Is it the weekend again? Well, it’s like the old saying: Time flies when you’re battling low-grade seasonal affective disorder and can’t get anything done, making life an unstructured fog of minimal possible effort on everything you do! Sigh...

I started Deus Ex late in December, dropped it for a few weeks, then picked it up again this week. I’m still very early in the game - just arrived in Hell’s Kitchen - and I think it’s going to be a long ‘un. Starting to really get into it, now that my eyes have adjusted to its 20th century graphics and I’m gradually…

I’ll be going on a lengthy road trip this weekend, and the Switch will be coming with. But, that’ll mean less online games. I’ve recently been trying to speed-run Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, currently at the stage of just trying to learn it myself. I’ll probably get into its undoubtedly helpful and extensive…

Picked up a Steam game called Battle Brothers. It’s a turn based strategy game with a gritty medieval feel, where you’re a group of mercenaries in a shithole fantasy world trying to gain fame and fortune going up against whatever enemies you can face. Combat takes place on an isometric hex field and reminds me vaguely…

Salutations~

I finally finished Alien: Isolation. I made a few comments about this game last week, so rather than repeat myself, I’ll just say this: I got past the first enemy encounter by lighting a flare and throwing it across the room to create a distraction, and I got past the last enemy encounter by lighting a flare and…

It’s a weird lull right now in terms of games. I’ve been filling time with Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds again. Finally managed to get my second chicken dinner in squad by playing decoy and exposing the other team’s location while my teammate gunned the last 2 down. Sometimes it’s good to embrace the fact you’re a…

Man, that Metal Gear Survive thing. It’s weird to think of games that manage that act of being so derivative, so ideologically lazy that they almost wrap around to being casually surreal. Which is a lovely if nakedly forced segue into the game I have been unfortunately playing most this week: Shadow the Hedgehog. In a…

Yesterday evening,I was lucky enough to go hang out at a friend’s house for the sole purpose of playing Playstation VR. In short, it’s awesome. In long, it’s aaaaaawwwweeee... (sorry)
To get my VR legs going, we started with Thumper. The depth of it was impressive and adds to the experience. It doesn’t require intense…

Last time I was around these parts I mentioned I’d be checking out Mafia 3. Well I checked it out, then I checked out. I’ll probably persevere with it occasionally but it’s not looking great. Dull and repetitive, and the bad kind of repetition at that.

No More Heroes 2 was possibly the only game that I actually returned, just because I was having so little fun with it. It was my first foray into the series (and it even starts with a joke about people not needing to play the first one to get into it), and I was pretty stoked for a madcap M-rated Wii title.…

BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS OF STEEL

Still real worried about this. The old God of War games justified their horrorshow of a protagonist with solid design and fun combat. Now we’re attempting to rehabilitate a rampaging monster and leaning on what looks worryingly like bland, safe third-person combat. I’m not sure that’s a recipe for success.

Great article. NMH is definitely a piece of work that can spawn some very.. ahem.. spirited discussions, because it deals with some problematic stuff with enough of a wink to claim satire, but at the same time purposefully blurring lines as part of its interest in involving the player in the question of what the lines…

Considering that at one point in the trailer they are about to ally themselves with The World Serpent, the child of Loki and Thor’s arch-nemesis in Nordic Myth who’s prophesied to kill Thor during Ragnarok, I assume that whatever their goals are it involves Kratos starting another apocalypse.

I never really understood why the Resident Evil movie needed the Resident Evil license. Other than a couple of proper nouns and the general presence of zombies, it has nothing in common with the games (especially the ones that had been released up to that point) in terms of story, tone, or theme. If you changed a few…

Is it bad that my first thought was “How John Cena spends his free time is his business?” as in, I thought the headline meants that John Cena was going to sit down and play some Duke Nukem.

So this is what draws me out of lurking on The A.V. Club for nearly a decade.

I have to assume that this adaptation will make Duke a straight action hero. Existing franchise material (with the exception of wildly popular fare like Harry Potter) is in demand more for the legal and financial benefits of adaptation than for branding. With Duke in particular, I can’t imagine that scads of grown…

I thought the game was pretty smart in how it illustrated how stupid gamers and their expectations of games are. My favorite part is how it literally has us do menial jobs to advance to the next level. Mow that lawn! Find the kitten! Pick up coconuts! It’s meaningless and so true. Sure it might stumble as commentary…