[Update: Huntdown is now live on Steam, early purchases will bag a 20% price discount.] There's no denying 2020 was an explosive year for video games. But among the mega-bucks, mega-marketed, mega-sellers of the industry, smaller titles wer...

For the past few years, aided by the glamorous memory of Paris Hilton’s miniskirts and a reassessment of sex work by internet people who realized that money is cool, the word “bimbo” has flipped from meaning “brainle...

Does Duke Nukem Forever really need an introduction? It was announced before I hit puberty. It spent 15 years in development hell, becoming legendary for its protracted development time. Every few years, another tease would come out, saying...

We’ve been friends for a while now, right? And after all these Famicom articles, you’re probably thinking, “gee, that lady sure does know Japanese.” That’s not true. My Japanese can best be described as existen...

One particular facet of video games that has always fascinated me is games where you attempt to make someone happy. I don’t just mean rescuing the princess at the end of a campaign of violence, I’m talking specifically about gam...

I've been lucky enough to get to meet a lot of game developers from very different walks of life. From people at big names like Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Devolver, Riot, and Bethesda, to little indies likes Tom Happ and Joakim Sandberg, I ...

When I was growing up, going to Build-A-Bear was a big deal. There was one in the mall we would frequent when I was a kid, and I always dragged my mom out of our way to walk by when we were there. I even preordered the Toothless plush from ...

Do you remember the film The Adventures of Milo and Otis? I don’t. It was based on a 1986 Japanese film called Koneko Monogatari. It’s not bad, I guess, if you think you can trust critics. It’s about a kitten getting lost ...

Is it ever a bad time to replay your Resident Evil favorites? Not really, no! But those crucial last few weeks leading up to a new mainline game, especially one as collectively attention-grabbing as Resident Evil Village, can heighten that ...

It's 2021. Street Fighter V has been out for five years, it's receiving its final season of content, and a sequel appears to be on the horizon. What is it like to enter its highly competitive scene in this environment? Is it populated mostl...

It is 1986. Computers are only just beginning to see widespread adoption, and you the player, as software developer Meredith, are in a mail truck in your hometown, helping the local postman figure out if he needs one. He remarks that it mig...

As a sheltered and awkward child growing up, I really have to hand it to my childhood friend Tristan. Our friendship was always tricky (he was my best friend, but I wasn’t his), but growing up, he helped me come out of my shell. He al...

A couple of weeks ago, I cold-called Kerri Ann Hoskins, famous for her roles in Mortal Kombat 3 and Aerosmith's Revolution X, to see if she wanted to do an interview for one of my podcasts. A week or so later, she said "Sure." Sh...

The official release date of the Nintendo Entertainment System was October 1985, but in truth, that was a test launch. Most people in North America didn’t have a chance to buy the console until Autumn of ‘86. At that point, the ...

Doesn't matter which medium you're working with, sequels can be pretty bad. From low-budget cash-grabs to a follow-up that ruins the original work entirely, there are plenty of ways that they can disappoint. Video games have certainly had t...

In 2000, while humanity was crawling from the wreckage and trying to rebuild after the devastation of Y2K, The Sims exploded on the PC. It was an opportunity for people to look down upon their creations, trap them in the pool until they dro...

We're approaching the six-month mark of gaming's ninth generation, and it's been a liiiittle slow getting started. While we should all remember that most console generations have moved deliberately in their early days, it appears that a com...

Ever since the first pixely penises flopped onto Atari screens in the early 1980s, erotic video games have earned a mainstream reputation of being heteronormative and, well, bad. A lot of erotic video games came from small software companie...

The world of Nier Replicant is full of dangerous mysteries. In its opening moments, you fight swathes of malevolent creatures determined to strike you down. Yet none of them draws my ire as much as those damn goats. I'm still working my way...

I don’t have much to say about the sport of sumo. It’s really old and has held onto many of its traditions. It’s also not difficult to get the gist of. Push the other rikishi out of the ring or knock them off their feet. B...

The new Mortal Kombat was always going to be a hard sell. Not only do you have the stigma of video game movies lingering throughout the industry (I don't think Detective Pikachu completely "solved" it), but you have the nostalgia for t...

2018's Wandersong was a game about a bard, who used the power of music and singing to change people's lives for the better. There were grander stakes for sure, but at its core, it was about helping people and singing. A lot of singing. Deve...

Twisted Metal was an institution on the PlayStation. Much like the landmark titles Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Resident Evil, it exploded its genre, resulting in a bevy of pretenders. For Twisted Metal, it was vehicular comba...

[Narrated by Josh Picard] The year is 2011, and the haunting, distant sounds of the Aperture facility are reverberating through our unfinished basement. My brother's at basketball practice, I have free reign of the Xbox. I've spent the past...

Somehow, Season 4 of Fall Guys has already been out for a month. That whole time, I've been meaning to check in — the futuristic low-gravity levels looked fun — but I kept pushing it off. After adoring Season 1, bouncing off of ...