Mark Steighner
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COGConnectedLatest Reviews
Mirthwood
I kind of wish that Mirthwood’s combat was either way better or entirely optional. Alas, it is neither. Aside from that, though, Mirthwood is an entertaining and engaging mashup of cozy farming and RPG adventuring. It’s easy to spend a lot of relaxing time puttering around, chatting up the townsfolk...
Fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise expect uncompromising action and are largely immune to the series’ rough edges. For them, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 delivers, adding a vast open world filled with danger and discovery. The release day patch fixed many big issues, but the game still needs serious additional polish. Some casual...
By almost every metric, Horizon Zero Dawn is a classic action RPG. For anyone who missed it, the Remastered edition is definitely the version to pick up. For those who already own it, the upgrade to Remastered is a reasonable $10 and at least on PS5, PS4 cloud saves work...
I’ve loved and played Planet Coaster for years, and I really wanted the sequel to be the ultimate coaster-building experience. The potential is there. The water features are great, and the new coasters are exciting. Many of the tweaks and changes add new flexibility and sophistication to the building process....
While it looks and plays differently than past Dragon Age games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard doesn’t abandon either its rich trove of lore, well-imagined characters or the ability to tell engaging stories. Dragon Age: The Veilguard has memorable companions and action-focused combat that contains more than enough depth to see...
The Quiet Place films had a remarkably simple but very effective narrative hook. A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a pitch-perfect, authentic recreation of the movies’ tone and tension. What holds it back is the lack of variety in player input stretched over the game’s running time of eight...
Whether you date it to the beginning in 1972 with Pong, or in 1980 with Pac-Man, this history of video games is by now substantial. And when it’s told, that history has to include developer Blizzard. The company’s flagship titles — WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo — have defined the MMORPG,...
Decades after games like Everquest and World of Warcraft began to define the MMORPG genre, developers are still birthing new ones, hoping to siphon enough players from some other game to theirs. There are at least a few types of MMORPG fans. One group consists of dedicated players who form...
Funko Fusion
True confession time. I don’t own a single Funko Pop! figure. Sure, I have shelves groaning with the weight of pop culture and gaming memorabilia, action figures, and toys but no hermetically sealed special edition Funko bobbleheads. I am, alas, a very bad nerd. Still, while I might not collect...
I know it’s a virtue and all that, but I’m not a patient person. Standing in line, getting stuck in traffic, or waiting for downloads to finish, they all suck. I admire those folks for whom these are opportunities to practice zen-like calm, but I just get annoyed. The same...
Soulslikes are like pasta. Pasta comes in many forms and can be dressed up in a lot of different ways. In the end, though, the delicious dish in front of you is sauce, noodles, and whatever else was added to make it stand out. Enotria: The Last Song is a...
If you’ve been following Black Myth: Wukong‘s development, you know there’s been lots of discussion and speculation about what kind of game it is. It’s an action RPG for sure. But is it a Soulslike, an open-world RPG, a boss rush Monster Hunter-clone, or a distant cousin to God of...
