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Review – Hotline Miami
Killing without consequence is something that video games seem to share with action movies. Regardless of how heroic a protagonist is supposed to be, they usually leave a wake of dead bodies. In reality, each of these deaths would have serious repercussions, from families robbed of father figures who made questionable decisions to severe problems with the law. But according…
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Review – Shadowrun: Hong Kong
It seems like every summer I get into a Shadowrun kick where I read a few novels, browse through some sourcebooks, and dive back into the video games. With every passing year, I become more familiar with the subject matter and more involved with it. Give it a bit of time, I’m sure I’ll be GMing a group one of…
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Review – Deltarune: Chapter 1
As much as I adore the game, I don’t want a sequel to Undertale. It’s not that I think that developer Toby Fox wouldn’t do a decent job of it, but it’s a self-contained story that wraps up in a satisfying way. Any attempts to extrapolate on it would feel cheap and lessen the impact. Luckily, for his follow-up game,…
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Review – Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut
I’m absolutely in love with Shadowrun. Admittedly, I’ve never played the tabletop RPG due to my social incompetencies, but I still love everything about it. It’s a ‘90s kitsch amalgamation of Tolkien-esque fantasy and Bladerunner-esque cyberpunk. Magic and megacorporations, dragons and robots: it’s a nerd’s dream setting. I’ve played the games, I own a collection of the pulp fiction novels,…
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Review – Celeste
It dawned on me recently that a lot of the games I played this year didn’t actually come out in 2018. I mean, you can look back through the blog and get a good account of what I played through; not a lot of new releases. Hell, I spent the first month of the year playing the early Elder Scrolls…
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Review – Undertale
I purchased Undertale shortly after its initial release way back in 2015, but I never finished it. This is because my initial experience was interrupted when I ended up enduring a period of emotional unrest (to put it lightly). I’m not prepared to get into all the depressing details, but the events were so traumatic that I’ve been avoiding certain…
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Review – Coffee Crisis
The beat-’em-up genre is one of the simplest formulas in gaming. During the early 90’s, following the release of Final Fight in the arcades, the genre exploded and found itself host to all manner of licensed tie ins. If you had a super-hero, action movie, or mascot that you needed to cram into an interactive format, the conveyor-belt beat-’em-up was…
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Review – Never Stop Sneakin’
I have a pretty severe distaste for Metal Gear Solid, but I will readily admit that it is stylish, which is probably a big factor in its lasting popularity. It copied its MSX predecessors’ palette of cool blues and greys, giving it a cold and sterile appearance, then bloated it out into full 3D. It really owned its blocky, pixelated…
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Review – Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
One of the first genre journeys I recall embarking on as a retro gaming hobbyist was an exploration of the LucasArts adventure catalogue. During that time, I dug through a scattered assortment of titles, but burned out earlier than I would have liked. I found new favourites in games like The Secret of Monkey Island, but have still yet to…
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Review – Fallout 2
I admit it, I’m part of the unwashed filth that was first introduced to the Fallout series with Fallout 3, but since I first dug into that game, it had been my intention to visit the games that had initially spawned the franchise. Fallout 1 frustrated me by placing my character in borderline unwinnable scenarios. In Fallout 2, I couldn’t…
