Steven Scaife
The game masterfully uses its microcosm of the internet circa 1999 to examine the way society functions when it's extremely online.
Kentucky Route Zero is about America in a way few games aspire to be and fewer still succeed at.
More than just a faithful recreation of an old subgenre, its greatest strength lies in its impeccable writing.
Even if the lavish detail, excellent writing, and world of possibility within vivid levels mostly just refine what came before, that’s because IO Interactive have all but perfected what they set out to achieve in Hitman: Codename 47 nearly 20 years ago
The game should feel wrong or disjointed with the conflicting elements it includes, but it all creates a strange, poignant, and often beautiful whole.
There are few greater thrills than discovering a new, powerful combo in Slay the Spire.
The world the game shares with its predecessors is detailed and bizarre in equal measure.
The game not only gets you to behave like a rampaging gorilla, it forces you to adapt like one.
The game offers one of the most fascinating, unique, and fulfilling portrayals of the human mind.
Of course, these late-game inconveniences also speak to something rare and refreshing: Immortality isn’t designed for convenient completion because it’s fully comfortable with the player not seeing everything. It’s confident enough to merely suggest certain details and concepts, giving us glimpses of certain prickly edges and troubling dynamics without falling back on an overt explanation, a tidy conclusion, or even a break from the verisimilitude of the “found footage” format. It’s an impressively layered work, filled with conflicted thoughts on the concept of the auteur, the collaborative process of art, and the prospect of going too deep in the service of expression. Rather than a clean moral or cautionary tale, Immortality opts for something messier, more complex, and far more likely to endure.
Faith’s visual and mechanical variety, as well as its one-button simplicity, helps obscure whatever rules it operates by. Sometimes the “save” function briefly changes, and sometimes a pivotal moment takes place from the ordinary overhead camera view rather than in the elaborate rotoscoped cutscenes, just to keep you on your toes. Faith’s masterful sense of timing and mood create a truly rare feeling of persistent uncertainty where anything can happen. The game manages to be frightening because of its technical constraints rather than in spite of them.
Solium Infernum already has its fans, but more so than the original, it feels as if this remake, given its extremely specific brand of prolonged negotiations and conniving, will live and die by whether it grows that dedicated audience. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay Solium Infernum is that I very much hope it finds one so I can play more of it.
Chuchel is an amusing diversion from a developer attuned to their considerable aesthetic strengths.
What saves this tossed-off narrative is the way it, like every other aspect of the game, interacts with the destruction.
The game's more successful cases ask you to evaluate your definitions of things like mercy and humanity.
Playing Pathologic 2 feels like suffering, and it's meant to be that way.
It fits together disparate genres so perfectly that you wonder how nobody thought to combine them sooner.
Wattam communicates a poignant, refreshing, and all-too-necessary joy in the face of adversity.
The game captures place and feeling through honing in on things that are singular, small, and warm.
The game is a charming concoction full of endearing characters and set to a wondrous soundtrack.