Carl asked me to cover this one because apparently I’m the only person on the team who’ll admit to crying during a video game, and Heavy Rain made me properly well up during the origami killer reveal on my first playthrough back in 2010. John still takes the mickey out of me for that. Fair enough, really, because Heavy Rain asks you to do things no other game was asking players to do at the…
Samuel normally spends his evenings coaxing dust out of cartridge slots and defending the honour of the Mega Drive, so when Carl asked him to cover Final Fantasy XIV for the site, the room went quiet for a second. Then everyone laughed, because Samuel covering a subscription based MMO on PS4 felt like asking a vinyl collector to review a streaming service. Here’s the thing though, Samuel has put more hours into this game than…
Sam is writing this one, mostly because nobody else on the crew wants to defend Killzone 2’s controls, and somebody needs to before Tim starts moaning again about “why does aiming feel like wading through treacle.” That treacle feeling is the entire point, and it’s taken me roughly 400 hours across three console generations to convince the rest of the crew that Guerrilla Games made one of the most deliberately designed shooters of the PS3…
Timothy’s been putting off writing this one for weeks because he knew what would happen the second he mentioned playing it. Joe wants him to compare the Mongol invasion to something on the Genesis (there is nothing on the Genesis that compares to this, sorry Joe). Sam wants frame data on the parry windows. Carl just wants everyone to stop shouting long enough to record the podcast. So here it is, the honest version, from…
John is doing this one because Carl knows exactly what will happen if Sam gets anywhere near a Metal Gear Solid 4 review. Sam will spend four thousand words on the frame data for Octocamo transitions and never once mention that this is a game about a dying soldier crawling through a Middle Eastern warzone whilst his own body falls apart around him. Tim played this for the first time last year and spent our…
# Bloodborne Carl asked me to take this one because apparently I’m “the only person on the team who didn’t play this obsessively in 2015 and won’t just gush for two thousand words.” Fair enough. I came to Bloodborne in 2023, nearly a decade after everyone else had already formed their opinions, memorised the boss patterns, and argued themselves hoarse about whether it’s better than Dark Souls. I didn’t have any of that history. I…
Carl assigned me this one specifically because Sam wouldn’t shut up about frame data in fighting games during our last call and someone needed to write about a genre that isn’t about punching people in the face. Tim volunteered, obviously, because he “just got a PS3” (it’s 2024, mate) and wanted to write about how revolutionary GT5’s physics engine is. I told him to sit down. I’ve been racing games since Out Run in the…
Carl had to step in twice during our last Zoom call before this one got written, once when Tim said he’d “never really understood the fuss about Skyrim” and once when Sam started talking about combat frame data in a game that famously doesn’t really have any. John’s writing this one because he’s spent more hours in Tamriel than most people spend at university, and because he’s tired of people treating Skyrim’s jank as a…
The Witcher 3 I got assigned this one because I’m the only person on this team who has actually opened a decompiler out of curiosity rather than nostalgia. Joe wanted to talk about how Skyrim did open world questing “first” (it didn’t, not really), Sam kept trying to turn this into a discussion about parry frames in the combat system, and Carl just wanted someone to write two thousand words without anyone getting muted on…
Samuel is writing this one because Carl reckons a proper old school gamer voice is exactly what a game this praised needs, someone who won’t just pile on more superlatives without checking whether they hold up against everything that came before. Joe still insists the original Red Dead Redemption on 360 is the “purer” game because it doesn’t ask you to brush a horse, and John has been banging on for months about how Arthur…