Mark Steighner
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COGConnectedLatest Reviews
Redfall
Considering they’re a staple of horror and fantasy, vampires have been the subject of relatively few great video games. Sure, there’s Castlevania, and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Legacy of Kain, and a few others. But compared to zombie-themed games, for example, vampires are lagging way behind. Is Redfall a chance...
Despite the fact that there are small armies of developers and creatives working in the video game industry, fresh ideas are relatively rare. While Meet Your Maker isn’t entirely original, it does have a gameplay loop that’s both addictive and frustrating in equal measure. If you were the kind of...
Stray Blade
I don’t envy developers, especially those making a soulslike action game. The competition is enormous, and any game hoping to claim even a small fraction of fan love needs to bring some new ideas and deliver on them. In the case of Stray Blade, developer Point Blank Games is banking...
Part art project, part action game, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos looks like nothing you’ve played this year. Or, probably any other. But there are lots of games oozing style but lacking substance. Where does Clash: Artifacts of Chaos land as an action game, aside from its art?
Just as you thought the turn-based RPG bus was already full, Redemption Reapers squeezes into the back seat with another, substantial take on a popular genre. Well, “another take” might be generous. From its gothic fantasy setting to its stock characters, Redemption Reapers sticks pretty close to the basics.
Atomic Heart
We live in a complicated world. Well, maybe we always have, but the links between the entertainment we enjoy and the political or moral entanglements of its creators have more and more become an issue. Some cloudy skies are hanging above Atomic Heart and Cypress-based developer Mundfish. Denied allegations of...
Wild Hearts
Ok, let’s push this elephant in the room right out of the way. There’s a lot of similarity between Wild Hearts and Monster Hunter. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Koei Tecmo’s Wild Hearts is just a knockoff of Capcom’s popular franchise, but you’d be wrong. Dismissing Wild Hearts as...
Although it has a faithful fan base, the Spellforce franchise has always flown just a little under the radar. Since the series launched in 2003, there have been over a dozen sequels, expansions, and improved editions of older games. Twenty years ago, Spellforce did something new. It was a hybrid...
Once the source of wild speculation, our neighbor planet Mars is now a pretty familiar place. We’ve all seen the pictures, thanks to the amazing Mars landers and rovers. It looks eerily like our own southwest, it has weather and seasons and if you’re Matt Damon you can grow potatoes...
Forspoken
It’s said that the essence of creativity is taking old ideas and rearranging them into something new. That’s certainly true when it comes to narratives. There are only so many ways to spin a yarn. The hero’s journey was probably already old news when Homer–the Greek, not the Simpson–wrote the...
Samurai Maiden
I’ll admit right up front that I’m probably not part of the intended demographic for Samurai Maiden. For one thing, I’m not well-versed in all the subgenres and flavors of Japanese anime RPGs. For another, my status as a middle age man means that the tale of young girls forming...
The Chant
Back in the 1980s, an Indian guru named Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh founded a commune outside the rural Oregon town of Antelope (less than an hour’s drive from where I live). Hundreds of followers came to the sprawling commune, attracted to promises of spiritual enlightenment, sexual freedom, and countercultural expression. Rajneesh...
