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Today
Feature: Hanging up
Entering into its deeply peculiar world, Strange Telephone offered up so many things I love. A bizarre, bulky aesthetic, creepy undertones and surreal locations, and a unique mechanic that made exploration feel novel and interesting. Until it really, really didn't. In words I never thought I'd type, this is a game that's too strange.
23 hours ago
Feature: What's a pirate's favourite letter?
Last week brought news that beleaguered swashbuckling MMO Atlas had been hacked by a bunch of salty ne'er do wells. The keys to an admin account were stolen, allowing hackers to go on what amounted to a trans-dimensional naval joyride. Invincible armadas armed with inexhaustible supplies of cannonballs briefly ruled the waves, which was to be expected. But then planes fell from the sky. The…
1 day ago
Feature: Undying affection
Certain moments in Resident Evil 2 are imbued with a specific kind of awful. Moments when calculated slaughter gets drowned under a tide of undead flesh, all thought of eradication consumed by escape. There's this deep, prolonged pull of fear, punctured by sharp desperation. Moments when a dozen zombies and worse lumber between you and presumed safety, grabbing and biting and clawing as they drag…
2 days ago
Feature: Armless fun
Do you remember those jelly-like toy octopuses you had when you were a kid, which you throw at a window or wall? They'd half-stick/half-walk their way down the surface, their legs glooping on and off as they rolled in a semi-controlled fall. That's what the character in the ridiculously delightful Pikuniku most immediately reminds me of. It's just the way he walks. It's the most…
6 days ago
Feature: The Year 2000 Problem
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG ought to be a mixed experience. There are elements of the game, particularly the music, that are excellent. There are those, like the combat, that are not so good. I expected to be talking here about how I am a child who was born in 1994, and whether that affected my enjoyment of the game’s pervasive nostalgia bait, and other such…
1 week ago
Feature: All dogs are good dogs
My dog has been dead for longer than he was alive, which means I’m long past having any right to fondly remember him as I stare through a rainy window, or to hear his bark on the breeze on warm evening walks along the old railway track. He’s just way too dead to be taking up that kind of emotional bandwidth any more. How weird…
Feature: Dead baby foxes
There is a fine line a lot of introspective indie games are walking, between a careful exploration of memories and events, and solipsism. For me, The First Tree leaps over that line with a clumsily implemented, wildly incongruous double-jump. Sanctimonious from the opening moments, this is a mediocre third-person exploration game made nauseating by the most self-obsessed narration I've ever encountered. It makes Dear Esther…
Feature: Selfies, emojis and refugees
"A game about Syrian refugees" has certain connotations, at least if you are not yourself a Syrian refugee. I expected sustained suffering, a maudlin and desperate tone, confusing cultural differences and a great deal of poetic misery. Which, well, probably says a few uncomfortable things about me, doesn't it? Because Bury Me, My Love, which plays out as a quasi-real-time text message conversation documenting one…
2 weeks ago
Feature: A chili reception
On one hand, there's the excruciatingly bad poetry. On the other hand, poo jokes. This is the dilemma I face when attempting a coherent position on my opinions of The Pepper Prince: Seasoning 1, the first in an episodic adventure series created entirely from ASCII art. Oh, OK, and the fact that despite being very cute, it's 45 minutes long and without challenge.
Feature: It was all a dream
I’ve never played Catherine before. I heard a bit about it from friends and fellow journalists: the stylish interface, the intriguing story that often fumbled gender stereotypes, and, of course, the trans character. But if you sat me down before launching Catherine Classic on Steam and asked me what I expected the gameplay to be like, well… fast-paced puzzle platformer with a heavy emphasis on…
Feature: Free the nipple
Large portions of my personality owe a great debt to Greek invention, from ABBA musicals and feta cheese to anal sex and fiscal irresponsibility. But for the past few thousand years the country’s chief cultural export has been its dramatic and complex mythology. A cross between Aesop’s Fables and Hollyoaks, Greek myth forms the basis of every story ever told. Scarface, King Lear, that episode…
3 weeks ago
Feature: Shadow of the Breach
The last time I played sunset-hued, post-apocalyptic survival-strategy affair Overland in earnest, back in the pre-apocalypse of 2016, I liked it a lot. In the mid-apocalypse of 2019, I only like it a little. Something's changed - and it's not Overland. It's not me either, though I'll admit to a certain amount of frenzied shrieking about the passage the time once I realised how long…
Feature: Curse the darkness
A weird thing happened after I’d been playing Below for a few hours. See, the thing about Below, which I spose is a basic feature of all underground things, is that it’s dark. Your little adventurer has some species of magic lantern, but it’s powered by crystals collected from dead enemies, and upon your death it’s left with your body for the next you to…
4 weeks ago
Feature: Cold to the bone
Sorry to make this quick, but Christmas is coming toward me at thirty thousand miles per hour, and frankly we're running out of time. I've not managed to play through both chapters of the redux version of The Long Dark's story mode, Wintermute, but I don't want to wait until the new year to tell you that - OH HOORAY - it's sooooo much better…
1 month ago
Feature: Cult Following
Dipping into my Itch.io backlog, I found a game released in September that we completely missed - Sagebrush. A walking-sim-cum-puzzle game in which you explore the abandoned site of a cult. Abandoned in the worst possible way. And while this could obviously be a topic rife with issues, it's handled here remarkably sensitively, without any loss of emotional punch.
Feature: Shambling on
I spot the man seconds before my flare fizzles out. It’s dark - so dark that even though he’s just a few feet away, I can only tell he’s there from the condensation of his breath. My own breathing stops, thoughts racing behind a moment pregnant with possibility, a crossroads where anything could happen. “Hey”, he says. “Would you like my beans?”. DayZ doesn't get…
Feature: Card knocks
CardLife is an open world crafting game that, like many examples of the genre, has a hunger mechanic. That means your little cardboard avatar is cursed with the need to eat to survive, or suffer the relatively minor indignity of respawning nearby with none of their stuff. We all know that robots eat nuts and bolts from cereal bowls, that’s basic science. But if we’re…
Feature: For it is in gibbing that we receive
DUSK rather undersells itself when it declares it's "straight outta the '90s". While absolutely going for that Doom/Hexen vibe, with outstandingly fast movement, gorgeous chunky pixel enemies, and big meaty guns that pack a punch, it also has a really quite fantastic amount of good sense where not to be faithful to those mid-90s gibby times. If anything, DUSK feels like the FPS that id,…
Feature: What's the scoria?
If you’re summoning Dark Souls, you have to be prepared to make a deal with the Capra Demon. In this pact, you will be granted the power of From Software’s ideas, yes, but you will also be doomed to comparison. You’ll only be seen in the light of that which came before. Ashen has made such a pact, and it invites that comparison especially often.…
Feature: Argh, it's in my eyes
I don’t know if I’m cut out for this. It pains me to write that. I’m RPS’s shooty boy, the kid with the crosshairs. I chomp M4A1 rounds for breakfast. But an average round of Insurgency: Sandstorm tends to chew me up instead, then squat over me while informing me about my poor life choices. I think I’m having a good time?
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