At the start of 2015, I was basically done with video games. I’d made myself a promise to read more books and play fewer games, which lasted all of two months before I read Willy Vlautin’s utterly depressing Northline and became...
Until Dawn’s success is much deserved, considering it was co-written by the guy who gave us The Last Winter, in which Ron Perlman and Connie Britton are terrorised by a ghost moose. Jokes aside, and regardless of the story’s int...
I’m not a fan of “The Capes” when it comes to comic books, but I understand why they’re such an easy fit for video games. Superheroes are proactive investigators and brawlers with adventures based solely around their...
Silent Hill: Origins opened with an outsider saving a little girl from a house fire. But when you look back on its place in the series, it meant so much more than a simple rescue. Travis Grady had problems of his own, but they meant very li...
What makes the difference between houses and homes? Is it the space itself or the people inhabiting them? Is it down to the memories we create for ourselves or the aged familiarity of the spaces around us? And if a room is indifferent to ou...
100 floors up, countless mutants on the way down, and only one way out of town. No, this isn’t your average council estate in Swansea. This is Skyhill.
Ah, another day, another pixel-art indie game with a Wild West theme. That said, A Fistful of Gun could’ve been set on the Moon and you’d be too busy dodging bullet hells and listening to arcade cabinet music to even notice. Thi...
Silent Hill 3 is a mean-spirited game, but then that was always the point. In order to value her future, Heather Mason is dragged, kicking and screaming, through the muck and mire of her past. Yes, she’s given the tools to fight back,...
“I get wet when I know that you're dying,” sang Andrew W.K. on his debut album closer, I Get Wet. It’s actually a fine anthem for the terrible things you get away with in Party Hard, far more than the phenomenal singl...
I wasn’t going to mention Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, not initially. But between the infamous handle splashed across the title screen and his pre-emptive comments against certain criticisms in the accompanying press release, a ...
It started with a worried look in mirror dimly lit. For Silent Hill 2, this was a statement of intent; a progression in not only hardware, but also in narrative. Out went the B-movie horror about gods and the occult, and in its place was so...
Once upon a time, I played a PC game called Heist. It was truly dreadful, but it did spark my interest in seeing more methodical crime games on the market. Sadly, the wait has been more of a slow drip, with more cancellations and flops than...
As someone who loves the detective genre in both novels and film, I’m always disappointed by the way they translate to video games. A lot of it boils down to gimmick first, mystery second; where you’re usually a ghost, someone w...
Western horror, Eastern eyes. That was what made Silent Hill memorable for a generation. It was visceral and relentless, oppressive and paranoid, and underlined with a tragic tale that hadn’t been seen on the normally escapist PlaySta...
As we all know, Geralt of Rivia is back on fine video game form with The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, but lesser known is his return to print with Sword of Destiny. First published in 1992, Andrzej Sapkowski's second short story collection is ...
I didn’t have the greatest of starts with Uncanny Valley. After only 15 minutes of play time, I’d wandered into one of the “bad” endings seemingly by accident. On my second attempt, I encountered so many pre-release ...
Do any of you remember the movie Nightwatch? No, not the Russian one with the iffy sequel. I mean the one with Ewan McGregor as a security guard at the local morgue, constantly harrassed by a presumably drunken Nick Nolte and a serial kill...
I'm terrible at Dark Souls, and I'm too broken to play Bloodborne, but at least I can always appreciate the amazing score as the phrase "You Died, Ya' Feckin' Ejit!" seeps into view for the trillionth time. Thankfully, for music lovers/bad ...
As you may recall, Forgotten Memories: Alternate Realities came out of near-nowhere with its Silent Hill 2 cast additions, after several years off the development grid. If you're still wondering what Guy Cihi's delightfully broken ton...
Way back in 2009, Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe had this cutting observation about the po-faced nature of military shooters. During a particularly grim scene in Call of Duty: World at War, Brooker flambés several soldiers, only t...
State of Decay was one of those pleasant surprises back in 2013. Sure, the sandbox/RPG-lite horror game was a little rough, but it was an intense experience full of free flow situations, base building, and likable survivors. Undead Labs wa...
As a Brit, I do miss the weirdness that defined the PS2. Play novels, especially, had to make do with the DS. And yes, several years later, I'm still upset about Cing. But fret not, my niche loving console chums! NIS America Europe just rel...
So you wanna be a podcast superstar? And live large, a big house, five cars, you're in charge? Comin' up in the world, don't trust no body, gotta look over your shoulder constantly? Well, it probably won’t happen unless you diversif...
[Sometimes great Cblogs come from the community. Sometimes, they come from the staff. And sometimes, they come from community members who have since become staff, like this one from Stevil/Stephen Turner! --Mr Andy Dixon] So vinyl came back...
Psychoz Interactive's survival horror Forgotten Memories has been flying under the radar for some time now, but all that seems likely to change with the recent cast announcements of Guy Cihi and Dave Schaufele (Silent Hill 2's Jam...
