Review by Matt S. Elden Ring feels like the journey that developer, FromSoftware, has been on for the past 28 years has finally come full circle. In 1994 there was King’s Field, then in 2009, it was Demon’s Souls. Then came the Dark Souls series, but it feels like 2022’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. With a heavy dose of the same kind of 19th-century English countryside gothic aesthetic that was instrumental in making Wuthering Heights my favourite book of all time, Maid of Sker hits the ground running. This game is beautiful and, while it is only very (very) loosely…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Let me tell you a story. A story about Ravenloft. Ravenloft was a big influence on me from a very early age (in retrospect, probably a little too early to be into gothic horror). It was a Dungeons & Dragons setting in which an otherworldy “continent”…
Read MoreFinal Fantasy X turns 19 years old this year. Over that time it has been frequently re-released – originally exclusive to the PlayStation 2, you can now play it on your PlayStation 3, 4, Vita, Nintendo Switch, PC, and probably a few other platforms I’ve forgotten about. It’s one of…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. As soon as you describe a Kickstarter project as a spiritual successor to something beloved, you set the expectations through the roof—not least of all when the original creator comes out of the shadows to take the helm. Even if the end result is something that’s…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Dark Souls: Remastered really, really needed to release at the same time on the Nintendo Switch. That’s where the novelty of the re-release was: for the first time we were going to be able to play Dark Souls on a handheld. That was a really exciting…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. A game like Black Mirror getting a high profile re-release in 2017 is surely reassuring proof of the health of the games industry. Starting life as a point-and-click adventure game in 2001 as The Black Mirror, the series has always been trying to find its voice…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The unfortunate reality about the entire “Diablo clone” genre is that it’s impossible to make a top-down perspective, loot-heavy, narrative-light game without having your game compared to Diablo. It’s right there in the genre title. Most games – in fact, almost all games, do not come…
Read MoreI really wanted to like AeternoBlade. It’s the kind of game that I want to champion, because it comes from a young development team (Corecell Technologies) from a young game development market (Thailand). And because of that it represents a diversifying game development industry, where creative people from all over…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Let’s make this clear from the outset; as a game, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 isn’t too bad. As with its predecessor the focus is very much on a fast, fluid combat system, and while it’s a little generic at times (especially the boss battles, which…
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