The Identity of a Fighter
What do fighting games teach us about identity?
What new virtual world does the Second Life creator have in store for us?
Virtual reality, today, means Oculus Rift. Project Morpheus. Samsung Gear VR or HTC Vive. But say “virtual reality” just a decade ago, and the first thing that likely would’ve popped into people’s heads is Second Life. Second Life seems ahead of its time To those not active in its virtual world, Se
The Night That Speaks brings a Slender Man-like ghost to the GameBoy era
This ghost story is a self-reflection on teen years and the fear of growing up.
Look out, Disney! Banksy’s getting into the theme park business
Say what you will about Dismaland, Banksy’s new theme park, but its tagline—“The UK’s most disappointing new visitor attraction”—might be the rare claim that the artist’s fans and detractors can agree about. Dismaland reimagines Disneyland as a rotting hellscape. Its perimeter walls and Magic Castl
Vane strives for beauty and consistency, even in its bird physics
It’s the little things that makes Vane one of the most gorgeous looking games in development right now: the graceful twirl of leaves loosening from thin branches, clouds of dust that kick up behind a small, running figure, or the beating of a bird’s wings against the hot desert air. In games, beauty
Why are tabletop games killing it on Kickstarter?
We are in the midst of a board game boom, and FiveThirtyEight has figured out why: Kickstarter. You should read the whole story, but here’s the crux of Oliver Roeder’s analysis: “Since [2009], pledges to board and card game projects on the site have totaled $196 million, according to the company. Ni
Let the Nostalgia Die: C.S. Lewis and the Final Fantasy VII Remake
The consequences of chasing childhood memories.
Knuckle Sandwich pits you in a fight against employment woes and runny noses
The hero’s journey is paved with crappy jobs
Seeing red
The tragic prescience of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy
SUPERHOT wants to get inside your brain and change how you think
Conduct an ensemble of bullets and glass in SUPERHOT
Instead of theorizing about what women think, why not just ask?
Experience the beautiful diversity of the female experience with She Might Think.
Brutalism has found a second life in Minecraft
The case for preserving brutalist architecture requires some strange contortions. Defenders of gems like London’s Robin Hood Gardens or the Orange County Government Center must claim that buildings whose charms are derived from their heft and imposing strength are at risk and in need of our protecti
The Detail is a videogame for people who just like the shootouts in The Wire
The crime drama aims for gravitas, and misses.
One More Night will have you reliving your teenaged summer regrets
The annual “song of the summer” competition is bullshit. Like summer movie season, which has taken over much of the calendar year over the course of Marvel’s latest phase, the song of the summer is a temporally inaccurate designation. But even if the song of the summer only made its presence felt du
Videogames are afraid of the female body
Examining the complicated relationship between videogames and female nakedness.
Silent Hill becomes a beat ’em up in this Streets of Rage mash-up
Fan games come in all shapes and sizes. There are high-def remakes like the recently cancelled Resident Evil 2 Reborn, and spiritual successors like Allison Road, which deviates in some ways from its initial inspiration P.T. while still retaining some of its influential qualities. Then you have thin
Throwback car game Drift Stage is elegantly sliding its way towards completion
Drift Stage is quite obviously a game about cars, but it is also a story about the passage of time. You can trace the evolution of car—and car game—culture in its influences: from 1960s Hot Wheels fantasies, to iconic cars of the 1980s, to 1990s arcade racers like Initial D, to the 21st century fund
This InnerSpace trailer is here to make sure you find tranquility today
Hey man, how’s your Wednesday going? Feeling good? Happy? At one with your inner soul and outer essence? Good, good. That’s good. Or, you know, maybe you’re not. Maybe you feel your center’s a bit shaky, and wish the ground seemed more stable—or at least more navigable. That’s totally chill too—abso
This is a command: you have to play Sonic Dreams Collection
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Sonic Dreams Collection (PC, Mac) BY Arcane Kids One of the most unwieldy videogame fanbases has met its match in Sonic Dreams Collection. Building upon the classic franchise’s already sky-hi
What’s the difference between a maze and a city? In CNNT, you’ll never know for sure
Maze designers are under no obligation to make their creations difficult to traverse. A maze is simply a collection of branching routes, one of which leads to an exit on the other side. In theory, these routes can be readily navigable, and in that sense all cities are mazes. In practice, however, ma
The glorious ideas and terrible, terrible puzzles of Cradle
Cradle reminds us why videogames are obsessed with transhumanism
Has Gears of War aged better than the song that marketed it?
Unlike movies, videogames rarely have memorable trailers. Most of the commercials created to show them off are either brief sizzle reels or prolonged, hacky punchlines. The TV spot for the original Gears of War was an exception, however. Undercutting the promise of apocalyptic alien carnage with the
The immortal mystery of Fez’s black monolith
Will we ever truly solve Polytron’s greatest puzzle?
Here are the six awesome sounding games debuting at this year’s Fantastic Arcade
Six new games will get their own original arcade cabinets and premiere for play at this year’s Fantastic Arcade, an annual exhibition of videogames set during the final four days of Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. The curated line-up this time around is a motley collection of weird and wonderful so
The NSA Playset is trying to democratize surveillance using the aesthetic of child’s play
Would that surveillance practices were reversible: we’d have a solution to the past decade’s revelations on our hands. But they aren’t and we don’t. Surveillance is more than a series of practices; it is a force with a momentum of its own and the turning radius of a cruise ship. Consequently, the de