Javy Gwaltney
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Game InformerLatest Reviews
Taking inspiration from the likes of Easy Rider, Mad Max, and the works of Hunter S. Thompson, Full Throttle was a strange game in 1995 – and it remains strange today. A comedic revenge tale set in the post-apocalypse, Full Throttle puts players in the leather boots of Ben, the...
Mr. Shifty starts off on a promising note. You play the eponymous hero, infiltrating a skyscraper to steal a valuable piece of technology. Shifty has the impressive ability to teleport short distances, passing through walls and enemies to reach his target. The entire game hinges on this mechanic, and it...
Robo Recall
A single, deserted street is often where you start in Robo Recall. Nothing but asphalt, a few cars, some streetlights, and silence. It doesn’t last long. Within moments, countless robots flood the sector, armed with shotguns, pistols, and claws primed to pull you limb from limb. Too bad for them...
Stories Untold
Stories Untold appears to be a quiet and inconspicuous game at first. This digital anthology of horror stories is essentially a series of escape-the-room puzzles that take place in different universes, but the tales have gripping and emotional threads to connect them. The unique structure is an effective vehicle to...
Titanfall 2
When the first Titanfall was released, it garnered praise for pitting players against each other in the future as wall-running, submachine gun-toting pilots capable of calling down and controlling massive mechanized death machines. However, the game also received a good deal of criticism for lacking a single-player component. The sequel...
Virginia
Since its narrative-driven revival, the first-person adventure genre has faced one seemingly impassable obstacle: how to capture the imagination of a larger audience. Most of these games are built on small moments, trusting the player to find some emotional resonance by going through an absentee person’s belongings to earn a...
Mother Russia Bleeds is not a game unsure about its identity; it is completely confident and unapologetic in the violent, retro action it provides. Any cursory glimpse of Le Cartel Studios’ debut reveals muscular people beating each other to a bloody pulp in grotesque environments dripping with grime. That pretty...
It’s the dead of night. You clamber up through a hatch to see the skyscraper where the confidential contract you need to photograph is hidden deep within. Using your portable computer, referred to as your ‘deck,’ you hack open doors and grates to amble on toward your target, disabling security...
Song of the Deep is a charmingly straightforward game that wastes no time getting to the heart of matters. A young girl named Merryn lives with in poverty with her story-spinning, sea-captain father. One day, dad goes missing after a trip to the ocean. What does Merryn do? Why, the...
As long as I’ve been playing games, I’ve found those that take place in real-life historical periods to be among the most interesting. As a child, I lost many hours to the likes of Age of Empires and Titanic: Adventure Out of Time because they were magical doorways to epochs...
The first episode of Telltale’s first mini-series is a slow burn, focusing more on side characters than its protagonist. That isn’t necessarily a bad storytelling technique, except that Michonne’s supporting cast is composed of poorly written architypes. The second episode, Give No Shelter, changes gears. It is essentially a single...
Stardew Valley
In its opening cinematic, Stardew Valley plainly presents the fantasy it wants to sell you. You’re a cubicle drone working for a monolithic corporation who opens a letter from your deceased grandfather to find out you’ve inherited a farm. You move there to find a field of weeds and overgrown...
