Those Who Remain
Over the course of Those Who Remain, the player should feel a strong bond with lead character Edward. His dialog often acts as a sort of catharsis for players, his words expressing similar thoughts racing through players’ heads. Many play horror games to be swept up in tense, fearful situations and allow a rush of adrenaline to spike them through breathless chases and eerie moments. A lead c...[Read More]
The Last of Us Part II
The Last of Us Part II does not need to exist. Naughty Dog’s masterpiece serves as a generational culmination and capstone, exposing players to profound storytelling only possible through this interactive medium. In the years since, The Last of Us has been dissected and revered, achieving universal acclaim and reverence for its accomplishments. By all accounts, it is a special game. Not perf...[Read More]
JBL Quantum 800 Wireless Headset
Tuning out the world. It’s something I often do when playing games. Theme music plays, press the start button, begin a journey into a new place that isn’t your own existence. This blissful form of escapism is possible with other forms of media but none resonate with me like gaming. Not only can you play games–see the movements of your fingers translated into movements on the scre...[Read More]
Huntdown
Huntdown‘s near-impeccable distillation of classic arcade shooting is a thunderous endorsement of a seemingly bygone era, one where raw skill was often only matched with the amount of quarters lining your pocket. Its 16-bit shooting style mimics what a player might find in Contra or an odd gem like Blizzard’s Blackthorne. The game is drenched in the 80s overtones of the best dystopian,...[Read More]
Maneater
Ever so often games come around that propose a power fantasy unlike any other. For some, its the ability to be a gun-toting badass. For others, it’s being able to be whisked away to a fantasy world. And then there are games like Maneater; a game that gives you direct control of one of the scariest creatures in the world and devours everything in its path. Maneater never truly takes itself se...[Read More]
Fury Unleashed
Despite the roguelike genre’s tendency to recycle many of the same elements, I rarely tire of its structure. There’s an eagerness to dive back into a randomly generated cloud of levels, equipped with the knowledge of past deaths and the determination of a few invested upgrade points. In the time since playing Rogue Legacy–a title I didn’t initially grasp or appreciate–...[Read More]
Kingdom Two Crowns
Build, explore, defend. The tenets of Kingdom Two Crowns should be familiar to any player who has spent a handful of minutes in a game where success is based on the ability to harvest resources and expand your influence. A small base of operations will soon becoming teeming with life as tendrils of economy allow the player to stretch farther into the given map. You may recognize the pattern in any...[Read More]
Predator: Hunting Grounds
Predator: Hunting Grounds looks and sounds like the cult-classic film Predator, but unfortunately doesn’t feel like Predator. As Alan Silvestri’s iconic score swells, you can’t help but feel like you’re about to embark on an action-packed, skull collecting adventure. But you’ll soon discover that under all of the nostalgia is a game that lacks a soul (or spine). Predator: Hunting Grounds by no mea...[Read More]
DOOM Eternal
Few games can compare to the raw splendor of DOOM‘s violence. The series flourishes in its homages to hellish gore and brutal violence. For decades, DOOM has reveled in pitting players against hordes of demons, watching their pixelated, polygonal corpses dissolve into bloody mush as a result of a sole aggressor’s relentless assault. For PC players in the 90s, DOOM was a revolution of m...[Read More]
The Division 2 Warlords of New York
Before the announcement of The Division 2 Warlords of New York, it had been several months since I had set down and played a hearty amount of my favorite “living world” “games as a service” open-world looter shooter. Unfortunately, my large group of friends who bought the game at launch and played semi-religiously had dwindled away. We all did. Time and the allure of countl...[Read More]
EarthNight
EarthNight captures the raw feeling of impactful adventure in the first quick, effortless moments of its introduction. The opening theme, an emotionally punctual bit of retro synths, crescendos through a brief expository cutscene. The title screen appears in beauty and flash. You press start and watch your chosen character fall through a fantastical sky and land on the back of a dragon and dash to...[Read More]
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Ultimate Edition
It took me nearly two hours to create my character in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Ultimate Edition. A sliver of that time was devoted towards determining whether or not I should fine-tune my character’s history from the first Pillars of Eternity. I could choose a handful of broad estimations, all of which I barely understood. I was able decide what fate I chose for those who were born w...[Read More]