It’s story time, TAY. Paragraph by paragraph, let’s build something that we can look back on and wonder how we ever let such a monster come to exist. One paragraph per person, and maybe call dibs before writing so we can maintain some semblance of order. As a community, let’s write the most incoherent, absurdist tale…

Nintendo has made it abundantly clear how big The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is going to be. 12 times the size of Twilight Princess, apparently, with the E3 demo representing just 1% of the entire game. Impressive numbers, to be sure, but worrying too. From the many gameplay videos streamed on Nintendo…

Have you ever wondered why the replay systems in games like Super Smash Bros. and Gran Turismo often lack simple features like fast forward and skip? Well, I did, so I dug into a couple of wonderful articles on how replay modes actually work. In addition to satisfying my curiosity, the nitty gritty got me thinking…

The recent news that the two major military-shooter franchises are heading in opposite directions has been pretty well received by critics, and it’s not hard to see why. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the game that kicked off the age of the gritty, modern-day shooter, came out nearly 10 years ago, and few games have…

Now hear this: I was patrolling an art museum the other day, rendering my expert opinion on the latest pieces on display, when I overhear some pleb complimenting the aesthetics of a vivid impressionist landscape of a 17th century sunrise. My finely-honed intellect pricks, and I approach the man and demand to know…

Ryse: Son of Rome is not a great game. You could probably argue that it’s not even a good game. But it sure is pretty. That’s not surprising coming from the studio that created Crysis, the game that brought the most bleeding-edge PCs to their knees and inspired the new standard of “but can it run Crysis?” Unlike …

Are you disappointed that the new Zelda game’s been delayed to March 2017? Well, I’ve got some good news for you. You can play the best Zelda of the last decade right now, and it’s not even made by Nintendo. It’s Evoland II, and don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it; it almost passed me by, too. I’m not quite sure…

In Portugal, you can walk into McDonald’s and order traditional Peasant soup. In Malaysia, you can start the day with a nourishing McPorridge, and in the Philippines, rice and spaghetti are popular alternatives to the standard French Fries. These meals are unique and unavailable outside their country of origin. Put…

Work, rest, and play. It’s more than just a maxim for selling Mars Bars, it’s a core tenet to a happy life. Balancing the daily grind with adequate time for rest and relaxation is vital to our health: insufficient sleep increases the risk of stroke, obesity, and diabetes. Similarly, working long hours heightens stress…

I don’t like horror movies. I like horror video games. You’d think these two statements would be at odds, and yet here we are. Something like The Silence of the Lambs does nothing for me, and the Saw movies actively make me ill. But Alan Wake, F.E.A.R., and Amnesia: The Dark Descent? Sign me up!

We like games for some pretty dumb reasons sometimes. For all the worthy praise we give to meaningful narratives, innovative interaction, and the subversion of expectations, we toss around hollow terms like ‘visceral’, ‘evocative’, and ‘cinematic’. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, and I’ve been focusing on cutting…

Show of hands: who loves LEGO here? Given the colourful little bricks sell 7 sets every second, and there are more minifigures than any nation’s population, I’m guessing quite a few of you are reaching for the sky right now. I certainly am. LEGO was a huge part of my childhood, and I’ve still got tubs of the stuff…

For all the praise The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time receives, its dual-timeline structure is often treated as little more than an analogue to Link to the Past’s light and dark worlds. That’s selling it short, though. While switching between young and adult versions of Link does allow for a greater variety of…

Games aren’t always for the playing. What with Let’s Plays and Twitch streams and debrief podcasts, it’s possible to have fun with a game without ever picking up a controller. It’s a different kind of fun, but it can be just as satisfying.

I finally got around to playing Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate recently, and I’m pretty sure it’s my favourite entry in the franchise. Yes, that’s including AC: II and Black Flag - I’m talking favourite, here, not most revelatory. Beyond the mechanical improvements to the parkour, the side missions that are actually…

Rogue-likes and Rogue-lites have been pretty hot for some time now. Many of their mechanics are creeping into other genres, much in the same way RPG levelling systems can now be found in everything from shooters like Call of Duty to racing games like The Crew. This time, though, it’s procedural generation and…

Lara Croft is a fantastic protagonist. Since abandoning her 90s-era ‘tude for a more grounded survival instinct in 2013's Tomb Raider, Lara has become not only one of the strongest female characters in videogames - a dismally short list to this day - but one of the strongest videogame characters, period. And with her…

I’ve just wrapped up Rise of the Tomb Raider, and I will most likely write up some grander thoughts in the near future. Before I do that, however, I wanted to make mention of a small, seemingly inconsequential touch that stuck with me due to its near non-existence in most other games.