A blog about video games.
Zero Parades, like Disco Elysium, feels like a genuinely creative endeavour. It's written by novelists and poets and its visually identity is forged in the spirit of fine art. Inasmuch as its predecessor is worth mentioning, its sordid corporate drama becoming more and more tiresome as the days go by, it is as a creative reference point. And in that sense Zero Parades honours this creative legacy.…
Perfect Tides: Station to Station , a sequel to the original, excellent Perfect Tides, is a very good game. Set in 2003 we've jumped ahead a few years to find protagonist Mara in the first year of college in the big city (an unnamed NYC). She's determined to be a writer but is endlessly distracted by the city itself, a string of unsuccessful romantic endeavours and family commitments tethered to a…
Against all odds, I'm going to use Death Stranding 2 to enact some self-control. For context, I have ADHD and wild impulse control issues around buying stuff (the self-flagellating basis of this blog was born from this fact). Despite the 70 smacker price tag I very much want to buy DS2 immediately, but I have many, many other games to play first and limited disposable income. It's also just a hard…
Formless Star is an indie game full of surprises. It takes the form (why are you booing) of a gorgeous technicolour Gameboy game where you, field researcher Anemo, are tasked to find 61 animals on the ever-shifting planet of Formless Star. You do this by exploring a procedurally generated environment, cutting down obstacles and building bridges to move from one landmass to the next. After finding…
Keita Takahashi's to a T is a narrative game that follows the day to day life of a teenager who is stuck in a T-pose . Structured like a Saturday morning cartoon (replete with opening and closing themes), the plot plays out episodically and gently considers the logistical and social realities of having a physical impairment. Despite being the most down-the-line game Takahashi has made, this still…
Don't Wake the Night is a narrative game where a community of people engage a spirit to mediate a dispute. Presented as a simple diorama, we embody the so-called spirit and click parts of the scene to trigger a series of one-on-one conversations amongst the cast. They share their thoughts and feelings about the issue at hand and more generally about their roles and each other. They sometimes…
Andy reviews the Suikoden HD remaster
Spoilers for Jedi Survivor's ending All's well that ends well is some real shit. It's surprising how often it rings true. Jedi Survivor is an interesting example because what proceeds its final hours, which are uniformly remarkable, is actually pretty enjoyable. It has the light touch Star Wars storytelling that either works for you or doesn't, but the story beats do a solid job of moving things…
Webfishing is a fishing game with a beautiful aesthetic. The central mechanic is straightforward because this is as much as social game as it is anything else. The fishing is a fun pretence for the hang. So you fish, sell the fish, buy bait, upgrades and visual stuff, and chat to people (if you want). You can join public lobbies, join private ones, start your own or play entirely solo/offline. The…
Don't be distracted by the relative technical competence of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The real evidence of its ten year development hell lie in its wildly underdeveloped characters and surface-level plot. Every story feels like it's missing a majority of the necessary components to mean something, to make us care. The game takes a classic Bioware structure of 'get a team together' with the…