Spider-man is a big deal to a lot of people. To someone like myself, a comic book nerd growing up in New York. He was an even bigger deal. The places where the Webhead squared off against Vulture and the Rhino were real, and I would regularly see them. As video games got, more and more impressive Spider-man games were some of the first where I got to see digital representations of my backyard, Couple that with the fantastic gameplay of Insomniac’s first outing with the NYC Wall-crawler, and it was only natural it was one of my favorite games of 2018.
Review: Watch Dogs Legion
Watch Dogs 2 was a step in the right direction for a series that initially went over like a wet fart. It traded in the all business plank of wood protagonist know as Aiden Pierce for Marcus Holloway, a young hacker leading hacking collective Deadsec on adventures taking down greedy corporate douchebags and mustache-twirling pharmaceutical and tech companies. Essentially it turned a boring over serious open-world game and turned it into a wacky adventure overflowing with style and charm. It’s strange then that Watch Dogs Legion manages to keep a lot of that fun and style intact while struggling to find a balance between a hack the planet type adventure and a decidedly dark tone.
Review: Ikenfell
Ikenfell is a magical school, and much like Hogwarts, it seems to be in a constant state of disaster; unlike Hogwarts, it doesn’t make me grapple with the moral conundrum of its author’s troubling world views. The world of Ikenfell is filled with crazy spells, boisterous characters, and some very engaging turn-based combat. Some of these ideas pan out better than others, but either way, our Pyromancer Marriette has put a spell on me.
Review: Amnesia: Rebirth
Frictional Games’ PC horror title was genuinely bone-chilling. It was dark, atmospheric, focused on its narrative, and did something most video games don’t, it made the player feel truly powerless. After the misstep that was A Machine for Pigs, it looks like the developer has finally outdone the original Amnesia with Rebirth.
Review: Star Wars Squadrons
I have a long, contentious history with Star Wars video games. There’s been a lot of them, and more of them are forgettable than memorable, but the ones that I have the fondest memories of are the space flight games. Rogue Squadron and X-Wing, and TIE Fighter are some of my favorite experiences in a galaxy far, far away. Games like the two former are the ones that tend to get the most right. It could be that it’s just easier to make something feel right when you can focus on the smaller details of cockpit experience and maybe not get so concerned with trade embargos and space senators' intricacies.