Cross-post from DigitallyDownloaded.net. “Joe’s Diner is scary.” That’s a message I sent to DigitallyDownloaded.net’s editor-in-chief not long after starting up the game. It was late at night, I was home alone, and there was a weather bomb outside making all kinds of ghoulish noises. A brief opening had introduced me …
Game Review
Double Fine has a way of breathing new life into old genres. They weave weird, wonderful stories through familiar mechanics to create experiences unlike anything else. Psychonauts twisted the 3D platformer by having you quite literally exploring people’s psyches. Costume Quest drew a story of childhood adventure around a Japanese-style …
These days, it takes a lot for a retro-inspired roguelike platformer to stand out. Bard’s Gold does nothing of the sort. If anything, it’s more simplistic than its peers, but I nonetheless found it to be one of the more enjoyable games to come out of this obsession with pixel …
Note: This post includes some NSFW screenshots from Ladykiller in a Bind. We need more games about sex. It’s odd (but not really surprising) that an medium so rife with titillation and sexualisation is so reluctant to actually explore sex as a theme. That’s part of what makes Ladykiller in a …
Gurumin 3D: A Monstrous Adventure feels old. Well, it is old – this is a 3DS port of a game that first came out in 2004 – but it feels even older. I don’t mean it feels dated, because it certainly doesn’t, but that it has the look, feel, and …
Pinball FX 2 VR is one of the best virtual reality games I’ve played. There’s a beautiful irony that: VR, with all its futurist appeal, shines brightest when it’s used to recreate one of the precursors to modern video games. By having you stand over a pinball machine, looking down …
There’s a moment not long into Shantae: Half-Genie Hero that gave me chills. As usual, Half-Genie Hero opened with Shantae’s longtime arch-nemesis Risky Boots attacking Scuttle Town. I was running through Main Street, hair-whipping Tinkerbats left and right, enjoying the pumping soundtrack, when suddenly… vocals. This is the first Shantae …
I used to play a lot of Cool Boarders back in the day. When everyone was obsessed with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, I got my video game extreme sports from the snow. That was many years ago, though; I don’t think I’ve played a snowboarding game since the first SSX. There hasn’t exactly been an abundance of …
“In 2013, Chicago realised the promise of smart cities with ctOS, a citywide operating system merging big data with surveillance, security, and transit programs. With a few hundred lines of code, hackers were able to hijack its central servers and cripple the entire grid. Many believed the attack would be …
Masquerada: Songs and Shadows is a timely reminder of the power that fantasy stories can have to explore real-world issues. Fantasy and science-fiction have a long history of taking on things like class conflict and racism through metaphor, but it seems to often fall short, especially in video games. I …