Opinion by Matt S. Horror games are far too sexless. This isn’t to say they’re bad – I love a good horror game and the intense chases and/or jump scares that it provides as much as the next person. However, the more I compare what has been achieved with horror…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. It must be hard to make a game based on the aesthetics, approach to storytelling, and design of opera. It must be really, really hard. Games and film are common bedfellows. There’s plenty of literature that has been adapted into video games, as well. Every art…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. Antonin Artaud’s play, Jet Of Blood (sometimes translated from its native French as “Spurt Of Blood”) opens as follows: YOUNG MAN: I love you and everything is beautiful. YOUNG GIRL: [With quavering voice] You love me and everything is beautiful. YOUNG MAN: [In a lower tone]…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. Koei Tecmo’s JRPG subsidiary, Gust, has been my favourite developer for a number of years now. Final Fantasy, Persona, Yakuza and Fire Emblem might be all higher profile and higher budgeted JRPG franchises, and their respective developers have legions of fans around the world for good…
Read MoreFeature by Farida Y. If you’re reading this without a Nintendo Switch in arm’s reach, you may have endured the past seven weeks thinking you’re in the minority. As far as sales projections are concerned, you are: Nintendo’s struggling to keep up with demand, and has already sold 2.74 million…
Read MoreFeature by Harvard L. Macromedia Flash, for all its benefits and pitfalls, was a revolutionary platform for the gaming industry. Before it, game design only happened in dedicated studios, with difficult programming languages being a barrier of entry into the industry. A game was a big project requiring a team…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. Horror is a product of culture. How that manifests might be different from one example of the genre to the next, however. It might be because the work is tapping into deep seated fears that are a combination of biological responses to perceived threats – the…
Read MoreIt was delayed a month, but nonetheless Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 will be released in just a few short weeks. I’m battening down the hatches against the media response to that one. Actually, in all seriousness, I doubt it will be anywhere near as controversial as that. In a…
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For Christmas this year, I was given a copy of a board game based on the classic collection of fantasy short stories; The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Which is timely, because I am in the process of re-reading that book, having read it last when I was a…
Read MoreIt might be a contentious statement to make, but 2015 has proven to be the best year on record for independent video games from Australia. With a major government push for funding a couple of years ago bearing fruit, we’ve seen the product of the last couple of years start…
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