incredible pliability, ac...[Read More]
Fate/Samurai Remnant Review
Fate/Samurai Remnant has a pedigree that I am completely unaware of. Often a blind approach can be the best one when reviewing games in a long-running series. The Fate series has been circulating since 2004 with various forms of media including manga, games, CD dramas, and even a stage play. Scanning through the dozens-long list I recognized a handful of names that had passed through my periphery ...[Read More]
Cocoon Review
Several times throughout Cocoon I experienced the exhilarating feeling of figuring out the solution to a problem a second too late. In many of the best puzzle games of our time–Portal 2, The Witness, and Inside to name a few–players will spend time gawking at a piece of environment trying to decipher how their given tool set will get them from Point A to Point B. Often, however, the en...[Read More]