Games

This review contains spoilers. The Last of Us is a competent post-apocalyptic zombie game about a troubled, violent man making troubled, violent decisions. It may never quite manage to successfully integrate its gameplay systems into the story, which leans too heavily on the clichés of the genre, but still offers a carefully built nihilist narrative and a couple of memorable …

Based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s most famous work, although greatly diverging from it in tone and message, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game that fails to harness its own potential. While its main story is shallow, repetitive, and contrived (hopeless both in its suffocating atmosphere and overall quality), when it comes to gameplay, the game actually presents a …

“When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor” – Paulo Freire. Dragon Age II is a rare breed of RPG: instead of offering an epic, episodic adventure, filled with exotic people and wondrous locales to explore, it has a single, almost barren location and a thematically focused story. Its reused assets and simple …

Dear Esther’s story is told by enigmatic voice messages that eventually contradict themselves, causing disorientation and confusion. Its setting is eerie, enveloped by a dreamlike atmosphere that rejects common logic. It’s a fascinating game that only falters when it tries too hard to make us replay it. The gameplay in Dear Esther could not be simpler. Our character is stuck …

The Turing Test is a puzzle game that is often at odds with itself, packed with design decisions that work against the discussions present in its story. It’s a game that contradicts itself at every turn. You play as Ava Turing, an engineer on board a space station above Jupiter’s Europa, who one day is awakened from cryosleep by an …

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, the 3D remake of the GBA title Chain of Memories, is a strange, disjointed, complex beast. It continues the story of Sora directly from where the first game left off, but with even more bizarre characters and plotlines, while introducing a new combat system that is as cumbersome as it is unbalanced. The story starts …

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is Monster Hunter at its best. Containing an unpretentious but well-written story, and a lot of new bosses, equipment, and locations, the game’s only problem is that it has been built around too many luck-based systems. In Monster Hunter 4, the player controls an avatar completely devoid of personality, whose function is merely to represent them …

Rhythm Thief & The Emperor’s Treasure is a game that offers musical minigames punctuating an adventure about an art thief. Despite this interesting premise, however, the game suffers from a poor selection of minigames and a story with serious problems of structure and cohesion. The story revolves around Raphael, a young thief who, accompanied by his dog Fondue, wears a …

“It’s not my first lost city,” protagonist Nathan Drake says to his brother at a certain point in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which is symptomatic, as this is a gorgeous but ultimately safe sequel that offers familiar set pieces, locales, and characters: it tries very hard to marvel the player with its visuals and spectacle but, just like Nathan …

Narrative-wise, God of War: Ascension is as redundant a prequel as the PSP games, bringing a story that adds absolutely no new layer to its protagonist’s struggles. It follows the series’ formula closely, maintaining a sense of scope and epicness by providing exciting and grandiose set pieces, but ultimately falls short on purpose: Kratos will do incredible things once again, …