Review by Lindsay M. Imagine you’re walking down the sidewalk and find a phone, face-down in some tall grass next to a sidewalk. It’s nighttime but luckily you’re in a well-lit area of your town — otherwise you would have missed it altogether, or possibly stepped on it. You pick…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Steins;Gate is one of the best visual novels that you’ll ever play. Indeed, it’s a big part of the reason that more and more visual novels are coming out west – PQube hit some real success in localising the original and now other niche publishers want…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Those themes of uncanniness which are most prominent, … are all concerned with the phenomenon of the ‘double’, which appears in every shape and in every degree of development …the ‘double’ has become a thing of terror.” (Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, 1919) Related reading: Here They…
Read MoreReview by Mikhail M. It feels surreal to be writing about Zero Time Dilemma, the third entry in the Zero Escape series. In 2014, Kotaro Uchikoshi, the director, said that the end of the trilogy might not happen. This really saddened me and all the Zero Escape fans out there…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. The Park is the scariest game I think I have ever played – though that isn’t exactly saying a lot because (a) I scare very, very easily, and (b) I don’t play a whole lot of horror games (see point a). Upon loading it up, you’re…
Read MoreReview by Nick H. iNK Stories has, in 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, created a narrative exploration of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which provides insight on the events that transpired by giving players the opportunity to live through them. And it is such an important game. Everyone should play it.…
Read MoreArticle by Matt S. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of the greatest books in the history of literature. Nabokov’s observations on the American culture that underpin the book, and his subsequent deconstruction of it through darkly transgressive humour, is by turns humorous and shocking, but at all times it’s breathtaking…
Read MoreWelcome to the latest episode of the Digitally Downloaded podcast; Digitally Uploaded! This week, Matt, Alan and Chris discuss narrative. From what we like to see in a game narrative, through to some games that we want to highlight as narratives we like in particular, and we enter into that…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. As much respect as I have for David Cage, I hadn’t actually played Heavy Rain before. I didn’t have a PlayStation 3 when it first launched, and when I did eventually pick one up, there were an awful lot of games I had to catch up…
Read MoreJean-Pierre Jeunet is one of my favourite film directors of all time. Ignoring his attempt to play in Hollywood with Aliens Resurrection (though nowhere near as bad as people would suggest that it is anyway), the French auteur’s body of work, from Delicatessen to The City Of Lost Children and…
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