Reviews

Take a bag of potato chips—any brand, anywhere—and you more or less know what you’re going to get. Crispy, greasy salt and oil delivered via thin layers of starch, they make a mess of crumbs and grease, and they’re terribly delicious, extremely difficult to stop eating once you’ve caved into the first, and likely to […]

Since its 2013 release, the 90 Killer Queen arcade cabinets scattered across the states have become one of those underground sensations in urban gaming circles and among in-the-know indie connoisseurs. The 10-player competitive game has amassed a cult following, and is often breathlessly described as “perfect” to anyone who asks, “What’s Killer Queen?” If you

The very first quest in The Outer Worlds, Obsidian’s highly anticipated first-person RPG out October 25, asked me to make what felt like an impossible choice. On one side was a community of outsiders frustrated by corporate control. Their outpost was something like a worker’s paradise—they were well fed and mostly happy, surviving by relying

Across thousands of years of existence, we as a people have come to regard war as pretty bad. Senseless violence and the loss of irreplaceable lives, usually in the service of petty men who wield the power of nations indiscriminately, is just fucking stupid. Yet it still happens, and in America, the necessity of the

There hasn’t been a better time to be a Star Wars fan. As this is being written, the ninth and final entry in the saga that began with George Lucas’ 1977 film Star Wars is one month away from release, concluding a story over forty years in the making. The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star

Arise: A Simple Story might seem familiar, but looks can be deceiving. It’s not necessarily breaking any molds in its minimal art style and platforming, but its heartfelt story took me on a journey that hit me like a ton of bricks. Arise is available today for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. It starts out

The final episode of Life Is Strange 2, “Wolves,” released on December 3 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. When I try to understand why people did not react with an open outpouring of excitement and glee for Life Is Strange 2 after the success of its predecessor, I think of Marvel movies. Superhero

We get a lot of funny video games. We get a lot of strange games. But wacky video games are rare. Journey to the Savage Planet, a short new sci-fi first-person shooter, is, despite some flaws, wonderfully wacky. In this game, you don’t punch enemies. You slap them, complete with a comedic thwack sound. Alien

When The Division 2 launched last March, the cover-based shooter set in a wrecked Washington, DC was received positively by fans and critics. Then things soured. Players who expected a game that would expand over time were disappointed by a lack of new content as well as balance changes that nerfed popular character builds. Months

During my time with an early reviewable version of Ori and the Will of the Wisps,, I experienced multiple lockups, intense framerate stutter, and a bug that warped me to the other side of the map after a death. I had a boss battle I’d attempted a half-dozen times reset completely as I landed the