Few companies can turn failure into a success story quite like Nintendo. Whether it’s the Wii U games that tanked on release but are suddenly must-have games on Switch, or turning the fortunes of the laughed-out-of-town DS around almost overnight and growing it into one of the most successful handhelds …
Read More »Resident Evil Re:Verse is a strange way to celebrate 25 years of survival horror
Have you ever wondered who would win in a brawl between Nemesis and Jack Baker? This is the sort of argument that should have no clear answer. It should exist hypothetically, as a discussion designed to keep a divisive fandom engaged eternally in the online era. To celebrate Resident Evil’s …
Read More »Don’t be afraid to turn down Outriders World Tiers
Outriders has four “Mantras of Survival”; memorable maxims marketed by developer People can Fly to teach players about the unique rhythms of its third-person shooter combat. Currently, there’s “Cover’s for cowards”, “Think aggressive”, “Powers on tap”, and “Kill to heal”, but now that the game is out in the wild, …
Read More »Best Year in Gaming: 1991 is the year that the 16-bit era came of age
1991 is the year that the 16-bit era came of age. Four years into the fourth generation of home consoles, developers unleashed a barrage of impressive, influential, and innovative video games that are as important today as they were for the time. Few years can lay claim to such a …
Read More »Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Marvel’s shows prove superhero stories need to embrace their length
Remember the summer of 2019? All anyone could talk about was Avengers: Endgame, the box-office breaking superhero flick that brought Marvel’s Phase 3 to a climactic close. What was remarkable then, and continues to be now, is the three hour runtime: a necessary evil designed to give Marvel Studios the …
Read More »The Medium proves that horror games dont always need jump scares
I don’t like Marianne in The Medium. I feel bad saying that, as though I’m betraying an old friend. It’s like she’s a girl I grew up with – someone I’ve spent a lot of time with, Been Through Stuff With – but have discovered I dislike in adulthood. Once …
Read More »Militsioner wants to make you feel like youre “playing against a real giant policeman” in its immersive escape simulator
A uniformed policeman sits wistfully in the centre of a provincial Russian town, his arms folded on one knee in a position resembling that of a bored child confined to the naughty step after a particularly egregious tantrum. You’d think his occupation would require him to adopt a more alert, …
Read More »Assassins Creed Valhalla unexpectedly made me learn more about the town I live in
It’s easy to forget when you’re wandering around Norway looking for Mjolnir that the Assassin’s Creed series is based on real history. Okay, so maybe not the bit about the godly Isu or the whole thing about Eivor being controlled by a 20th-century woman called Layla, but the actual history. …
Read More »Why Diablo 2 deserves to be Resurrected
For a certain generation of players, Diablo 2 wasn’t a video game – it was a rite of passage. If you made it past the piercing eyes of the Dark Wanderer, the skeletal embodiment of hell itself burned into the box art, there’s a good chance that you were duty-bound …
Read More »How a joke about bathroom signs inspired one of the best indie platformers hitting PS5 this year
Developers talk a lot about signposting when figuring out how to gently guide players from Point A to Point B, but The Pedestrian takes that strand of game design to an entirely new level. Its premise, a 2.5D platformer that takes place entirely within the confines of public signage, is …
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