Jusant was a game that immediately and intensely caught my eye upon its announcement at the Xbox Games Showcase this year. The title’s visual style was undeniably a huge part of that initial eye catch, but its premise was what intrigued me most: traversing a towering monolith of stone and unearthing the stories of the
In 2019, Remnant: From The Ashes showed up on the scene with an interesting fusion of third-person cooperative shooting gameplay and the challenging, more exploratory emphasis of Soulslike games. While a novel blend in its own right, the first game’s rougher edges prevented it from really sinking its claws in me as much as I’d
When the Wachowskis unleashed The Matrix onto unsuspecting moviegoers in 1999, there was little inkling of just how much its gun-toting, martial arts-flinging, slow motion-laden antics would persist in popular culture for decades after. Setting aside the flood of parodies and inspired works in film itself, video games were (naturally) quick to take inspiration from
It takes astonishingly little to endear me to an art style inspired by those found in titles released for the original PlayStation. Games for the console sported a very singular look, and to this day can provide a unique atmosphere in the gaming space that belies their age. Quite a few modern games have been
With any mammoth franchise, it’s standard practice to create tie-in media that seeks to fill in the gaps of a greater narrative canon. This is just as true for The Lord of the Rings as it is for other IPs, and when it comes to video games in particular, the series has seen a lot
Throwback games are nearly always a risky business. There’s certainly much to be gained by taking notes from the classics that came before, but a lack of innovation on tried and true concepts can just as readily cause a game to feel like a drop in the bucket for a genre rather than a proper
It’s always a compelling prospect when a development team, hot off the considerable challenge of releasing a video game, makes an attempt to switch things up with a forthcoming sequel. It can also be equally off-putting; would an alteration of core elements mean a loss of what made the experience click in the first place?
Are you exhausted? Overworked? Do the events of your life feel akin to the tides, where everything takes place in an omnipresent cycle, looping day in and day out without end? If you answered yes to any of the above, you have something in common with the Grim Reaper himself—or at least as he’s represented
Since the release of 2017’s Nioh, developer Team Ninja has been having something of an action RPG renaissance. While the impetus of Nioh’s continued development was the success of From Software’s Souls series, the game managed to not only carve out its own unique space in the genre, but carve it with beta tests and
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Japanese developer Toaplan was an indisputable juggernaut of the shoot ‘em up. After the release of their first shmup (and third game overall), Tiger-Heli, the developer went on to unleash no small amount of shooting games across arcade floors. Some time later, they would also make their foray into console
Are ya ready, kids? Met with mixed reception though it was, the 2020 remake of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom served as a much welcome return for fans of the cult classic platformer. It seems it was quite the lucrative one as well, given that we’re now staring down the barrel for the release
The year was 1976. The first VHS cassettes and their accompanying VCRs were newly available for purchase, everyone was dancing the night away to their favorite disco tracks, and programmer William Crowther had finished developing Adventure (later Colossal Cave Adventure): one of the earliest text adventure games ever made. Crowther, an amateur cave explorer, based
At least as far as pre-release reception is concerned, Forspoken has something of a hill to climb with its release. Despite flashes of an expansive open world and impressive-looking magical combat, the marketing focus highlighting protagonist Frey’s reactions to the world around her occupied a majority of discourse surrounding the game. Now, after being the
The longevity of the metroidvania continues to impress. It feels as though every new year brings with it an ever flowing stream of new iterations to the genre that expand on its staples while throwing their own flavors into the mix. Astronite, releasing November 30th, 2022 from developer Dume Games Studio and publisher JanduSoft, is
Given its status as one of the most recognizable franchises on the planet, the Dragon Ball series has seen video game adaptations across a wide swath of genres. From fighting games to RPGs and action adventure titles, we’ve seen different takes on the events of the series from a variety of gaming perspectives.
For those of us who stumbled across its initial pre-alpha footage all the way back in 2014, waiting for Scorn has been quite the test of patience. A first-person horror adventure game rooted heavily in the singular art styles of artists H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński was an immediately captivating prospect. The footage was replete
Taking a creative work of one medium and adapting it into another is something we’ve all seen time and time again. The process of turning novels into films, for example, is an undertaking that’s consistently taken place for as long as both media formats have existed.
Back in June, I had the chance to preview Soulstice, a character action game that stood out from its contemporaries for its dark aesthetic and hectic action, pitting its two protagonists against hordes of enemies as they traverse the ruins of a gothic city thoroughly inspired by anime and manga.
Is there anything in gaming as immediately tantalizing as player-versus-player castle siege gameplay? I’m earnestly asking here, as the concept has consistently found its way into the designs of many a game, all the way from earlier MMORPGs like Dark Age of Camelot in 2001 to more focused competitive games like Chivalry and its 2021
It goes without saying that many developers have tried their hand at the Soulslike genre over the years. Generally speaking, the most successful of these attempts are those that take the familiar staples of the genre and reinterpret them to create an experience that’s fresh and engaging while still staying true to player expectation. If
