game aesthetics
Why P.T. Anderson Gets Away With "Retro" But Games Don't
Why do filmmakers using vintage VistaVision get praised for aesthetic choice while pixel-art games get labeled "retro"? The difference reveals everything.
hotline miami
News
The rise of VHS horror games
The introduction of VHS cassettes in the 1970s was a revolution in bringing horror closer to people. Two decades before, television became the primary medium for affecting public opinion, trumping newspapers and radio. This bore a generation eager to sit around a humming electronic box in their livi
Review
Not a Hero makes confetti from the tatters of modern democracy
The pixels and chiptunes of Not a Hero mask a game of brutal cynicism.
Article
The game-like films of David Lynch
To engage with David Lynch films is to undertake a puzzle.
Review
Hotline Miami 2 force-feeds you sleaze
The one that goes all the way.
News
Foot-tall Hotline Miami toys will presumably murder your pets
Imagine this thing stalking behind your houseplants, or peering from behind the claw-foot of your bathtub. Designers Dennaton games have partnered with ESC-TOY to create this toy (“doll,” I feel like some people would say) version of the protagonist of their 2012 instant-classic Hotline Miami. The c
News
OlliOlli plays with skateboarding and kickflips onto PC
OlliOlli adds smash-forehead-into-keyboard support.
News
An unlikely partnership forms in LA Cops
On the verge of retirement …
Article
The Choreography of Pixels
Videogames and dance music have a long standing connection but what’s really behind this happy marriage?
Article
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number’s Map Editor is like a Very Bloody Mario Paint
If you’re clunky and you know it, blast some guards.
Feature
Always Sometimes Monsters combines Atlas Shrugged with Hotline Miami
The results, they are mixed.
News
Somehow Hotline Miami 2 looks even more gratuitously violent than Hotline Miami
And that is something of an achievement. The highly praised 2012 original was a visceral bloodbath, complete with Al Capone poetic justice and almost problematically satisfying baseball-bat beat-downs. But judging from the new trailer, Hotline Miami 2 is upping the ante in the brutality department,