Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, is a different and ambitious book, presenting a strange world with a fascinating style. The Circus Tresaulti is known for its extraordinary members: people who have had various parts of their body – such as their legs, eyes, or even their heart – replaced by gears, scrap metal, and …

Beyond: Two Souls is a game that doesn’t work on any level: the story is dragged down by a disconnected structure and shallow, boring characters, while the gameplay is even less interesting, offering us choices that have absolutely no impact over the game’s main events. The protagonist is Jodie Holmes (Elliot Page), a woman who has spent her entire life …

Deadhouse Gates, the second volume in Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series, is an even better book than the first one. Beautifully structured and written, the novel offers an incredibly pessimistic story with a wide range of tragic characters, whose arcs always come back to the same question: how to face the horrors of violence? The story …

Call of Duty WWII has the series returning to its roots but also once more playing too safe to be truly great. Offering a derivative campaign that fails at developing both its characters and themes, and a bunch of multiplayer modes that any series veteran will have already played hundreds of times, the game’s lack of ambition is the only …

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 …

Shin Megami Tensei IV is an RPG with great narrative ambitions – trying to discuss the purpose of religions and forms of society – that presents a complex – albeit unbalanced – battle system. Its narrative, however, is very erratic and often puts the focus on its least interesting elements. The game’s protagonist, called Flynn, works as an avatar for …

God of War 2 is a fairly safe sequel that capitalizes on the core elements of the first game for great effect, bringing a violent revenge-driven protagonist, and a simple yet effective combat system, while expanding the scope of the adventure. It brings some new ideas to the table, but they could have been more developed. In the story, the …

The Damned, a horror novel written by Andrew Pyper, works better than the author’s previous foray in the genre: although it’s still full of problems, the book at least has a better protagonist than The Demonologist and a more efficient structure. The story follows Danny Orchard, a man who was pronounced dead for a few minutes during a fire when …

The Sword of Shannara, a fantasy novel written by Terry Brooks in 1977, tells a classic, derivative story that is marred by repetition and the unwillingness to detach itself from its greatest inspiration: The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. The protagonist of the book is Shea, a half-elf who, one day, receives a visit from a …

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker boasts a unique art style – a wondrous cel-shaded look that simulates a cartoon – and a great story – with the best antagonist in the series to date –, but it is sadly bogged down by some uninspired dungeon design and an overly repetitive structure that focus too much on combat. The …