I can't get Fish Sticks out of my head. Not the food, but the stray cat with a squished face and stubby legs that I wrangled into my shack in Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s new roguelite strategy game, Mewgenics. The shop, the pub, the dentist; no matter where I go, I…
I was, like so many of my 1990s-born peers, a huge Sims girlie. I spent hundreds of hours as a teen and young adult making people I knew, characters from shows I was obsessing over, or original characters I wanted to experiment with, and diligently following their life paths and…
Cthulhu games are a dime a dozen these days, with everything from JRPG parodies to well-meaning but flawed efforts that bear the official Call of Cthulhu license. But there aren't many point and click adventures showcasing H.P. Lovecraft's sanity-twisting mythos. Two very dated…
Excuse me, coming through. I’m Kazuma Kiryu, and I’m on my way to speak to some gruff yakuza lads about what their local gang war means for my orphanage. You can tell I’m serious because I’m riding a prototype segway dressed in nothing but a swimming cap,…
I can't get Fish Sticks out of my head. Not the food, but the stray cat with a squished face and stubby legs that I wrangled into my shack in Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s new roguelite strategy game, Mewgenics. The shop, the pub, the dentist; no matter where I go, I…
My experience with the third Nioh reminded me of many other games — the open world of Elden Ring, the samurai/ninja gameplay of Assassin's Creed Shadows, and the dopamine-generating loot drops of Diablo. I make these comparisons not to disparage Nioh 3, but rather to…
I am in the dusty basement of Manchester cathedral. On the streets above me, there are police searching for anyone who would challenge the state. Someone like me. I am supposed to be working on a weapon to use against these fascists. It isn't a gun or a bomb, it is a machine…
A game where music is illegal and you do crimes. It’s the perfect tone-setting tagline for Unbeatable, a rhythm game about a bunch of young adults (and one child) rebelling against an oppressive regime by playing raucous garage rock. Read more
One of the first "moving pictures" ever created is a moving picture of a horse. In the late 1870s, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge produced a series of "chronophotographs" of horses and riders, including the famous 12-frame sequence Sallie Gardner at a Gallop. I know about…
'If you want to torture somebody, first show them your tools' is one of the better horror game design lessons taught by Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I thought of Amnesia's cistern chapter while playing through a later area in Lunar Software's excellent first-person spookathon…
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 's multiplayer is better than its awful, terrible, abominable, ghastly, hideous, not very good campaign. But 'better' in this case does not necessarily mean 'good'. This year's anxious flurry of maps, modes and zombies achieves the base requirement for…
To say that Demonschool comes out swinging with its premise would be an understatement. Trapped on the isolated Hemsk Island and surrounded by increasingly spooky occurrences, it quickly becomes clear that Faye and her classmates have no choice but to kick demons’ spines…
The word "morsel" comes from the Latin "mordeo", meaning "I bite". Every time you play Morsels, you are bitten and eaten by a horrible cat. The beast's incisors crash shut around the screen, and you tumble slowly down its oesophagus after the game's squealing mouse protagonist.…
It is strange to imagine – I thought as I battled a giant vomit-spewing plant monster in a hallucination induced by a biological weapon – that Call of Duty was once, at least notionally, about the human cost of war. That was a long time ago, admittedly. There are full grown…
A teardrop of bog bordered by slithers of fertile ground. The locals call it Natrixia – I call it Sausage Island, and it's at the heart of my domain in Anno 117: Pax Romana. Read more
Ten hours into Arc Raiders, I felt betrayal's sharp sting for the first time. The round began with generosity. I met a fellow raider who had dropped me a rare shotgun as well as a damaged heat sink to upgrade my workbench. They asked nothing in return. It was one of many…
Europa Universalis 5 is a forever game. Insofar as you might be able to play this grand historical strategy forever, but also because - my god - it takes forever to play. After a mere 45 hours of conniving, trading, battling, and scratching my head at menus, I have just about…