It's hard to believe that Shantae and the Seven Sirens is just...out on the Apple Arcade (kind of)! I mean Shantae games are an event at this point following the incredible second showing of Risky's Revenge. From Ga...

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening had a profound impact on me growing up. Although I was already familiar with more traditional JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy at that point (and had played the first two Zelda games), Lin...

I'm not ready for Overcooked 2 to come to an end. That's how I felt going into Carnival of Chaos – the third and final DLC in the game's season pass – and that's how I felt after finishing it this weekend. Overcooked has be...

It was the best of Gears, it was the worst of Gears. It was an amplification of everything every Gears before did well, and it was a maturation of everything those same games struggled with. It was an identity crisis, a dysmorphic preoccupa...

I have a complicated history with Borderlands, and I suspect that's a fairly common experience. Okay, so it's not all that complicated but bear with me. I wasn't super into the first game. Sue me! "Better with friends" is an idiom/crutch th...

Making my way through Metro Exodus back in February was one of the most frightening video game experiences I've ever had. As I noted in my review, I'm a particularly jumpy person. I'd be on edge in a room full of kittens, lest one of them m...

Blasphemous might be 2019's gnarliest video game. Its odds are certainly up there. Drawing direct inspiration from the usual suspects like Dark Souls and Castlevania – the series, I mean, not just Symphony of the Night – Bl...

Adequately creating a mecha action game seems like an absolutely daunting task. Years of anime shows like Gundam and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA have enriched our imaginations of what action combat would look like if these ...

I was very lucky to have the friends and relatives I had growing up. Although my parents could only afford the occasional console, I had the opportunity to experience pretty much every device (including ill-fated ones like the Wonderswan an...

There is one sure-fire way to get me to pay attention to your upcoming game: just tell me it’s something I like with pinball. “It’s a metroidvania…with pinball!” Consider the physical edition purchased. &ldquo...

With Monster Hunter: World last year, the adrenaline-pumping series finally managed to break through for me, and – given what a colossal sales success the game has become for Capcom – plenty of other would-be players. It's not ...

Atlus is one hell of a company. Following up on its success with the Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, and Etrian Odyssey series, the publisher decided to release a little old game about climbing blocks in a nightmarish hellscape and naviga...

A lot of things blew up big in the late '80s: Bermuda shorts, TMNT, those shirts that changed colour when you got hot, displaying your sweat stains to the world. Also popular, as far as video games were concerned, was the scrolling bea...

If you're like me, you're always looking to add more titles to the list of "local multiplayer games to bust out when friends come over." Heave Ho has our back.

"Like, zoinks gang! We're stranded on a spooky ghost ship!" is what I imagined the cast of Dark Pictures: The Man of Medan to say when I booted it up. They did not! Instead this very horrific tale from the horror masters...

[You can read reviews for past episodes here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3.] Sean Diaz is beaten and bloody and beaten and bruised and beaten and broken. If we're chasing alliteration, blind too -- at least partially. The conclusion to E...

You might not know the name "Bombservice," but you probably know about Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight if you follow Metroidvanias in any fashion. Reverie was a fantastic 2016 release that really put the studio on the map, far be...

Synchronicity is a theme, or at least a phenomenon, that's used in Control. Through its elaborate and convoluted story, it's established that spectacular results can be achieved when distant and separate things are attuned to one another. T...

When Astral Chain kicked off with a janky vehicle section, I was worried. Then the toilet fairy came. Then the insane mechanical depth we'd expect out of Platinum. Then I got to moonlight as an office mascot named Lappy who helped out ...

Monster Hunter-esque, quick-service co-op games are popping up like a cottage industry. The angle isn't new, but with releases like Dauntless gracing the neon lights of gaming marketplaces so frequently (and becoming overnight successe...

With the release of Overwatch in 2016, the multiplayer shooter market was turned upside down. Going from a period where everything had a bunch of faceless military drones to a game with a cast of eccentric characters with distinct personali...

Sam Barlow is really on a roll. Although his work on a few Silent Hill entries (Origins, Shattered Memories) put him on the map, it was 2015's Her Story that made him a household name. Barlow did a hell of a lot more than just "bring back" ...

Tokyo RPG Factory has a track record. Now I can't really use a qualifier in that statement, because it's really hard to actually track! I dug I Am Setsuna, but a lot of people didn't. I thought Lost Sphear was alright, and some folks s...

I've always had an aversion to the fantasy genre, and because of that, I've never dipped my toes into the Age of Wonders series despite loving the 4X genre. With the announcement that the newest game, Planetfall, was going to be painted ove...

This year hasn't exactly been the best on the books for mobile gaming. Many of the biggest titles have so far failed to meet expectations and much of what is on the horizon isn't exactly painting a glowing picture of mobile's future. Howeve...