Latest Reviews
Doom Eternal
2016’s Doom reimagined the classic shooter into a frantic but modern mold. The bloody escapades of the Doom Slayer were rife with bullets and guts. It was a grimy video game hamburger. Doom Eternal is bigger and bloodier, almost to the point of excess. It’s the same hamburger dipped into...
It seems like everything is getting a fighting game adaptation these days. Dragon Ball Z, RWBY, Power Rangers, League of Legends, you name it. Granblue Fantasy, one of many mobile role-playing gacha games that asks players to spend real money on virtual slot machines, is the latest to jump aboard...
We get a lot of funny video games. We get a lot of strange games. But wacky video games are rare. Journey to the Savage Planet, a short new sci-fi first-person shooter, is, despite some flaws, wonderfully wacky.
Disco Elysium
The most important thing about Disco Elysium, an oddly titled role-playing game that came out last month for PC, is that it’s funny. Set in a beautifully ugly world of smudged watercolors and throbbing noir music, Disco Elysium appears at first to be the type of game that might take...
Untitled Goose Game
The way Untitled Goose Game’s goose moves, I think, is what makes it so endearing. Its self-assured waddle. The way it leans its feathered neck forward, with an almost innocent inquisitiveness, before turning on some poor guy’s sprinklers and drenching him. How it flaps and flutters after its plans have...
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a shining example of using a game’s design to say something meaningful while also making it look cool as hell. The game controls simply with the analog stick and a single button. What makes it stand out is its music, its look, and its mood.
2018’s Monster Hunter: World was a successful update to the long-running beast-slaying series. Fully functioning ecosystems and updated combat crafted an experience where each battle was a unique challenge even after hundreds of hours. World’s latest expansion, Iceborne, is massive. Building up a solid framework, it brings dozens of new...
Metal Wolf Chaos XD
I hesitate to call any review of Metal Wolf Chaos XD complete if it does not include a long-winded anecdote about how I personally got rich in 2007 by selling off a stack of mint-condition copies of the Japanese Xbox original which I’d bought for less than $3 each. Therefore,...
Genre is mostly bullshit. It’s useful for discussion and for imagining where a certain game exists on the continuum of innovation and progress. These discussions are important, and for them, we need genre. But genre doesn’t do a lot for games, especially once they start to borrow from each other,...
Mortal Kombat 11
2015’s Mortal Kombat X signaled the beginning of an evolutionary turn for Netherrealm Studios’ storied fighting game series, featuring fresh new characters, a compelling story and the ability to select different fighting styles for every combatant. Mortal Kombat 11 continues this evolution, but not every aspect of the game is...
Cuphead
Cuphead turns players into perfectionists. The long-awaited hand-drawn action game is full of cartoony boss battles that demand enough precision and focus that even a single hit of damage feels unacceptable. Playing Cuphead is like a stage performance; every mistake is embarrassing, but the curtain call of each defeated boss...