Opinion by Matt S. Just as “RPG” was the hot trend through a couple of decades ago, and “FPS” was the big thing over the last decade or so, now it’s the “open world” genre’s turn to be the genre. Every major game developer at the moment seems to want…
Read MoreRetro Reflections by Matt S. Gregory Horror Show is – or more accurately, was – one of the oddest shows on Japanese television; a medium known well for its love of the odd. An incredibly adult anime series, episodes of the show were aired on late night TV in Japan,…
Read MoreGame Theory by Matt S. NieR: Automata is a very dense game, and it covers off a great many themes, ranging from gender and identity politics, to the impact of religion, the meaning of existence, and the structure of video games themselves. One of its absolute key themes, however, and…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Matt S. Before even the Game Boy, Nintendo had the Game & Watch games. These little handheld gaming machines were a serious addiction to me, and to this day they are such utter curiosities that if you haven’t played one, in its original form, then you’re doing…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Davis A. With NieR: Automata now in the open and receiving critical acclaim (you did it Yoko Taro, you finally did it!); I thought to myself, what better time to write about what makes Taro’s games so special, and specifically my favorite (for now) of them all,…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt C. Horizon: Zero Dawn is a game that does a few things really well. It’s a technical marvel, showing a beautiful vision of a post-apocalyptic that just begs to be explored. It’s a fun game, in that open-world checklist-a-thon style popularized by Ubisoft and Rockstar. It has…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Matt S. With the latest Nintendo handheld, the Nintendo Switch, now on the market (yes, I know it streams to home televisions too, but it’s totally a handheld), I thought for this week’s retro reflections I’d take a bit of a personal look back at my history…
Read MoreInterview by Matt S. It has been a little lost among the excitement for all the other big RPGs out over the next month or so – Mass Effect: Andromeda, Horizon: Zero Dawn and NieR: Automata among them, but Torment: Tides of Numenera is a game that deserves a lot…
Read MoreInterview by Matt S. Yoko Taro is an absolute genius. He hasn’t produced a huge number of games over his career to date, but what he is best known for; the Drakengard series, as well as NieR, have been right up there with the best games that you’ll ever play.…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. Once developers were able to start working with polygons and creating full 3D worlds, something quite substantial happened to the aesthetics of game art. Where once, inhibited by the technology available to them, game developers were forced into highly-stylised abstractions, such as pixel art, suddenly the…
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