The Paragon Homunculus in ME

Over the course of seven days I fell in and out of love, only to find it again in the arms of another.  I stopped a genocide, only to cause two others; I talked people off ledges, helped mend broken

The Dear Esther Interlard

You are on a macadam jetty — ostensibly shipwrecked — looking out over a briny shoreline that snakes its way out into the distance before disappearing behind a limestone cliff face. Even further stands a radio tower on which a

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY and the douchebag in all of us

It’s late in Arkham Asylum. Dawn will break soon and it seems like the nightmare Joker would unleash onto Gotham was averted. The game is about to end, but, before it does, a call about Two-Face is overheard on the radio. It seems Batman: Arkham Asylum is all but over for Commissioner Gordon, you and me. But not Batman. He flies off to handle another crisis in Gotham City. He must endure. The game offers us a taste of what it is like being Bats, but just a taste. What that ending says is that never truly became him. His martyrdom must continue after the credits rolls.

Sometime after the first game, mayor Quincy Sharp, former warden of Arkham, together with the help of Dr. Hugo Strange, reallocated all criminals to a closed-off area in Gotham City and named that new prison Arkham City. The developer’s goal in doing this is pretty straight forward: to finally get the full experience of being Batman, as he scours the city for criminal activity.

In doing so, what they have managed to do was to corrupt all that understanding of what it means to be Batman that was so well-crafted in the first game. Batman is no longer a hero. He is a “video game hero”, with all game manias that entails.

Review: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters

This is the sort of review to begin with a description of myself, the reader: I am a 24-32 year old white, heterosexual male who comes from a very liberal background (I live in the Portland, Oregon of the East,

Sine Mora – XBLA Review

Shoot ‘em ups—in my mind—have always been games about sex. It’s not the phallic imagery. Nor is it the screenfuls of bullet-semen. And while the pacing is often frantic, frenzied, down and dirty even, I can’t say that it’s more

The digital god, Proteus

Proteus is an ancient Greek god, called “The Old Man of the Sea”. His name carries the weight of newness, of lives left unlived and a world untouched by man. This is the impression Proteus, a game by Ed Key

Draw Pinchbeck pretty, Dear Esther's got grass

The syndicated remake of 2008’s Dear Esther is out in a day and there’s hubbub. People seem to think that something wonderful is just breaching the horizon. And they’ve been talking – everyone has – about the life-changing power they’ll

Dofus Review: A pretty gem with one too many flaws

I’m just going to start with this. I hate the standard MMORPG gameplay. I hate cool-downs, auto-targeting, and watching arrows curve to hit me because the shooter’s accuracy stat defeated my agility stat. I often look at games with a system like this and wonder, “Why don’t they just be honest and make it turn-based? It’s all decided by ability scores and dice rolls anyways.” Dofus, while quite enjoyable in many ways, has made me eat my words on that opinion.

Review: Pineapple Smash Crew

Thanks to Pineapple Smash Crew I have screamed at my computer more than any other game. These weren’t screams of rage, or frustration: they were exhortations. “No, Jools, keep away from the fire!” They were accompanied by pleading—“Okay, Roo, we

Punk baby, lycanthropy rock

KEYBOARD DRUMSET FUCKING WEREWOLF is a 2011 independent game by Cactus and can be played here. Something in the freshly-minted Swedish air made KEYBOARD DRUMSET FUCKING WEREWOLF a totally feasible, attainable thing. It’s an attitude – some counter-cultural, punk, piss