Category: Gaming

  • Hellish Quart Early Access Review

    “It is easy to kill someone with a slash of the sword. It is hard to be impossible for others to cut down.” Yagyu Munenori Hollywood, games and fiction gets fencing wrong. Protracted clash of blades. Wild telegraphed flailing and awkward cuts. Casually absorbing lethal attacks, or powering through guard positions. Ridiculous speeds. Most of…

  • Yakuza 0 and the Art of Writing the Anti-Criminal

    Kiryu Kazuma is a bad guy. Kiryu Kazuma isn’t a bad guy. The main protagonist of most of the games in the long-running Yakuza franchise, Kiryu Kazuma is the heart and soul of the series. Yakuza 0 explores his origins as a low-level member of the Dojima-gumi and his involvement in an underworld struggle to…

  • XCOM: Social Justice

    My fondest memory of X-COM (the original 1994 game) was my first base defense mission. Which happened to be the first mission of the campaign. The run began swimmingly. I established my first base on the coast of North Africa. From here I could cover a goodly portion of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle…

  • LA Noire and the Tragedy of Cole Phelps

    L.A. Noire broke new ground in the history of game design. Released in 2011, L.A. Noiretransported the player to 1947 Los Angeles, seen through the eyes of Detective Cole Phelps. Mixing investigation and interviews with traditional combat and chase sequences, the game charges the player with solving myriad crimes across Los Angeles, culminating in the massive conspiracy…

  • Memoirs of A Casual Gamer

    When I was younger, video games were a significant part of my life. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. As a gamer, I consider myself fortunate to have been born in the late 80s. Having skipped the growing pains of the video game industry, I entered the world of gaming…

  • Children of a Dead Earth: Future War in Space

    Children of a Dead Earth bills itself as the most scientifically accurate space warfare simulator ever. And it lives up to the hype. In the universe of CDE, World War III wiped out the Earth, forcing the survivors to colonise space. The game covers a superpower conflict between the Republic of Free People and the United Sol…