Mark Steighner
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Writing For
COGConnectedLatest Reviews
Let’s start with a bit of video game history. The original Outcast was released in 1999. It was an action adventure game and featured one of the first freely explorable open worlds. For that element alone, it garnered a lot of respect and a cult status that continues to this...
Last Epoch
Setting aside Soulslikes, action RPGs are my go-to genre. Diablo IV, Path of Exile, Achilles, and the Titan Quest remake are just a handful of recent games that have stolen away the hours from what could have been a productive life. With Last Epoch, my precious gaming time is once...
What do you get when you take one of the most popular gaming IPs in the world and blend it with an equally beloved genre? You probably get something very much like Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story. Set in the LoL universe, Lazy Bear’s game is a pixel...
For some fans, puzzle games are the pinnacle genre. The more obtuse the puzzles, the better. To be honest, I’m not in that group. I like puzzles, but I’m not into spending hours scratching my head, or combining a dozen random objects in order to open a door. Those kinds...
I love city builders. Doesn’t matter if they’re focused on creating the perfect medieval town or a self-sustaining planetary colony. City builders bring together the intricacy of interconnected systems, imagination and creativity, the aesthetics of city planning, and a whole lot of godlike power. The original Cities: Skylines built on...
Here’s a question: is it better to stretch and stumble, or play it safe and succeed? I’m a strong proponent of the former, but I can appreciate taking the well-worn path as well. I thought about this choice as I played — and sometimes struggled —through Lords of the Fallen....
David Cage’s games are known for their emotional excess and melodramatic production. While Under the Waves is not a David Cage joint, it is published by Quantic Dream and shares a few of the game auteur’s trademarks. Parallel Studios has created a game with three strong — some might say...
Lies of P
I love it when a musical artist remixes a familiar song in new and unexpected ways. You know, like playing Green Day’s American Idiot as a guitar folk ballad. Sometimes these things work, sometimes not so much. When they hit, though, they can reveal hidden aspects or fresh perspectives. I...
Everspace 2
No foolin’, back in April of this year I reviewed the PC release of Everspace 2. Spoiler: It was a great sequel to one of my favorite games. The original Everspace in 2017 was a roguelike and had a fair amount of procedural generation. Everspace 2 jettisons that formula for...
Ride 5
Many of us could probably imagine — and perhaps have actually experienced (legally or not) — the thrill of high speed auto racing. We’ve all been there, on an empty stretch of highway, giving it a little more gas than the situation strictly requires. While high-end Formula 1 cars are...
Gord
Don’t try to tell me that video games are not educational. For example, from playing Gord I learned that a gord is a Slavic medieval settlement, a small cluster of buildings surrounded by a wall. The game also taught me that, as the British say, I would be rubbish at...
There are many adult gamers for whom Double Dragon represents carefree hours in the local arcade, or maybe a happy, simpler time parked in front of their NES. Set aside the fact that many readers weren’t even alive in 1987, almost everyone has heard of the franchise and played some...
