Category: Play
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It Hasn’t Been A “Good Year” for Games
UPDATE: A friend sent me a link to this website which has been keeping an even more granular account of games layoffs and studio closures. By this site’s count, there have been roughly 107 different layoffs and closures this year, with over 6,000 people fired in the past ten months. So, you know. It’s fun…
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First Glimpse: My Work Is Not Yet Done
I’ve been heavily anticipating Spencer Yan’s upcoming game, My Work Is Not Yet Done (Mac ver: itch.io) (Sutemi Productions/Raw Fury), since it was announced a few years ago. Ahead of Steam Next Fest we finally have a very small demo of the game that showcases its movement, controls, a good chunk of lore and worldbuilding,…
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Complexity and Flatness
It’s weird to call a game in which your character avatar is climbing a massive tower “flat,” but that is what Chants of Sennaar – by Rundisc and published by Focus Entertainment – feels like out of necessity. The game’s principal mechanic is language learning, but how that works in practice bears little resemblance to…
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Cyberpunk’s Critical Reevaluation Feels Rushed
I’m enjoying myself in Cyberpunk 2077, and that bothers me. To be clear, it doesn’t bother me because I find myself stuck in 2021, unwilling to acknowledge that a game studio – especially one with the resources and willingness to crunch like CD Projekt RED – can’t improve a video game post-launch. I’ve seen what…
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A Gun That Never Misses
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon story spoilers ahead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. For all intents and purposes, Rubicon III – the setting of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon – is a dead planet orbiting the star of a dead system. A half-century before we arrive and the events of the game…
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It’s That Lonely Sinking Feeling
In 2008 Fox News had talking heads on to discuss the corruption of the youth via interactive video sexuality. The Girls and Homos could kiss in Bioware’s Mass Effect and if the sound of two clonking pieces of blue colored digital wood pushing faces against each other wasn’t the sign of the culture wars to…
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The Signal and the Noise
Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, the sequel to 2016’s Oxenfree, is haunted.
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Loved and Lost
I think there’s value in telling stories similar to Maquette, where relationships fall apart and don’t get put back together. But I don’t really think this game gets there.
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Geoff Keighley’s Summer Feighleys 2023, Day 5: IT’S SO OVER
That sound you heard is me breathing a sigh of relief. There’s no more events. I don’t care if there are any more events, to be honest; for me, there’s nothing left. It has been five full fucking days of watching hours of video game trailers, and you know what? I just want to go…