Charlie Kelly
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Writing For
Checkpoint GamingLatest Reviews
I disembark the train. Now, I rest on a desolate island filled to the brim with overgrown forestry. Birds fly by. Trees whisper as the wind passes through. An old, 18th century hotel stands lays ahead of me. A siren song plays, beckoning me closer. I couldn’t be more eerily...
We have a new entry into the long list of anime and manga that’s been adapted to a video game! Fairy Tail is that franchise, which originally spanned a series of manga volumes and anime series over its 2006-2017 life-span. Admittedly, it’s a franchise I know very little about. Still, getting to...
Halo 3
A deep space sky is laid out before me. Stars twinkle, almost blinding. AI Cortana’s voice welcomes me as I return on my journey. Available both as a standalone product and part of the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Halo 3 is finally on PC. It’s a good thirteen years...
Really, is there anything better in gaming than when you settle into a niche title that turns out to be absolute magic? Crosscode is an indie sci-fi RPG crowdfunded on Indiegogo a few years ago. It’s already been on Steam for some time. Admittedly, I hadn’t heard of it until it was...
Waking
I’ve played quite a fair few video games that explore mental illness or death. Fractured Minds offers a realistic and unique way to experience death. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice allowed me to understand further what it’s like to live with psychosis. Hell, even upcoming game Spiritfarer explores these themes in an emotional and...
Sometimes, video game and graphic novel narratives aren’t all that dissimilar. Bombastic, over the top, stories can be aplenty. The two can allow for some minute by minute, or even second by second, means of telling a story. So much emotion, impact and emphasis can be explored in a single...
Let me be clear: Maneater is a game I wouldn’t normally be keen on. Saturation (for better or worse) of games that simulate you playing as x animal or x concept for comedic effect is well established. Be it the great (Untitled Goose Game) or not so great (Surgeon Simulator),...
Few games have staying power the way Minecraft does. What spawned a genre, and even became the world’s best selling game, surely had more creative ideas to follow. Follow it did, with other video game forays such as an episodic Telltale series of the IP and more recently a mobile...
25 years after its original release, a little game by the name of Trials of Mana has come out. It looks quite different from the 1995 Japanese version. Instead of the top-down, isometric view we now have a fully-fledged third-person remake, brought to life in a world of colour. The...
Years and years after its original first teasing, many questioned whether Final Fantasy VII Remake was still going to be a thing. Was it cancelled? Were those trailers we saw back in 2015 even real or did fans simply imagine it? Sure enough, five years later, near the end of the...
Dreams
The game starts with a big bang. My television screen slowly emits hints of constellations. A warm, dulcet and British voice welcomes me. I’m moving my cursor (a fuzzy creature with a point, called an imp) to calibrate my controller’s movement and space. Each mapping point I nudge with my cursor...
A great group of foes await me. Orcs, zombies vomiting bile, and knights block a clear path to my goal. Do I mow through them with my cardboard sword? Smash them to smithereens with my club? Or do I risk it all for the pleasure of swiping at them with...
