Long after I’ve reached the close of the Life is Strange: True Colors Wavelengths DLC, I can’t stop thinking about just how well it wraps up Steph Gingrich’s story and brings everything so full circle. All of the Life is Strange games take place in the same universe, and as …
Read More »DokeV preview: Developer talks boss fights, folklore inspiration, and capturing childlike wonder
Having injected fresh life into MMOs with its combat-heavy Black Desert, Pearl Abyss is a studio full of ambition. Crimson Desert, its upcoming gritty fantasy adventure is taking its genre further, blending single-player and multiplayer together within a glorious open world. DokeV [doh-keh-vee], while another multiplayer open-world adventure, is something …
Read More »Splatoon 3 needs to learn the right lessons from Splatoon 2s Octo Expansion
From what we’ve seen so far, Splatoon 3 isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Nintendo is keeping what worked for next year’s squid paintball sequel – and that even with a new setting and some new tools to play with, we’ll still largely be flinging ourselves against each other in …
Read More »Forza Horizon 5 transformed me into Count Driftula, superstar driver of Mexico
Out here in the real world, I’m known to most as ‘Josh’. Yawn; given names are so passé. There’s a handful of people in my orbit that have yielded to the assertion that I be known as the ‘J-Dawg Supreme’. That’s better, but it took precious years of my life …
Read More »For Phoenix Point on console, X-COM creator Julian Gollop says he “quite shamelessly copied” the Firaxis games he inspired
Julian Gollop spent his youth playing chess, backgammon, and popular tabletop board games Dungeons and Dragons, Avalon Hill and SPI. He learned to code while at school, started making video games at 18, and founded development studio Mythos Games a year later, alongside his brother and father. In 1994, having …
Read More »Hell Let Loose is an FPS for those seeking brutal realism
Hell Let Loose is here to remind you that war sucks. Not because the game is bad, but because the game is so damn realistic it leans closer to a military simulator than an FPS. It certainly feels like an accurate representation of what World War 2 warfare might have …
Read More »I watched the world burn in a 1,000-player GTA Online roleplay server while playing the guitar
The world is burning and I’m standing outside a police station with Donald Trump and Kermit the Frog. A coast guard helicopter has spawned inside the lobby over my shoulder, its rotor blades slicing through the security glass doors like a knife through butter, and the former US president has …
Read More »In time-loop shooter Lemnis Gate, you’re as much your own worst enemy as the person trying to kill you
My name is Joe and I am really, really good at Lemnis Gate. In fact, I might be the best Lemnis Gate player in the world right now. Because as we speak, the chump I’m facing in this online turn-based 1v1 shoot-out has deployed Karl first, a laser-blasting automaton tank, …
Read More »I fear the Battlefield 2042 open beta may be too familiar for its own good
Battlefield players will forgive a lot, particularly when it comes to large scale maps and player counts. I’m not saying that in the abstract; I’m one of those players and have been since 2005, back when the Battlefield 2: Modern Combat multiplayer servers came online for PlayStation 2. And we’ll …
Read More »Why Halo Infinite is drawing so many comparisons to Halo 3
Amongst all the discourse surrounding Halo Infinite, you’ve probably heard “it feels like Halo 3” the most. Halo 3 is the standard-bearer for the Halo franchise, a game that was, as the kids say, a cultural reset. But it’s also well over a decade old, which means many of the …
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