• 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Reviews - Video Games

    Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Is Redeemed by Its Finale

    March 30, 2024 - By 

    Is it reasonable to say that I like Star Wars a healthy amount? I like it, but I don’t love it like my older brother does and I definitely don’t love it as much as die hard Star Wars fans do. So it may not surprise you to learn that the first time I played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was four years after its release, despite the sequel already having been out for some time, and only because it had finally come to PlayStation Plus. It also suffices to say that I wasn’t going in with major expectations. I…