About an hour into Calico, I reached the icy mountain peak of this magical island and found a couple of capybaras chilling in a hot spring. It was a pleasant scene, but I was still getting used to the controls. I walked up to them, intendin...

2010 was a reckoning. It was a year that saw the gaming market explode with a bevy of independently produced titles. In forgotten scenes reminiscent of the "bedroom programming" days of the late-'80s/early-'90s, talented coders from around ...

One of the trends I saw on social media in the lead-up to the new year was a pledge by people to be "better" in 2021. To be more kind, more thoughtful, more patient, and more forgiving. Basically, taking the negative energy 2020 gave us and...

I should probably stop volunteering to review fitness games. Not because I don’t need them or I don’t enjoy them, but because every time I sit down to write the lede, I have to face the fact that I ultimately failed at getting t...

I had hoped – and even started to believe – that Nioh 2 was building up to a thrilling conclusion across its three DLC packs, but the final expansion, The First Samurai, is a bit of a letdown. It's not outright bad, and I'm just...

We are now in an era where impressive-looking VR games are somewhat commonplace; it's no longer a selling point all on its own. So when I heard that Respawn Entertainment was working on a new Medal of Honor for VR, my interest was piqu...

CD Projekt Red has the benefit of releasing a major game once in a blue moon to a roaring applause. I was hooked from the very first Witcher (which is frankly still some of their best narrative work), and continued on through Geralt's ...

Call of the Sea is the debut game from Out of the Blue Studios, a Spanish outlet comprised of industry veterans that's dedicated to creating narrative and puzzle titles. Their first product is a marriage of the two genres - a first-per...

Worms has been a part of my life since I was a kid. My first foray into the world of tactical wormy combat was on the Game Boy many moons ago, and my wife and I have been jamming the series together for over a decade. For the most part...

It delights me to see Q-Games add more entries to the PixelJunk series, especially a sequel to Eden. It's arguably not the best of the bunch, but Eden – a minimalistic platformer about catching plumes of pollen to reinvigorate garden ...

Ubisoft is sometimes referred to as the king of open world games. For some of you, it has a divine right to rule. For others, it’s a proverbial crown that needs to be overthrown. Immortals Fenyx Rising (the artist formerly known as Go...

Things have gone from bad to worse, from unfortunate to bizarre, and from Kinda Suspect to Super Murdery. That's Dontnod's MO, and everyone should know it by now. The French developer loves examining personal relationships, amplifying them ...

Time and again, media has utilized problematic real-life events and figures to carry its entertainment. Whether for comedic or dramatic purposes, movies, comics, books, and video games have taken recognizable personalities and world event...

Since World of Warcraft's launch in 2004, I've seen pretty much every up and down you can imagine. Its highest points (Burning Crusade into Wrath of the Lich King), its lowest point (shades of Cataclysm, Pandaria, and most of Draenor), and ...

A grown man probably shouldn't be so interested in a game where all you do is play with toy trains, but I never had a wooden train set growing up. We skipped over that staple of childhood in favor of Hot Wheels tracks. At the time, I didn't...

It's a shame that VR didn't catch on: it really is. Although I perfectly understand that it doesn't demo well, and the buy-in, especially early on, was ludicrous; we've reached a point where the PSVR and the Oculus Quest have allowed a grea...

Overcooked: All You Can Eat probably won't be anyone's first, second, third, or even fourth pick-up on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, but if you get around to it – when you have enough controllers on-hand – you're in for a fu...

I've played a lot of insane action games in my time. No, not "whoa that backflip into a shotgun blast was wild!" kind of insane. Like, "how was this even made?" insane. Godfall doesn't quite fit under that latter umbrella as there's a ...

I still can't believe that Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released over three years ago. Insanity! It feels like it's always been here, because to many, it's a source of evergreen enjoyment. Recently I've talked about how my wife decide...

It's hard for me to imagine a better introduction to the PS5 than Demon's Souls – or a more unlikely one. As I said in my review-in-progress, Bluepoint's remake of a once-cult classic feels like a gift. Tracing back the history of Dem...

As Disney continues to throw a ton of Star Wars stuff at the wall to see what sticks, some of it is landing. The Mandalorian and the recent season of The Clone Wars are really resonating with people, in part due to the effort...

About 35 hours into Assassin's Creed Valhalla, I unlocked the "Silent Viking" achievement for killing 10 consecutive enemies without alerting anyone. It really drove home how different this Assassin's Creed is from all the other Assass...

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin has been a long time coming, and even though it's dropping in a super crowded release week, I'm thrilled to see this spunky rice-growing action-RPG platformer finally come out. As a laid-back agricultural sim with m...

Playing Bugsnax while starting a diet is probably not the ideal way to enjoy the game. I'm sitting here doing my best to not think about food and the Grumpuses of this island keep asking me to chase down grinders with googly eyes or ci...

Having a decent set of earphones isn't really something I've ever considered to be important to gaming. When I have played my Switch, 3DS, Vita, or smartphone on the go, I'd just use whatever set I had lying around. Usually, it was the same...