Review by Matt S. Games academic, Ian Bogost, recently wrote a piece that proved to be controversial. In it, he laid out some of the issues in the way that game creators often try to tell stories using similar narrative structures to what those in literature and film have traditionally…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. In Japan, horror is a summer activity. For centuries the Japanese have flocked to exhibitions of ghost paintings, haunted houses, and the cinema in the hottest months of the year in order to experience scares and chills. They do this precisely because that chilling effect of…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a quick talk about NightCry. Developed by Nude Maker studios and featuring talent like Hifumi Kono, the director of the original Clock Tower games, and Takashi Shimizu, the film director responsible for terrifying classics like Ju-On, among other high profile talents,…
Read MoreThe Coma acts as a cautionary tale, albeit that of a farfetched one. Overworking school students will lead to a nightmarish hellscape where teachers attack students who fall behind. Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch, but underneath it all it speaks to the harsh conditions and pressures that Korean…
Read MoreI don’t think I’ve come across a title that has proven as successful in exposing deficiencies in how games are typically reviewed in this industry as I have just seen with Corpse Party: Blood Drive. Flicking through some of the other reviews on the game and you’ll see endless complaints…
Read MoreSOMA succeeds in creating a tense atmosphere, as you would expect from the development team behind the original Amnesia. The suspense does not always hold up as well as I would have liked, but by and large the team at Frictional Games has proven yet again that they know how…
Read MoreAs I commented in my hands-on preview of Until Dawn a couple of weeks ago, it genuinely surprises me that game developers so rarely tackle the teen slasher horror genre as a subject. We all know the industry’s love of zombies, but as fun as that horror can be, there’s…
Read MoreI love slasher and stalker horror films. Before I was legally allowed to watch them, I was devouring stuff like Friday the 13th, Halloween, the Chucky films, an even the more obscure stuff like the Leprechaun series (Jennifer Aniston back in the day…). Related reading: Here are ten of my…
Read MoreReview by Jim S. For the 35th anniversary of the Alien franchise, Sega and The Creative Assembly have released Alien: Isolation. I can’t think of a more perfect way to celebrate one of the most beloved sci-fi horror films ever made. The game takes place 15 years after the events…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Melancholia can make for an oddly beautiful theme when done right. We’ve seen it work for poets such as T.S Eliot (“By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/ Till human voices wake us, and we drown” – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is…
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