I never expected to see “I got reincarnated… as a hamster!” as the opening words of a game’s description on Steam. After crossing that dread threshold, I certainly didn’t expect to see a banner on the same page warning me about “frequent nudity or sexual content.” But here we are: grass grows, sun shines, and…

Despite the massively multiplayer angle, MMOs can be quite lonely games—and if you play them for very long, you’ll learn there are plenty of people who play them specifically to solo as much as they can. That can mean casually clearing the story or going sicko mode by killing a raid boss intended for a…

Erik Wolpaw’s first encounter with computer gaming was on a TRS-80 in his high-school library. “It was one of the Scott Adams adventures. I don’t remember the exact name, but it’s the haunted mansion one,” Wolpaw says. “They are very crude at this point, but at the time I couldn’t believe it, and that was…

Marathon is a game about loss, though not in the traditional PlayStation Studios fashion. There are no sad dads on Tau Ceti IV, unless you count the various corporate AIs still pining after the failed colony they funded. Rather, Marathon is about the potential for loss—the furrowing fear that sits on your brow every time…

There comes a time in every gacha game where, for whatever reason, the developer decides adding a rhythm game is a good idea. It’s not. Critical Hit Welcome to Critical Hit (formerly known as Soundtrack Sunday), where I celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our…

Today, a teaser trailer called “False Sense Of Security” was posted by the Alien: Isolation YouTube account. An industrial door unlocks and opens into a gloomy, rainy cityscape, and the scene cuts to one of Isolation’s emergency phone save points. It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years since the first game scared the bejeezus…

Zenless Zone Zero, a game I primarily associate with the neologism “gooner 9/11,” is finally en route to PC’s biggest digital storefront. This game produced a headline on this very website containing the phrases “divine domain,” “jiggle physics,” and “cat balls” all one right after the other. It got a glamorous 55% from reviewer Kerry…

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena review – PC Gamer issue #200 (UK, May 2009) Around about the time that I was stamping three guards to death, I realised that I was the monster in Riddick. Is it any wonder that the fourth guard who blundered into that scenario, who saw his colleagues…

Never in my life have I felt like the screenshots I take while playing games are worth printing out and displaying on the wall. They’re barely good enough to stick under a magnet on the fridge, mostly because they’re things like map locations or places I promise myself I’ll come back to and never do….