Shadow Labyrinth didn’t make the best first impression, though I’m not talking about the game itself. The concept of a gritty reboot of Pac-Man first reared its strange head in Secret Level, an anthology that turned notable video games into animated shorts that mostly felt like extended commercials. And that’s exactly what the episode “Circle,” […]
My first thought upon starting up Donkey Kong Bananza was, “Why yes, I actually would like to go ape shit.” The game starts by having Donkey Kong smash through a wall to reveal a glittering gem waiting to be liberated from the rock. But instead of punching the bright yellow gem into bite-size pieces, I […]
The Playdate is easy to forget about. It’s colorful and weird, but it’s also tiny. Like the Game Boy Micro before it, sometimes I toss it in a bag and then can’t remember where I put it. But over the past few weeks, the yellow handheld has been in constant rotation in my house, despite […]
It’s been an agonizing wait for more Deltarune. The first chapter of the episodic, parallel story to Toby Fox’s acclaimed RPG Undertale came out nearly seven years ago. But the newly released third and fourth chapters are so good that I highly recommend playing everything that’s available right now – even if there are still […]
Date Everything! isn’t the dating sim it appears to be. Though the game’s cutesy art style and lighthearted premise indicate an unserious game that’s making yet another joke at the expense of the genre, Date Everything actually contains novel explorations of human relationships and sharp-as-shit political critique. Date Everything (the title technically includes an exclamation […]
When I was a kid, there was a moment when it felt like everyone was obsessed with yo-yos. I never got better than just being able to make the yo-yo go up and down. But with Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, I could pretend like I was halfway decent – all while playing a silly […]
It took me a long time to appreciate Death Stranding. I’m not even sure I fully got it after my initial playthrough, which was equal parts mesmerizing and dull. The game, in which you play as a postapocalyptic delivery man in a world ravaged by a breach with the afterlife, demands a lot from players. […]
With FBC: Firebreak, Remedy Entertainment has entered the world of the first-person co-op shooter. Set in its Control universe – specifically the site of the first game, the brutalist nightmare office called the Oldest House – players control a member of the titular three-person team of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), tasked with addressing […]
Rolling across rugged alien wilds, your circular base in The Alters offers a twinkling haven from the whipping winds and nauseating radiation. At least, that’s how it feels for the first few hours. Gradually, as the in-game days stack up, my view of the vessel changes: protagonist Jan Dolski seems to be stuck on what […]
All sequels have to live up to their predecessors in some form, but few have as daunting a task as Mario Kart World. It’s a follow-up to the best-selling game across Nintendo’s last two console generations, and a game that eventually doubled in size thanks to an ambitious array of downloadable add-ons. So instead of […]