An interview with the late Ralph Baer, the father of modern videogames
Ralph Baer’s inventions open at the Smithsonian today. Check out our interview with the late pioneer.
Filipe Salgado
Gabriel Knight’s 20th anniversary edition is a shrine to its father
Jane Jensen’s classic, just like you remember it.
Murasaki Baby makes parenting seem impossible
Lending a helping hand.
Fighting the power-and a rough beginning-in Unrest
No giant rats to grind on here.
Super Time Force is obsessed with the past
Finding beauty in revisiting.
The troubling professionalism of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Kojima decides to grow up.
Luftrausers makes the right moves, but has one big problem
Fly the unfriendly skies.
With 50 Short Games, thecatamites becomes the Robert Pollard of videogames
Burning quickly and brightly.
Top 5 Michael Brough Games of 2013*
*that didn’t make our year-end list.
Doki-Doki Universe: the game for no one
What’s that chestnut about trying to make everyone happy?
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag wants you to think really hard about Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
The medium is the message. The message is the medium.
The agony and the ecstasy of 868-Hack
Michael Brough’s latest treasure is a simulacrum of modern existence. It’s also hard as shit.
Shelter shows life as lovely, brutish, and short
The developers of Pid take things in a more primal direction.
Papers, Please makes you a cog in the machine
Lucas Pope’s immigration agent sim explains the mechanics of oppression
The Quizmaster
It takes a lot of smarts to win at pub trivia, but what about the host? Filipe Salgado follows Toronto’s most beloved Quizmaster, and gains insight into how this descendant of television quiz shows is built to be lost gracefully.
Max Payne 3 Makes Us All Ugly Americans
When does Die Hard illuminate the gravity of a bad situation? In Rockstar Studios’ Max Payne 3, the player-protagonist plays the ignorant American in Brazil, with only his brute force to save him.
Prototype 2 Offers a Lot of Deity, Not a Lot of Definition.
What makes a man a “hero”? James Heller, the contortedly violent star of the Prototype 2, asks that question, but the answer leaves our reviewer strangely wanting.
Too Little, Too Late
Environmental simulation Fate of the World lets you advance the world, only to end up destroying it. Filipe Salgado wonders why futility leads to such persistence.
No More Fog in Silent Hill
Is it possible to preserve classic videogames? The new rendition of the Silent Hill series shows that technology can undermine the best intentions, and old illusions are easily broken.
Devin Shatsky on the Silent Hill franchise and HD remakes in the changing landscape of the Horror genre
When debates flare up again about whether games are art, one title that often gets brought to the table is Silent Hill 2. Like the lovechild of Polanski and Cronenberg, it’s a psychosexual thriller that worms its way into the player’s psyche. The critical and fan responses to subsequent entries have
Unlevel Design
How does the other half play? Our one-time casino correspondent rides the bus to Niagara Falls and tries to get used to losing, being lost, and loathing games.
The Unauthorized and Incomplete Story of the IGF Pirate Kart
What happens when you combine more than 100 renegade game developers, 300 off-the-cuff games they made, and a mock failed submission to the Independent Games Festival? Filipe Salgado brings us into the sporadic and rebellious world of the 2012 IGF Pirate Kart to talk with some of the minds behind th
Review: Don’t Play Sports With Justin Smith
Want to feel the sand between your toes and the ocean spray in your face, to hear the crowds ooh and ahh over your pirouettes in the sky? Justin Smith’s Realistic Summer Sports Simulator is not your game.
Review: Homeless, Gaming’s Photo 101
Filipe Salgado on the independent game Homeless, which attempts to express the plight of the homeless with repeated presses of the A button. Questions remain: Why does the homeless man think he deserves to be homeless? And how did he get X-ray vision?
Review: NFL Blitz
Regardless of one’s familiarity of the game, some sports games just fall flat. Filipe Salgado paints a picture of why NFL Blitz won’t have Madden worrying about competition anytime soon.