• Video Games

    Why Silence is The Great Strength of Dragon Quest III

    February 14, 2025 - By 

    Playing the recent HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest III, it didn’t take long for me to realise that this game is special. At first, I attributed it to the stunning, ultra-detailed art style and soothing soundtrack, which has a nostalgic quality even for first time visitors to the Dragon Quest franchise. The magical journey to defeat the evil archfiend Baramos has never looked or sounded better. But I soon realised that there’s more to Dragon Quest III in what it – or rather, its central characters – leave unsaid.  The Silent Protagonist of Dragon Quest III A silent protagonist can…

  • Reviews - Video Games

    Control: My Spellbinding Time With Remedy’s Twisted Fairy Tale

    November 29, 2024 - By 

    Late to the Tea Party  I’m late to the party with Control. I had heard the combat was fun, but beyond that, it’s often been described to me as generic or uninteresting. I hadn’t really considered playing it until I found myself looking for something at least mildly scary to play this past October. Knowing it was developed by Remedy, the team behind Alan Wake, I considered myself set up for a spooky, if slightly dreary, time. What I got instead was a game that had me hooked from the get go, equal parts menacing, zany, and a blast to…

  • Reviews - Video Games

    Why ‘Justice For All’ Is More Spectacular Than the First ‘Phoenix Wright’ Game

    November 3, 2024 - By 

    Here’s my hot take for a game with a cult following that released almost 25 years ago* – I struggled to get through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I desperately wanted to love this game, which seems to be ingrained into the cultural zeitgeist, but I struggled to connect and understand why people love this series so much. Looking back, after having recently finished the second installment – Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All – I realised that I had gone in to the first game with entirely wrong expectations. I had anticipated a more typical detective game, one…

  • Video Games

    5 Games I Actually Enjoyed Earning the Platinum Trophy For 

    October 7, 2024 - By 

    I love the idea of being the kind of person who has hundreds of platinum trophies. Unfortunately, it’s also incredibly rare for me to want to platinum a game. Platinums are a big commitment. Seeking a platinum for a game suggests that you loved it enough to spend even more time with it after completion – in some cases, hours and hours of more time spent on the usual trophy related activities. Unlocking collectibles, upgrading weapons, revealing every little inch of the map… and once you start working on one, it makes it so difficult to back down, as if…

  • Reviews - Video Games

    Why Live A Live Is the Perfect JRPG for People Who Hate JRPGs

    August 30, 2024 - By 

    Live A Live-ing up to Expectations? I appreciate JRPGs, but they’re not my genre of choice. The original Final Fantasy VII was a groundbreaking, childhood defining game for many, with characters, locations and music that are rightly considered iconic. But playing it for the first time, I found the story confusing and the combat gruelling (more on this later). Likewise, Octopath Traveller is a gorgeous game, with stunning visuals that understandably captured the hearts of millions. But I found the story progressed too slowly, and the dialogue was too cliche and simplistic to be interesting. So, when I decided to…

  • Reviews - Video Games

    Why ‘Dredge’ Is the Game That Will Cure Your Gaming Slump

    August 8, 2024 - By 

    What is a gaming slump? It’s like any other slump really – a period of time where you find it difficult to enjoy a hobby, when you just can’t find the motivation to do something you ordinarily love. The worst thing about a slump is that it can come on suddenly, and there’s no telling what will get you out of it. While I know tactics vary from person to person, my personal preference is to throw myself headfirst into as many games/books/movies as possible until something kick-starts my excitement again. Which is why I find that a quick fix…

  • Video Games

    Embracing the 7/10 Game – 7 Games You Might Just Love!

    July 7, 2024 - By 

    Recently, NakeyJakey released a video titled ‘In Defense of the 7/10 Games’, in which he explored the virtue, value and necessity of games which are typically considered not worth playing due to their middling score. As usual, I think Jakey has things exactly right; 7/10 has wrongly become a synonym for ‘mid’, when it is literally several spots above the middleground. When did we collectively decide that these average ranking games were not worth our time? True, they usually lack the polish and visual prestige of perfect 10s, but what they sacrifice in perfection they usually make up several fold…

  • Video Games

    Why I Love A Plague Tale’s Exceptional Amicia de Rune

    June 14, 2024 - By 

    I’ve always struggled with linear games, not massively enjoying the experience of ‘playing a movie’ which often amounts to holding down forward on the analog stick. It was with the release of A Plague Tale: Innocence in 2019 that I began to appreciate that linear games don’t have to be glorified walking simulators – that they can showcase how to be a masterclass in video game writing and be as engrossing gameplay-wise as any open world action RPG. After playing the sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem and watching my partner play it too, I realised that this revelation of mine…

  • Video Games

    The Video Game Companions I Love Most

    May 19, 2024 - By 

    You may not realise it, but your favourite video game companion says a lot about you – they can be indicative of your gameplay style, and you as a person in general. As an example, I always find people’s go-to Skyrim follower very telling. For instance, if you stuck with Lydia, the Housecarl you receive at the start of the game, all the way through to that final battle with Alduin, you must be a very loyal Dragonborn indeed. That, or your self-respect level might be quite low, to be willing to suffer Lydia’s insolent attitude which, frankly, is not…

  • Reviews - Video Games

    6 Reasons Marvel’s Midnight Suns Impressed Me on Apocalyptic Proportions

    April 27, 2024 - By 

    Comic book video games have long been a kind of gaming comfort-food for me. Whether it is delivering pizza in Spider-Man 2, or re-playing the Superman Returns demo over and over (usually just to have Clark Kent lift innocent bystanders miles into the air, only to abandon them in the chimney of a power station). Even now, there is something reassuring in knowing there will always be games like this. Games which first let us pretend to be the most powerful beings on Earth, and then let us behave as we actually would by giving us the silliest of gameplay…