Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is like a symphony — a gorgeous classical concerto where an electric guitar occasionally cuts in to shred an off-putting, yet surprisingly sick riff. As a whole, it’s weird and uneven, but there’s something undeniably compelling about how those disparate parts fit together. If …
Read More »
“Rip and tear, until it is done.” This is the line that opens id Software’s duology of modern Doom games: Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal (2020). It’s a creepy, campy narration meant to set the tone for not-quite-horror games with horrific settings. But it’s also a mission statement — players …
Read More »
When Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was first revealed during Xbox Games Showcase 2024, it instantly caught the attention of role-playing game fans. Here was an RPG from a brand new IP that mixed the turn-based combat of Japanese games like Metaphor Refantazio with a more realistic aesthetic akin to Western …
Read More »
There’s no one way to properly revive a classic. For games like Street Fighter 6, its creators focused on hitting all the right notes that fans broadly know, while trying to streamline the gameplay to be as accessible as possible. For others like Tekken 8, there’s little need to change …
Read More »
Around this time every year, a wave of indie games begin to appear that will make their mark on players. Balatro in 2024, Dredge in 2023, and Sifu in 2022 are some examples of indie darlings that shaped the landscape for the months to come — drawing attention from AAA …
Read More »
Neople’s Dungeon and Fighter (or Dungeon Fighter Online, as it’s known in the US) series isn’t exactly a household name; but the Korean MMO brawler has been running for 20 years and is one of the highest-grossing media franchises ever made (we’re talking more than Looney Tunes, TMNT, and The …
Read More »
No studio makes games like Monolith Soft. That’s not hyperbole — literally no other RPGs blend humanism and sci-fi with philosophy, reflections on grief, and religious commentary the way Tetsuya Takahashi and his writers have for the last 30 years. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is a remaster of the …
Read More »
The Assassin’s Creed series tells the ongoing fight between the Templars and the Assassins. The former is an organization trying to usher in the New World Order by seizing political power, while the latter is a hidden peacekeeping organization protecting humanity. The series uses different historical settings to tell standalone …
Read More »
It’s safe to say that It Takes Two was a breakout success for Swedish developer Hazelight Studios. The co-op action adventure won “Game of the Year” at The Game Awards in 2021 and has since gone on to sell 20 million copies in four years — an impressive feat for …
Read More »
Monster Hunter is a series whose name explains it all. In each of the more than two dozen games in the franchise, you hunt monsters. A lot. Then you craft better armor and weapons from the pieces of hunted monsters — a process that’s less grisly than it sounds — …
Read More »