Category: Feature
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I love and miss Maximum Rocknroll
The moment that changed my life forever was November 2008, when I turned 16. For my birthday, my parents bought me my first guitar and amp, a left-handed Fender Squier and a tiny Marshall. I awkwardly (and poorly) taught myself music fundamentals on that motherfucker; I would join up with a high school friend and…
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El Paso, Elsewhere and Inverting the Monster as Metaphor
Roughly halfway through El Paso, Elsewhere you meet Draculae for the first time.
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Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, Aging, and Agency
How many years will we let pass, how much more brutal must every single fight become before everyone finally lets Kazuma Kiryu go?
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Labores Ludos Gignit!
This year at the Game Awards, the Game Workers of Southern California stood in front of the industry and proudly proclaimed: Labor Creates Games!
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Who Watches The Watchers Who Like To Watch?
On a brightly lit soundstage, two heavily made up drag queens look out at us, the audience outside the screen. They are bemused, observing without observing. Cognizant of the watchers they cannot see but just know will be there. “I’m Trixie Mattel,” says the first, eyes popping beneath heavy lashes and iconically bombastic eyeshadow. “I’m…
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Intuitive Reading
On Game Anthologies Like any type of media, video games are presented in the tried-and-true forms familiar to their audiences. Mini games, visual novels, and RPGs are as ubiquitous for games as short stories, chapbooks, and essay collections are for literature. Another similarity between different types of media is their penchant for borrowing from one…
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Asphalt Graffiti
Mini Metro was a pleasing, inoffensive game about creating a public train system. Its sequel, Mini Motorways, could easily be described as “the same, except it’s cars.” There is, however, a murkier underside to the follow-up title, which develops a surprisingly effective satire. In Mini Motorways, you place road tiles to connect color-coded businesses with…
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A Rain to End and a Flower to Begin
A short primer on Drakengard 3 and Xenofeminism (Spoilers for Hybrid Child and Drakengard 3 follow) One of Yoko Taro’s most lovingly cited sources of inspiration is the book Hybrid Child by Mariko Ohara. In this book, an immortal rogue AI machine weapon with the power to metamorphose into other creatures assumes the form of…
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Three Skate Games to Play Right Now
What if you just want to play a skate game, right now, with little to no strings attached?
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FruitySnacks on Fishing and Creating Community in Final Fantasy XIV
This interview has been edited for clarity. Light spoilers for Endwalker ahead. Kaile Hultner: How long have you been playing Final Fantasy XIV? How did you get attracted to fishing? FruitySnacks: Oh, I’m trying to remember when I started playing. It’s been a while. It was like November of 2014, I think. KH: So right…