Jaina Hill
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COGConnectedLatest Reviews
Pendragon
Strategy games and RPGs are all about communication with the player. In those genres, statistics dictate success and failure. What is your strength? Your income? How do your choices impact the underlying numbers? Pendragon is ostensibly a strategy RPG. You have a party of characters, who move across a grid,...
If you played Control, the action game from Remedy Entertainment, chances are: you like it! It’s a pretty winning formula. A well written, X-Files kind of a story. A confident protagonist. Awesome psychic powers. Extra-dimensional weirdness. It had just enough novel gameplay ideas and fun story beats but all of...
I’ve been noticing this attitude in the world of video games where gamers are really concerned with price and value in a way that I find perplexing. Is a video game more valuable if you play it for longer? If so, I should pay thousands of dollars to the makers...
I play a lot of games that star people that murdered my ancestors. There are lots of fun games about medieval history, ancient Rome, Eastern Europe, and Russia. And at various times (most times really), those places were a pretty hostile place to be Jewish. In the 20th century, my...
Phoenix Point
Were you playing PC games in 1994? Truly it was a different era. The games were clunky and unpolished. They often bit off more than they could chew. But there was a gritty punk rock feeling to everything. When the creative culture is so messy, you’re more likely to arrive...
The fighting game scene is probably the hardest video game genre to break into. It’s crowded for one- Street Fighter is forever a mainstay, and Mortal Kombat (and the similar Injustice series) came out of nowhere to become the premier series. Then you’ve got Super Smash Bros, not to mention...
It is likely that you already know how you feel about Castlevania. After all, the original NES game came out in 1986, the same year as the original Super Mario Bros, and it is at least as ubiquitous. After all, Mario-like games are called platformers. Castlevania-like games are called Metroidvania,...
Dark Devotion
Dark Devotion isn’t a difficult game to describe. It’s an indie game that takes its cues from a lot of popular genres and fuses them into a somewhat unique experience. I could lob criticism at it, nitpick certain creative decisions—and I will—but it is undeniably a competently designed game, developed...
Sunless Skies
There is no doubt that Sunless Seas is a brilliant game. But there are many who could argue that it is not a good game. Those two facts are not exactly contradictions, and understanding both of them is essential to getting the most out of the experience. It’s a totally...
Ashen
Ashen is full of nonsense. I don’t mean its gameplay. The fighting, exploring, advancement and traversal mechanics are all well thought out and a ton of fun. I’m talking about the story. Every time a character in Ashen speaks, my eyes start to glaze over. Then I snap back to...
In modern gaming, there are few figures more decisive than David Cage, creator of Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. The French game designer comes with a lot of baggage, but his experimental style and obsession with independent cinema make his games singularly unique. Enter Chris Darril, a young Italian...
Get excited to unfurl your banner one more time. The Banner Saga is back, and it’s pretty much the same as it’s always been. And you know what? That’s a very good thing. The last entry in this tactical RPG trilogy doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but it tightens up the...
