Mark Steighner
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COGConnectedLatest Reviews
Riders Republic is a sprawling, messy, open world playground, an extreme sports game for the TikTok generation, incredibly ambitious, audacious and pure, fast, fantasy fun. Riders Republic is a land of youthful bodies that can never break, endless trails, perfect powder and energy drink-stoked good times. But will the fun...
Hell Let Loose
There are a few situations in life when communication and teamwork are key and it doesn’t pay to be a lone wolf. Commercial airline pilot, for instance. Or NFL quarterback. Tossing a ball downfield or landing a jet can be accomplished by one person, but Hell Let Loose reminds us that...
Rogue Lords
I play a lot of games, both as a critic and simply for enjoyment, and one of the things I look for and appreciate is a game that takes a familiar set of mechanics and changes them up just enough to make me have to pay attention or really think....
Sable
There’s a trend I’ve noticed with artsy indie games lately: a weird reluctance to show the faces of its characters. I just finished playing The Artful Escape, in many ways a musically thrilling and downright inspiring game, but every character’s eyes were hidden behind opaque glasses. And now we have...
Deathloop
Playing Deathloop. Arkane Lyon’s ambitious new murder mystery shooter, it’s hard not to indulge in a game of spot the influences. There’s the studio’s own Dishonored 1 and 2, of course, plus a dollop of the BioShock franchise. Add in some Quentin Tarantino stylistic extremism, classic 1960s James Bond-like villains,...
Townscaper
Philosophical question: is it better for a game to do one thing really well, or several things with a moderate degree of success? Would you rather eat at a (pre-COVID-19) buffet, where the chicken is delicious but the potato salad tastes like old socks, or at a fancy restaurant where...
“The role of the artist is not to give the audience what it wants. It’s to show the audience things they never even dreamed were possible.” I’m paraphrasing a bit of dialogue from The Artful Escape, a new game from developer Beethoven and Dinosaur, and although the story centers on...
When it comes to computer roleplaying games, I suspect that most fans of the genre line up somewhere on a continuum that has the rules, stat and number obsessed at one end, and the lovers of good stories, grand adventures and memorable characters at the other. My bias is definitely...
Humankind
I know, it seems obvious, easy and perfunctory to start a review of Humankind by immediately referencing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, but what else can you do? After all, games like Humankind and, recently, Old World, are essentially banking on the fact that players know the mechanics of the Civ...
Psychonauts 2
Aside from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, I don’t remember a lot about 2005. But I do recall playing Psychonauts, Double Fine’s groundbreaking action puzzle platform game with its weird, trippy visuals, quirky sense of humor, and unique take on the human mind. Playing it today Psychonauts remains a...
Rims Racing
Imagine growing up in urban Philadelphia, the only daughter of a veteran motorcycle cop who was killed in action when you were a young girl. Your dad’s beloved bikes sit shrouded like corpses in the garage until one day in your late teens, something compels you to pull off the...
Grime
Soulslike has been a genre long enough now that we all know what it means. We can argue about the particulars but it usually suggests action RPGs with a specific style of precise, timing-based combat that’s unforgiving of mistakes, coupled with stamina management and a reliance on the player developing...
