We really like Kentucky Route Zero. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the Ideal Kill Screen Game: aesthetically surefooted, poetic, funny, surreal, and melancholy. (The other pole of this is, like, last year’s Bloodborne, or something.) So when designers Cardboard Computer tease more Kentucky Ro
Twin Peaks. We all know it! We all love it! Even if we haven’t seen it, we know it’s a big deal! David Lynch and Mark Frost’s 1990-91 TV series has been a huge influence on videogames, from the obvious (2010’s Deadly Premonition) to … the fractionally less obvious (2015’s Life Is Strange). There’s s
One of the primary pleasures of European horror from the 70s is the sheer amount of wandering that takes place. In France you had erotica auteur Jean Rollin and his undead ingenues padding barefoot around mist-shrouded moors; in Italy, the more overtly perverse Dario Argento was stalking actresses t
2002’s Resident Evil for the GameCube was a luxurious, Gothic remake of the 1996 PlayStation original. It came out a year after Fatal Frame and Silent Hill 2, slotting perfectly into their bleak new visions of horror: unrelentingly dark, art-directed to the nines, and tense as shit. Resident Evil is
What you make of Quentin Tarantino’s latest genre genuflection The Hateful Eight will really come down to one thing: how many times can you tolerate a woman getting hit in the face? The gauntlet is thrown down early: Kurt Russell’s ursine bounty hunter John Ruth smashes his captive, Jennifer Jason L
Sylvio was a humble ghost-hunting horror game in the foggy, abstract lineage of Silent Hill. It also boasted an indelible protagonist in soft-spoken Juliette Waters. Her resolve through all manner of supernatural phenomena makes you, the player, feel a bit better about the screaming ink-black blobs
Calling the design of the Hunger Games terrible is kind of missing the point, right? There’s no fairness intended, no logic, no rules. The “gamemakers” are industrial-scale butchers, striking a balance between mass execution and mass execution that’s fun to watch. They’re games only in the bread-and
Our upcoming print reinvention is going to zero in on the creators we love and their current projects. Three of our favorite upcoming games are from independent Los Angeles-based developers doing exciting, diverse work that nonetheless shares strong aesthetic vision full of pixels, pastels, and bold
We’re still rounding up Fantastic Fest, bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// To properly explain The Witch to you, I need to give you two pieces of context. One: I grew up in rural Vermont. My house was sat off a dirt r
We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// “I like murder,” Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier confessed in a post-screening Q&A. This comes as no surprise. You might know Saulnier’s
We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// Mickey Keating’s Darling is a lovingly-crafted Polanski mixtape. If the idea of “Repulsion, but also The Tenant” gets your juices flowing, s
We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// Hou Hsiao-Hsien has been working for a long time (he’s 68), but The Assassin has more verve than stuff from directors half his age. It’s an
