Tag: Video Games
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The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow Review – Quintessential British Folk Horror
Folk horror has been a part of British culture for a long time and, even though the term itself is somewhat new, the genre continues to be a popular source of spooky entertainment. A recent example is Alex Garland’s 2022 film Men, which recontextualises folk horror tropes to tell a distinctly modern story about gender.…
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Where Do We Go Now? 3 Days at Develop: Brighton
When applying, I was not confident about my chances of receiving a press pass in order to attend Develop:Brighton. The three-day conference is the primo event within the video game industry and sees many of the UK’s most talented developers, creators, and business moguls come together to network, share knowledge and, just generally, have a…
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Binary Domain Review – Seven Out of Ten
Developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the team behind the Yakuza series, Binary Domain found itself in an odd kind of limbo upon release in 2012. A third-person cover shooter in the vein of Gears of War, the game arrived towards the end of the seventh generation of consoles, during a time period in which…
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Video Games as Art: Ico as Isolation
I like to think that we have moved beyond the question of whether video games are art. Critics and consumers are much more receptive to the idea that the medium has reached a level of creative, emotional power that it can be seen as a genuine form of artistic expression, to stand alongside literature, cinema,…
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In Search of Hate
As a rule of thumb, I tend not to write about games that I do not like. The idea that it’s easy to denigrate and much harder to praise is not a theory I subscribe to. Perhaps this mindset is something that came about with the inception of the YouTube internet critic, with figures like…
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Card Shark Review – A Cultivated Garden
Voltaire is famously quoted as saying that you shouldn’t ‘think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money’. Indeed, this adage is so popular that you’re most likely to come across it plastered on Minions-based image macros shared by your extended family on Facebook, or by that dude in…
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I Played Every Monkey Island Game and All I Wrote Was This Stupid Retrospective
Having been around for a whopping 31 years, Monkey Island is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Maybe you’re an original gangster, having experienced the first game in the series all the way back in 1990 and its sequel the following year in 1991? Or you could…
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The Overwatch 2 Beta is Threatening My Productivity
Back in February I wrote a piece on my multiplayer addiction of choice, Overwatch. Make no mistake, although titled a ‘lament’, I deeply enjoy the game and, despite its reoccurring pockets of player-base toxicity, still regularly play with the same group of friends. At the end of the article, I made the (admittedly) desperate claim…
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An Interview With Sally Sheppard Regarding Spellbound: The Magic Within
As I wandered around the Indie Game Showcase at W.A.S.D. one stall, adorned with a colourful banner and a cast of magical characters, immediately grabbed my attention. The game in question was Spellbound: The Magic Within, an upcoming visual novel from developer Wyrdren Games. While I waited to play the demo, I was further intrigued…
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Day of the Tentacle Remastered Review – Perfectly Paced Puzzles and Puns
There are several factors that contribute to making a point-and-click adventure game truly great, and rarely do they all manage to coalesce like they do in LucasArt’s 1993 classic Day of the Tentacle. Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman managed, in their first directorial roles no less, to create a sequel to Ron Gilbert’s ground-breaking Maniac…
Gamer! Beware! 