For as long as I can remember, from my earliest childhood, a huge part of me has been drawn towards escapist activities and creative play that contained a sense of agency and interactivity. A flight from the chocolate box uniformity of suburban life and rote learning for vocation. From the dog-eared pages of Choose-your-own-Adventure books... Continue Reading →
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Japanese launch of the Sega Dreamcast, Sega’s ill-fated parting dream and final glimpse of last gasp, wide eyed, wide screen blue skies. In maudlin celebration, let’s take a look at their last desperate days as a hardware manufacturer and dream of what might have been. This article was... Continue Reading →
LOCAL MASOCHIST JIMOTHY PUDENDA RECENTLY HIGHLIGHTED HIS EXTRAORDINARY COMMITMENT TO FROM SOFTWARE’S SEMINAL CONTROLLER-DESTROY-EM-UP ‘DARK SOULS’ BY CONTINUING HIS SPEED RUN RECORD ATTEMPT EVEN AFTER A SWARM OF BABY SPIDERS COMMENCED CRAWLING INTO HIS DICK HOLE. Looking to shave a further 3.4 seconds off his current best time, Jimothy was racing up the steps of... Continue Reading →
You are standing in the eerie hollow of a cramped cavern, an icy wind whips at your back as your torch flickers, sputtering wildly and throwing shadows upon the ancient stone. From here the path forks in two directions. To the right, the passageway evolves into a winding arc, furrowing deeper into the living mountain,... Continue Reading →
In which we describe the act of playing ‘Fallout 4’ by using every synonym for brown in the goddamn dictionary. How many days has it been since I first emerged into the wasteland? This sunblasted ochre landscape that extends toastily in all directions to a shimmering bronze horizon? Day after day it stretches before me,... Continue Reading →
Into The Abyss: A Cartographer’s Odyssey. How the Etrian Odyssey series compels and confounds in equal measure. The golden age of exploration was also the golden age of cartography. Alongside the plunder of resources, the subjugation of natives, and the raw thrill of scurvy, part of the primary appeal of far flung horizons was the... Continue Reading →
Pain and Pleasure. Indivisible. Bullet Hell. It doesn’t sound that appealing right? Not a place you’d particularly want to visit. An inferno of lead, perhaps the streets of Baltimore, perhaps the trenches of Ypres. But what if the bullets were bright pink orbs that unfurled in dizzying waves like the demented etchings of a tilted... Continue Reading →
Of torture and Torquemada. We will now pass the collection plate. With seventeen hours to go as I write this, tiny Spanish game studio The Game Kitchen have smashed, eviscerated and put the thumbscrews to their Kickstarter funding goals for the forthcoming follow up to their award winning point and click adventure The Last Door.... Continue Reading →
Into the Pandemonium It’s no secret that I harbour somewhat old-school proclivities when it comes to which games tickle my nads in the most pleasing and sado-masochistic fashion. Give me a copy of any of the 2D Castlevania games, Ghouls n Ghosts, or something plucked from the Soulsborne series and I’m at home on a... Continue Reading →
Remember when all the good shit came from Japan? When Fez creator and twitter pounding neuroses vessel Phil Fish declared at the 2012 GDC that Japanese games “just suck” it wasn’t too hard to see how that attitude and perception had permeated the consciousness of the games industry at the time. Far from the glory... Continue Reading →
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