Nintendo has a history of fleshing out the larger Pokémon world through spinoffs. What games from the Pokémon Snap and Detective Pikachu series lacked in terms of action, they made up for in the way they made pokémon feel like creatures with rich lives outside of their relationships with trainers. And as the mainline series […]
Resident Evil has always been a strange creature: Like many of its most notable monsters, it has shifted and evolved into various forms. From its blocky days of tank-controlled Z-list actors to first-person fright fests, the franchise’s identity is not so much tied to genre as theme: zombies, viruses, very ugly monsters. Now, with Requiem, […]
I’ve always wanted to go skydiving. Aerial_Knight’s DropShot, from indie developer Aerial_Knight, lets me live out that dream – at least in a safe, virtual kind of way. It also lets me shoot bullets from finger guns, wield laser skulls, and wear cool sunglasses while I’m falling through the air. So maybe it’s better than […]
Colonialism is not merely about occupying nations. It’s a project of mass violence, part of which involves total erasure and the widespread theft of some of the most culturally significant artifacts in the world. Even today, colonizing nations proudly display stolen artifacts, acting as peacocking robbers under the guise of tourism. See, for example, the […]
The woods in Reanimal are full of surprises. You will encounter human cadavers that slither like snakes, gigantic talking pigs, and, at one point, a forlorn, supersized whale who seems resigned to an agonizingly slow death. These variously monstrous beings inhabit a realm that, though it looks like our own, seems to defy spatial logic: […]
A postmodern surrealist tale of geopolitics. An otaku’s hell-bent journey to become the top-ranked assassin. A high school cheerleader who kills zombies with a chainsaw and pompoms, with a story cowritten by James Gunn. Every project under the Grasshopper Manufacture umbrella sounds like an unlikely anecdote. The Japanese video game studio founded in 1998 by […]
I’m an awful rock climber. Being scared of heights probably doesn’t help. But when I’ve tried it, I’ve loved the slow, methodical work of moving from one ledge to the next. It reminds me a lot of why I love running; in both sports, you achieve goals that seem insurmountable by taking them one step […]
When a video game series goes on for a long time, it raises a question for newcomers: Just where is the best place to jump in? In the case of Dragon Quest, there are nearly a dozen mainline titles, not to mention copious spinoffs and ports that span four decades of history. Of late, though, […]
It’s no secret that Cassette Boy is inspired by the classics. It’s a top-down adventure game in the vein of a retro Legend of Zelda, while your home base is a small town like in an older Pokémon game, complete with a mom who is constantly wishing you well. The game’s blocky 3D graphics evoke […]
There’s a lot about Perfect Tides: Station to Station’s Mara that I find relatable. Like me, she’s recently moved to a place simply called “the City” from the middle of nowhere, and like me, she’s an avid writer. But these biographical details aren’t the important thing; it’s the way she’s painted by the game’s incredibly […]