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At the beginning of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, an anthropomorphic wolf voiced by Sting tells you to travel around the depression-era United States collecting stories and telling some of your own. With a premise like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Where the Water Tastes Like Wine would live and die by…
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Far Cry 5 didn't know whether it wanted to tell a serious story or a silly one and, in the end, it settled for barely telling a story at all. Lost on Mars—the second piece of DLC in Far Cry 5's season pass—knows it's silly and milks it at every opportunity. It's hilarious at times,…
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I've never been a huge fan of the western genre. Firefly and Westworld are quasi-westerns, I guess, and that's about as close as I get to enjoying it. If the genre had more aliens, ghosts, and goblins, I might have developed more of a taste for it. West of Loathing has all that and it's…
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Cyberpunk stories often assume that body upgrades are commonplace in the future, albeit they are typically reserved for the rich, further widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. The Red Strings Club goes one step further and proposes a future where humans can upgrade their minds to remove negativity and emotional pain. One generous…
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I have a strange obsession with games that immerse me in post-apocalyptic nuclear wastelands. It's a weird fetish, but an undeniable truth about me nonetheless, dating back to my fascination with the first Fallout game. Immersion might be a bit of a buzzword, but in the case of Metro Redux, it's a well-earned label and…
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It's been fifteen years since the last mainline F-Zero game and I can only play the same old Wipeout games so many times. Fast RMX doesn't quite fill the futuristic-racer void left behind by those classic franchises, but it's a decent snack that'll keep me going until the main course eventually arrives. If Fast RMX…
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The history of Kickstarter-funded video games isn't exactly full of success stories. For every Shovel Knight, there's a Mighty No. 9. Much like movie tie-ins, you do occasionally get good games from Kickstarter, but for the most part, you should exercise caution and keep the hype to a minimum. We still don't know whether Koji…
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N++ fully earns the "Ultimate Edition" subtitle attached to its marketing. The original N was a Flash game from 2004 and was followed up by N+ for the Xbox 360, DS, and PSP. In 2015, Metanet Software released N++ for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and as of May 2018, the definitive version of this addictive momentum-based platformer…
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I thoroughly enjoyed Life is Strange, but given how it ended, I wasn't exactly screaming out for a sequel. The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a free prologue tasked with getting us interested in whatever the hell is going to happen in Life is Strange 2. Well, mission accomplished. Captain Spirit wastes no time…
Continue reading ➞ The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (PC)
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Much like the sport it's based on, Golf Story is initially relaxing and enjoyable enough: a pleasant way to spend a lazy afternoon. However, after a few hours, Golf Story begins to get boring and the mind starts to think about all the more interesting things you could be doing instead. Both the game and the…
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In House Flipper, you renovate run-down houses and sell them for a profit. Your first purchase will probably be a bug-infested one-bedroom house but before long you'll be buying mansions with garages bigger than a San Francisco apartment. There's an inherent satisfaction in turning a property from something you need a hazmat suit to enter into…
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*Free review copy provided by the publisher* Genre mashups are a tricky thing. When they work, they can be some of the most memorable games ever made, taking players by surprise and making you wonder why no-one thought of doing it before. Portal is a good example, melding first-person shooting with puzzles in a way…
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Subsurface Circular is a visual novel about talking to strangers on a train. Basically, a British person's worst nightmare. It ends up being a relaxing and thought-provoking experience where you talk to androids and solve a mystery without ever moving from your seat. At ninety minutes long, Subsurface Circular doesn't overstay its welcome and if…
I've spent more time than I'd like to acknowledge thinking about the games that might be revealed at E3 2018. There's no point keeping these predictions in my head because then I can't be smug and annoying if I get any of them correct. Anyway, here are my predictions. Most of them are a bit…
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Far Cry 5's first piece of DLC—Hours of Darkness—shifts the focus to stealth with a reworked perked system that's an ideal fit for a short piece of DLC. Unfortunately, not much else has changed. Hours of Darkness feels like a fan-made mod for Far Cry 5. There's barely any story to speak of, no interesting…
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Detroit: Become Human offers a fascinating glimpse into a possible future where the US is rife with prejudice and discrimination. A future where people are angry about the loss of job opportunities and direct that anger towards those they feel took their jobs. A future where politicians are in the pockets of large corporations, putting the…
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On May 2, 2017, The New York Times stated the following in an article about gamers: This quote was also included in a tweet which was rightly lambasted and laughed at by gamers and people with common sense. Stereotyping is rarely accurate or productive, especially when you're talking about 150 million people. For context, there are about 126…
Continue reading ➞ The Other Problem with that New York Times Article About Gamers
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"Ares, you tricked me into murdering my family. They weren't supposed to be among the completely innocent people I was brutally murdering for no reason." Yeah... the new GoW will have to go some way to make me give a shit about Kratos. https://t.co/dWjIbRIVBd — Chris Davis (@cdavis_games) March 26, 2018 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js That's a tweet…
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Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom has everything it needs to be a great JRPG. There's a deep combat system, charming characters and environments, and an interesting fantasy premise. It could have been really good, maybe even great. Instead, Level-5 spread the quality too thin, mixing it with half-baked concepts such as skirmishes and kingdom…
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Last year, Ubisoft made huge changes to its Assassins' Creed franchise with the release of Assassin's Creed Origins, which I gave a four out of five. Thanks to Origins, I'm excited to play Assassins' Creed games again. Far Cry desperately needed the same treatment. Instead, Far Cry 5 is merely a minor evolution in a series that hasn't…
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*Free review copy provided by Ubisoft* Assassin's Creed Rogue has a relatable protagonist and an intriguing premise, so it's a shame that both are wasted on a mundane game that was churned out to drag a few more dollars from gamers who hadn't upgraded to the PS4/Xbox One generation. The mission structure is uninspired, you…
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Hidden Agenda, Supermassive Games' follow up to the excellent Until Dawn, is an interactive police procedural that can be played solo or with friends as part of Sony's PlayLink experiment. Sony is trying to introduce games to a wider audience; it's a noble goal. For non-gamers, touching the screen of their phone/tablet is far more…
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This re-re-release of Okami doesn't add much to either the original game or the 2012 HD version. There are no extra characters or cosmetics, no added DLC, and no galleries of concept art. All this latest version of Okami does is upgrade the visuals to 4k (assuming you have the hardware). Fortunately, Okami doesn't need…
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*Review copy provided by publisher* Devil May Cry transitioned from being a Resident Evil sequel to one of the best new IPs on the Playstation 2. It inspired three sequels, a reboot, and the God of War and Bayonetta franchises. In other words, it's a series that has earned some respect. Unfortunately, this HD Collection is…
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Fair warning: this review is longer than usual and descends into analysis territory at times. An earlier draft was much shorter, but I didn’t feel comfortable putting my criticisms out there without concrete examples. Despite spending a lot of time focusing on the negatives, I don’t hate Iconoclasts by any stretch. It’s average. Iconoclasts is…
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Sometimes all you need is a push. I was tempted by the previous Yakuza games and even had Yakuza 5 downloaded on my PS3 at one point. I never played it. It can be hard to jump into a series so late and nothing I saw made them look like must-play games. Then along came…
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I died over 500 times completing Celeste's six-hour story mode. I died another 500 times on just one of the post-game challenge levels. If I’d have known this before playing Celeste, I would have deleted the game and never bothered. I like a challenge but there’s usually a limit to my patience with hard video…
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Video games can—and indeed should—deal with sensitive subjects like mental illness. Celeste and Night in the Woods tackled depression, however including sensitive such topics carries an inherent risk and isn't something to be taken lightly. If the developer doesn’t do its research or messes up the implementation then the illness can come off as a…
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Ubisoft's latest financial results provide further proof that major publishers are shifting from selling "traditional" $60 games to selling what Ubisoft refers to as "live service" games i.e. ones with recurring revenue streams. DLC, microtransactions, and loot boxes make money and a lot of it. When I was a wee lad, publishers made money by…
Continue reading ➞ Ubisoft to Create More “Live Service” Games
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Shadow of the Colossus is the perfect response to gamers who complain about the glut of remakes and ports of old games to new consoles. Shadow of the Colossus was on my list of shame for twelve years. I couldn’t afford the game when it first came out in 2005 but I made a mental…
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I always thought the term “collectathon” was a rather mean-spirited way to describe games like Jak & Daxter, Spyro the Dragon, and Super Mario 64. Sure, Jak & Daxter had 2000 precursor orbs to walk into, but it was the power cells that progressed the story and they took more work. You collected orbs but…
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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a disappointing follow up to The New Order. The story in The New Colossus features two of the craziest scenes ever included in a video game, and yet for most of its fifteen hour campaign, the story meanders from destroyed city to destroyed city—and then back to the first destroyed city—as…
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Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is the follow-up to the crazy but delightful Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. The original had me glued to my Vita the entire way through as I watched an evil animatronic teddy bear force a group of school children to murder each other. Goodbye Despair offers more of the same. There’s a bigger…
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Steins;Gate is my favorite visual novel and I recommend it to anyone. It’s a time travel story that makes as much sense as a time travel story ever can and includes a healthy dose of science to keep everything appropriately grounded. Steins;Gate’s “true ending” felt complete and it never occurred to me that we’d get…
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It’s about that time of the year when every online publication and YouTuber churns out a Game of the Year list. Actually, that time was a few weeks ago, but it’s still 2017, so I reckon I can get away with it. When have I ever been timely? I don't want to do a straight…
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I can usually tell if I'm going to enjoy a puzzle game from the first ten minutes I spend playing it. Puzzle games follow a standard formula: introduce a simple concept and then drip-feed new mechanics into the game to up the challenge. However, you're usually doing the same thing from beginning to end. If…
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A Hat in Time is an adorable throwback to 3D platformers from the N64 era. It’s a love letter to games like Mario 64, however it’s a love letter from an honest partner. One who isn’t afraid to point out your flaws and tell you where you need to improve. Yes, I love you, but we…
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SteamWorld Dig 2 is a beautiful and charming game with a satisfying mixture of exploration, puzzles, and mildly challenging platforming. The more treasure you collect, the more abilities you unlock, which in turn, lets you collect even more treasure. It’s a simple yet addictive loop that pushed me forward until I beat the final boss.…
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With Assassin’s Creed Origins, Ubisoft has made wholesale changes to its most popular franchise. There’s a new combat system that feels more like For Honor than Arkham Asylum, side quests with meaty stories like those in The Witcher 3, and a loot system ripped straight from Destiny. You can even hide in tall grass like,…
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“I can’t tell you anything about Doki Doki Literature Club. Just play it.” “It starts slow, but it’s totally worth it.” “You have to play this blind to get the full experience. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever played.” That is how people talk about Doki Doki Literature Club. Everyone wants you to play the…
