Here's a blast from the past: I began my 2019 Game of the Year rundown with the following phrase: "2019 sure was a year, and if I do say so myself, it felt like a pretty strong one for games." Oof. If 2019 was a year, then 2020. Was. A. God...
It took some time (about a hundred turns, give or take), but the mighty walls of Troy finally fell. Embarrassingly, they didn't fall by the hand of mighty Achilles and his giants (he got some giants on an island after convincing its king to...
If I've learned anything from my brief time with a pre-release build of A Total War Saga: Troy, it's this: Don't piss off Achilles. He will walk over to you, no matter how many guys you have in your army, and stick you in the ass with a sha...
This year hasn't been especially conducive to tourism, to say the least, but no amount of international travel restrictions can stop you from logging into Star Trek Online's 25th-century timeline this August. The Cryptic Studios-developed f...
Remakes, no matter their quality, are always a tricky business. How much of an old game's ideas or mechanics do you preserve? What do you update, reinvent, keep as-is, or discard outright from an old game that won't betray its essence, or r...
I couldn't tell you right now if Trials of Mana, the modernized 3D remake of the now-legendary 1995 SNES classic Seiken Densetsu 3, does justice to its 25-year-old forebear. I don't say that because I have mixed feelings about thi...
Video game sequels are weird. Whereas the sequel to a book or film need only continue or conclude the story set out in the previous entry, most players generally expect a video game sequel to be substantially better than what came...
How do you make a game about a character that's literally invincible and unbeatable? It's a problem everyone that's thought about making something about Superman has had to face, and it's a problem that Spike Chunsoft is also saddled with. ...
Well, look who's chewing on my neck all of a sudden: It's State of Decay 2, a game released back in 2018. Like a freak you didn't behead all the way, it's back up and at 'em, ready to crack your head open and feast on the goo inside. With s...
Azur Lane has had a rather rapid rise to the upper echelons of gacha gaming. Once, it was derided as a Chinese "clone" of the Japan-exclusive Kantai Collection. Now, less than a year after its official English release, Azur Lane i...
It's still hard for me to believe that Star Trek Online has been around for ten years at this point, but it's true: The game my Steam clock tells me I've played the most of any game ever (with more besides that, since I was playing STO...
Star Trek Online celebrates its tenth birthday starting this week, and while it looks like its celebratory update, titled Star Trek Online: Legacy, won't contain any hot Picard bombshells, it will be looking back at decade's worth of storie...
It can be hard to believe, but not that long ago if you wanted to experience a Star Trek story that didn't involve watching a rerun, Cryptic Studios' Star Trek Online was your only option. Thankfully for Trek fans, thing...
Fate/Grand Order may not be quite ready to debut its next big story expansion, but the time between now and Spring won't be empty, if the game's handlers at Aniplex have anything to say about it. Players are still trading in their curr...
Its title might be a bit of a mouthful to pronounce, but Utawarerumono is a good time. I've sung its praises over the years, and despite some missteps, I'd recommend the core series wholeheartedly...bar one problem: The original story ...
2019 sure was a year, and if I do say so myself, it felt like a pretty strong one for games. Strong enough that I actually had genuine trouble just narrowing down the entries that stuck out in my mind, where usually the struggle is in bendi...
Type-MOON's Fate franchise is a many-headed beast, but it's not all Holy Grail Wars and gacha hellscapes. Sometimes it's just a bunch of superpowered friends gathering for a nice meal. That's the premise of Today's Menu for the Emiya F...
There are only five days left until the New Year, but Fate/Grand Order isn't about to give its players rest. Right on the heels of its grind-heavy Christmas lotto event, FGO's website and social media feeds went into a dramatic lockdown, re...
Oh sure, another month means yet another Fate/Grand Order event to grind, but this one's a biggie! Indeed, it's time for the third of FGO's Christmas special grindfests. This one is titled Merry Christmas in the Underworld, and se...
Most folks might get their first taste of Granblue Fantasy with next year's Granblue Versus, but there's another Granblue game slated for next year and dressed to impress: the action-RPG Granblue Fantasy ReLink, now with a ne...
Fortnite is a latecomer to this decade, only really breaking out in the halcyon days of last year once it became clear that Epic had something lasting on its hands, and not another also-ran riding PUBG's coattails. Looking back, it fe...
Fate/Grand Order players have been having a hectic quarter, with back-to-back events threatening their supply of stamina-refilling Golden Apples. First there was Shimousa, then this year's Halloween event, then a rerun of last year's C...
We're not even a fortnight from the last significant Fate/Grand Order release, but time (and the event schedule) wait for no master. Plus, it's already late October, which means the yearly Halloween event wouldn't be timely if the game...
Any service game that aims to keep the lights on needs a steady flow of new things to do to survive, but even by those standards English-language Fate/Grand Order players have had a rather busy 2019, with content drops or events occurr...
When reviewing a game, it's a given that one would play the game being reviewed to learn more about it, but it's decidedly less common that just posting a game review would make for a similar learning experience. That's what happened when I...
