John Cal McCormick
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Writing For
Push SquareLatest Reviews
The '90s. It was a wonderful time to be alive. An era before TOWIE, before PewDiePie, and before Ed Sheeran. Sheffield United were in the Premier League (briefly). We had it all. Pulp Fiction at the cinema, Oasis and Blur being horrible to each other every day, Curly Wurly's were...
Divinity: Original Sin II is a fantastic role-playing game that strikes an almost perfect balance between dense, absorbing storytelling, and allowing you the freedom to shape the adventure as you wish. The journey through to the end credits will take you dozens of hours to complete, and during that time...
The Banner Saga 3 is a fitting end for the light tactical RPG series, and one that feels less like a sequel and more like the third act of a cohesive whole. The combat system used in the series up until this point remains relatively unchanged, and most of the...
XCOM 2
Republished on Wednesday 30th May 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of June's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
Because many video games lean on familiar gameplay loops, archetypal characters, and genre conventions, when you're reviewing them it can sometimes feel like you're saying exactly the same thing about a game that you already wrote about previously. But every now and again you'll have to write a sentence during...
Given the mire that mankind currently finds itself in, we should probably applaud Trey Parker and Matt Stone's scattershot, omnilateral approach to satire in South Park: The Fractured But Whole, a game which mercilessly skewers all facets of modern life. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you align with,...
Aven Colony tells the story of the human colonisation of an alien world, and each mission of the fifteen hour campaign is a variation on that one, singular idea. Like Earth, the planet offers everything from frozen tundra to lush, fertile landscapes capable of supporting the growth of crops like...
It's been two decades since PaRappa the Rapper first appeared on the original PlayStation in 1997. As one of the first rhythm games to make a dent in the public consciousness, the poetic puppy was instrumental in paving the way for the music-based games that would follow in his wake:...
2015's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X was a little bit of a departure for the long-running rhythm game series. Rather than adhering to the traditional, gameplay-focused framework of the franchise set up in earlier instalments, X thrust players into a sugary sweet narrative starring the popular virtual popstar and her...
Dying has been a part of playing video games since the early days of the arcade, but few games in that time have killed you off right at the beginning of the story. By the time the opening credits for Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky finish rolling,...
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness takes place in the same universe as the popular anime show, Psycho-Pass. Set in the year 2112, an always online system named Sybil is constantly monitoring the mental state of the entire population, and pointing out individuals who are psychologically likely to commit a crime in the...
One of the songs in the brand new rhythm game, Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X, is called Holy Lance Explosion Boy, and it's about an unsettlingly young boy accidentally getting someone pregnant, featuring lines like: "This 0.02mm barrier is seriously getting annoying." If the thought of a kawaii, virtual boy's...
