It was all set to be the biggest game of the year, but Cyberpunk 2077’s release has been overshadowed by technical hitches and multiple controversies. Sam Brooks reviews. Before you talk about actually playing Cyberpunk 2077, there are a myriad of other things you have to talk about first. More internet ink has been spilled … Read more
Is the much maligned Final Fantasy VII sequel/spinoff Dirge of Cerberus really as bad as everyone says? I was 17 when Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII came out. As a longtime Final Fantasy nerd at the height of my obligatory emo phase, the idea of a new game focused on Vincent Valentine, everyone’s favourite … Read more
The JRPG has been in decline for the past decade, but the Tales series continues to attract a dedicated audience. Sam Brooks investigates how it has survived so long. The first Tales game I ever played was a good ten years after its debut. It was 2005, the year where we pre-emptively gave Reese Witherspoon an Oscar for playing … Read more
Despite five numbered entries over eleven years, Suikoden remains a much loved but little known RPG series. Sam Brooks writes about one of his favourite video game series ever, and what makes it so special. If there’s a niche that I occupy that very few other people do, it’s that I love video games based on 14th-16th … Read more
A new game ten years in the making attempts to adapt naturist Henry David Thoreau’s classic Walden. But far from the rich and luscious text of Thoreau’s hippie bible, Walden, a game is closer to a bowl of plastic fruit, writes Don Rowe. Few games start with an advertisement for endowments in the arts and humanities. But … Read more
Eugenia Woo has a date with evil in a RPG that drops moral decisions on the player like a tonne of bricks. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. That’s Nietzsche. I remember someone trying to explain that to me ages ago using the tired example of … Read more
In Undertale, monsters aren’t bad, they’re just misunderstood – but that doesn’t mean you can’t slay them anyway. Liam Maguren holds the power of life and death in a game that straddles the line between hilarious and ridiculous. Standing alongside the beautiful brutality of Bloodborne, the social life-crumbling world of The Witcher 3, and the skin-itching addiction … Read more