After the Assassin’s Creed franchise became very successful, its producer Ubisoft adopted the strategy of releasing one title per year: they must make money while the iron is hot. It was inevitable, then, that the games would eventually show clear signs of a rushed development cycle, being devoid of any creative reason to exist. Assassin’s Creed Revelations is the first …

3D Mario games have always excelled at renewing themselves, making their most basic mechanics – like jumping – more interesting in the most imaginative ways possible, either by abusing and twisting gravity in Super Mario Galaxy or by prolonging the jump in Super Mario Sunshine. The current 2D titles appear to follow a different guideline, basing their design on familiar …

The Demonologist, written by Andrew Pyper, seeks to mix a horror story with the typical structure of a thriller while building an allegory on depression. The novel may contain a couple of exciting scenes, but its incoherent story is ultimately incapable of sustaining itself. The novel’s protagonist is David Ullman, a university professor and specialist in the most famous work …

The third volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords, is the most climactic novel in the series so far: its narrative is permeated by major events that brutally modify the political structure of Westeros and the life and personality of its inhabitants. However, the book slips up precisely on the portrayal of some of these …

“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it’ says the priest, …

The Lovecraft Project: Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror – the genre constructed around the notion that we humans are just a tiny, insignificant part of the universe, which holds much bigger, ancient, more powerful beings. We are nothing compared to what lies out there, beyond our reach and understanding. The plan is to write a few …

Released in 1998, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has become one of the most influential titles in the action-adventure genre. The game surprised players at the time by reinventing the Zelda formula established in A Link to the Past, adapting it to accommodate the arrival of the third dimension in gaming. Despite a couple of flaws, Ocarina of …

A Game of Thrones, the first volume of the A Song of Ice and Fire series presents a vast and intricate world, with a rich array of fascinating locales and characters, and focuses on how their troubled relationships help deconstruct the concept of honor. The plot follows Eddard Stark, the lord of Winterfell in the north of Westeros, who receives news …