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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 – Baobabs Mausoleum Episode 2: 1313 Barnabas Dead End Drive
I was left feeling cold by the gameplay of Baobabs Mausoleum Episode 1: Ovnifagos Don’t Eat Flamingos, but still came away with nothing but affection for it. It was its aesthetic; a weird mix of creepy and groovy. It was its protagonist who I kept reading in the voice of Jack Nicholson. It was the lighthearted horror that wasn’t so…
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Review – Baobabs Mausoleum Episode 1: Ovnifagos Don’t Eat Flamingos
The indie games market isn’t what it used to be. What once felt like a thrift shop bin full of knickknacks and other oddities is now more similar to a dumpster. If you wade into it, you might find some hidden treasures, but you’ll more likely emerge with a bad smell and a strange disease. We now largely rely on…
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Review – Quadrilateral Cowboy
I’ve felt a lot of goodwill toward Brendan Chung ever since Citizen Abel: Gravity Bone blew my young mind with its expert melding of interactivity and narrative. Quadrilateral Cowboy sounded like a game he was making specifically for my own specific interests. Hacking, old computer hardware, his own personal twist on storytelling; it’s a recipe that gets my thighs grinding.…
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Review – Sin & Punishment Star Successor
Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is a bit of a weird situation, and I’m not just talking about the game itself, though we’ll get to that. It’s a sequel from Treasure, a legendary developer with a strong aversion to creating sequels. It’s published by Nintendo who, at the time, was more focused on creating family friendly content for their hyper-popular…
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Review – Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes (PS1)
You might recall me mentioning that a lot of Army Men ports were completely different depending on what platform they were on? Sarge's Heroes on PS1 is a good example. It resembles the N64 and Dreamcast versions, but its levels and the way it plays are completely different. Not in a good way.
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Review – Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
I often wonder what authorities think when they come across the carnage left in the wake of Nathan Drake. As a gunfight raged through what was essentially a museum, I could only theorize on how the discovery would go. Would they blame gang violence? Surely they wouldn’t easily arrive at the conclusion that one dude and his murderous friends were…
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Review – Hypnospace Outlaw
I’m old enough to remember the internet before the dot–com bubble burst. I’d boot up my Intel 486 powered, Windows 3.1, beige monstrosity and, with a burst of horrid screeching noises, log onto the ‘net. The youth of the internet was an awkward phase filled with spinning gifs and noisy backgrounds. “Surfing the web” meant navigating from site to site…
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Review – Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Nathan Drake is a character who can only exist as a video game protagonist. When you really dig down into his core, he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing and no motivation to be doing it. At least, not one that is established. I like to tease that he just enjoys killing scores of his fellow man, but really,…
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Review – Twisted Metal III
In my youth, I never really got to play anything past Twisted Metal 2 on the PS1, but the knowledge that there were further sequels was tantalizing. I think I maybe caught glimpses of Twisted Metal III and Small Brawl, but that just stoked my craving for more vehicular combat. I never did get around to playing the other PlayStation…
