James Paley
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Writing For
COGConnectedLatest Reviews
Everyone has fond memories of the Mario Party games. They’re colorful, whimsical, timeless treasures that never fail to amaze and delight the whole family. Except when you get bumped to last place by a garbage dice roll, or one of your treacherous siblings, or the sinister RNG. Actually, most of...
Metroid Dread
Metroid games have always had a thin, tenuous connection to sci-fi horror. H.R. Geiger’s aesthetic has a ghostly presence throughout the older games, and those tiny threads of horror have persisted ever since. Metroid Dread looks to revitalize that connection, at least from a mechanical perspective. Rather than a traditional...
Every Sonic game has a similar set of faults and highlights. Colors: Ultimate is an excellent case study for this. While my preview impressions of this game were pretty glowing, do they hold up under further scrutiny? Does any Sonic game stay glittering after enough time in the spotlight? The...
I have a complicated history with Skyward Sword. I love the Zelda franchise with my whole heart, but I had a terrible time with this entry. The motion controls, the level design, the constant handholding, all of it rubbed my nerves raw. By the end, I was persisting out of...
Legend of Mana
For the most part, the Mana series is fairly straightforward. You master various weapons, recover the power of Mana in its myriad forms, and save the day. Legend of Mana is slightly different. So much so, in fact, that I’m not sure where to start. The graphics are beautiful, the...
The world holds its breath for the next real chapter in the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga. After the first game shook things up a bit story-wise, the wait seemed both eternal and unbearable. While Intergrade doesn’t really answer any of those burning questions, it is a brief, beautiful distraction...
A good survival sim should be pretty stressful stuff. You’re alone, in a hostile environment, struggling to make it just one more day. The moment you can truly relax is the moment that game in question either wraps up or loses all its momentum. In this sense, Subnautica: Below Zero...
Outriders
Our relationship with looter shooters has been long and tumultuous. We’ve spent years mowing down monsters, dancing in the rain of treasure that erupts from their shattered bodies. Outriders is the latest milestone in this grim harvest, the newest always-online Arrow Examination simulation from Square Enix and People Can Fly....
Maquette
Breakups are the absolute worst. They leave a crater in your life that stretches for miles in every direction. The event itself burns like mercury stew, so why not wrap it in a protective layer of puzzle game? Maquette explores the existential horror that is heartbreak with a complex set...
Gods Will Fall
Games are all about turning lopsided battles in your favor. Whether you’re fighting empires, armies, or incredible monsters, it’s your chance to do something otherwise impossible. Gods Will Fall presents you with an impossible task that truly feels beyond the reach of most human beings. Whether this Sisyphean labor appeals...
Calico
A good life sim will suck you into a world you’d never considered before. I’m not a farmer or a full-blown cat lady, yet I gravitate to those worlds in games. Calico in particular represents a realm I’d left untouched before now. What if I owned a baker’s dozen cats,...
There’s nothing quite like the Devil May Cry series. Every successive release aims to crank up the insane intensity, assaulting players with an endless parade of ridiculous moments. Devil May Cry 5 is an excellent example of this philosophy writ large, but what of the Special Edition? Are players being...
