Latest Reviews
Just a few missions into Doom: The Dark Ages, I felt like I’d reached the apex of action games. There I was behind the controls of an enormous Atlan mech, eclipsing the kind of battleground that felt enormous to me moments before. The sky above me was scorched. Buildings turned...
To make it in today’s cutthroat world, sometimes it feels like you have to be a taker to survive. It’s a ruthless mentality that makes the rich richer, crooked politicians more powerful, and countries more bloodthirsty. They take, take, and take until there’s nothing left for the rest of us,...
If I pull up a Google Maps street view of my old house in the Dominican Republic, I’m met by a stranger. I don’t mean the literal stranger eyeing the camera from the garage, but the place itself. The exterior’s been repainted. The little garden out front has been ripped...
How is a person expected to do a job with no resources? That’s the question that intergalactic insurance agent Nina Pasadena comes up against in Skin Deep, a miniature immersive sim from Blendo. Pasadena is tasked with protecting spaceships full of cats from pirates, but her corporate overlords haven’t given...
When it begins, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an RPG about younger adults fighting to give themselves a future in a world controlled by forces that seem hellbent on taking it from them. It’s sad how relevant that feels right now.
When a video game developer makes a big hit that earns it recognition, it’s only natural that it might try to stick with the same formula and try to make lightning strike twice. Atlus’s Metaphor: ReFantazio is a prime example, doubling down on the Persona structure to create a refined...
Very few fighting game series get a second act. Most fade. For a series to get there twenty-six years after its first big moment, after the company behind that series has been through bankruptcy and acquired — twice — is nothing short of miraculous. But no miracle is free; like...
When you grow up in a small town, punk rock isn’t just music: It’s a lifeline. Fuzzed out guitars blaring out of garages become the soundtrack of rebellion. It’s the music that the cops tell you to turn down, that your parents can’t stand, that your politicians try to demonize....
Some games are finely-tuned sports cars. Others are total lemons. Rusty Rabbit is neither; it’s a pile of scraps.
Night after night of frustration and euphoria have all led me to this moment. There’s no action, but my heart is racing. I feel like I’m about to emerge from a cocoon. There is another face beneath my own, another brain bulging inside my own.
When I first arrive in Kaso-Machi, it feels like I’ve stepped into a ghost town. The Japanese island at the center of Promise Mascot Agency, the latest game from Paradise Killer studio Kaizen Game Works, is awash in a brown haze. It’s eerily quiet, with no bodies walking through its...
South of Midnight is a weighty adventure that pays tribute to the deep South with astonishing art, impeccable sound design, and the best music you’ll hear in a video game this year. It’s an emphatic journey about connecting with our most vulnerable neighbors when they need it most rather than...