Cass Barkman
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Checkpoint Gaming Latest Reviews
Prior to my current job, I worked in retail for a decade. One of the few reasons I was able to leave the house during COVID was to stock shelves and hear customers complain about having to buy a second pasta maker because their first one was stuck at their beach house. I broke down boxes, dealt with problematic bosses and tactfully avoided the regular angry customer. During this period, I actually earned a reputation for being very good at organising the warehouse, meaning I spent most of my ...
Roguelikes and roguelites feel like an indie release staple at this point. Coined from the 1980 release of Rogue, the rise of small game studios, digital distribution, and the success of hits like Spelunky and Slay the Spire have seen a growing cornucopia of roguey releases for players to choose from. This year alone has already seen Blue Prince and Monster Train 2 sparking early GOTY conversations alongside other solid titles like Lost in Random: The Eternal Die, Luck be a Landlord, Rift Wiz...
Steam nowadays often feels like an overwhelming tide of Early Access and newly released games vying for your attention (while Valve happily takes a massive 30% revenue cut from each). Against this storm of releases (get it), you still get the regular title that may not make it massive, but still gets lucky enough to find a dedicated audience. Against the Storm is one of those titles, and as of last month, its interesting genre hybrid of roguelike city building has hit consoles after four year...
TRON is an odd multimedia series – starting with the Disney film TRON in 1982, it has been intermittently in and out of the cultural zeitgeist since, with TRON: Legacy being released in 2010 and this game being followed up by only the third film in its 43-year history, TRON: Ares. Amidst that, there has been a range of theme park attractions, an animated series in 2012 and a short film, but also, perhaps unsurprisingly given the series’ subject matter, there has been a long history of vid...
I’m midway through a run. My train barrels along the divine tracks, and heaven streaks past in the background. I carefully coordinate my motley assortment of dragons, angels and welps across its three levels, only for titanic enemy forces to come barging through the entrance. Spells fly, numbers flash endlessly back and forth – initially, my forces seem overwhelmed, but a few rounds in and the number of buffs on my units begins to exponentially accumulate. By the time the boss arrives –...
In the 2012 book ‘Rise of the Videogame Zinesters’, game designer Anna Anthropy advocates for games as “personal artifacts instead of impersonal creations by teams” – games not as huge commercial entities but private, unique stories that have more in common with zines (small self-publications) than blockbusters. I open the review with this quote because not only does Despelote neatly fit this description, but it’s also central to the game’s success.
While it’s almost 20 years since the world saw a brand new Advance Wars game (putting aside the seemingly great 2023 remake), a huge variety of indie game devs, likely spurred on by childhood nostalgia, have happily rushed to fill the spritely turn-based military void. Amidst the Wargroove’s, Tiny Metal’s and Into the Breach’s of the world comes Warside, a hardy but underbaked experience whose core gameplay engine may be revving well, but is let down by the rest of the chassis.
Video games are an ideal medium to hang out with virtual animal companions. You’ve got games entirely centered on beloved furry friends like Nintendogs and the Pokémon series, as well as recognisable characters like Dogmeat from Fallout (rest in peace, mo-cap dog River), bird dog Trico from The Last Guardian and, my personal recent favourite, the titular mystical wolf in last year’s Neva. Entering this pantheon of games that allow you to play alongside a beloved furry friend is Koira, a ...
The new title from Spanish developer The Game Kitchen, previously known for their ‘Blasphemous’ series, is simultaneously new and familiar terrain for the studio. The religious iconography of their previous titles is alive and well, but gone is their Metroidvania action to be replaced by the tactical stealth of trying to escape an 18th-century monastery. Besides some frustrations with its resource management and a few lacking stealth mechanics, The Stone of Madness does a compelling job r...