Review by Matt R. Ask any fan what they like about Dishonored, Deus Ex, Thief, and the like—”immersive sims”, as they’re often referred to, because the game industry has a weird obsession with genre descriptors that are vague to the point of being meaningless unless you’re already familiar with them—and…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. “I absolutely love this game and I’m not sure why it’s not getting reviewed anywhere,” writes a user on Metacritic about Monster Train First Class. I can tell you (and them) why: Because it’s so painfully easy to overlook. I very nearly did. I’m glad I…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Ever-prolific publisher, NISA, is at it again, having announced two games this week. We’re getting a new horror game with a deeply Japanese aesthetic as well as a new roguelike. The horror game is called Shadow Corridor, and it sounds like it might be a bit…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I never did review the original Curious Expedition. But I did do a video on it. In that video, I called it a “cracking roguelike.” Given that Curious Expedition 2 is better than the original, I guess that makes this game “cracking+”. It could have gone…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Hades has ruined me. Zengeon is a perfectly competent roguelike action game, but it’s not the kind of genre-transformative experience that Hades is, and that leaves it feeling a (very) distant second in 2021. The first issue is the narrative itself. Zengeon has a perfectly adequate…
Read MoreThe roguelike is a hot topic again, thanks to the “AAA”-roguelike, Returnal, exclusive to PlayStation 5. We chat about that this month on the podcast. We also have a good chat about photography in games, thanks to New Pokemon Snap bringing out the wildlife photographer in us… and then we…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. “But optimism dribbles away when horror repeats.” I have no idea how good Tim Reed’s novel, Spider from the Well, is, but I came across this quote from that novel when researching Returnal, and I think it’s a perfect encapsulation of that game. Returnal is a…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Cute little blockies bouncing around will never get old, and the studio behind BQM – BlockQuest Maker – is back with more of that exact aesthetic, with Dungeon & Gravestone, coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The game launches on April 23, and…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. While the roguelike genre is well overplayed at this point, enjoyable examples of the genre do deserve to be noted as such. Curse of the Dead Gods is an enjoyable roguelike, but being too stylistically similar to last year’s breakout super-hit, Hades, won’t help its cause,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The kind of experience that Dungeon Nightmares 1 & 2 champion is the kind of thing that goes down really well with YouTube and Twitch. Do a search for either title and you’ll see a wall of “OH! LOOK HOW SCARY IT IS!” and “SCARIEST GAME…
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