3+ week, 2+ day ago   (849+ words) The reveal of Nintendo’s remake of the 1998 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has stirred up incredible responses. Anytime I come across a video of someone reacting to the trailer, I stop and watch it because it’s nice…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (985+ words) Amanda Tien (she/her or they) loves video games where she can pet dogs, solve mysteries, punch bad guys, play as a cool female character, and/or have a good cry. She began writing with The Punished Backlog in 2020 and…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago   (442+ words) I recently attended the BAFTA Games in Concert tour, which took place in the U.K. in May and June. The event revisited the games that have won BAFTAs for sound and score within the past 20 years, celebrating the composers who add…...

1+ mon, 4+ week ago   (860+ words) Somewhere above a smoldering caboose carcass, roughly a quarter of the way into my playthrough of Denshattack!, I paused to jot in my game journal, in whimsical, facetiously looped capital letters: M A R X V E R S U…...

4+ mon, 5+ day ago   (404+ words) Two quick notes: 1) The following contains spoilers for the mainline Resident Evil franchise, including Requiem, and 2) No legitimate study has found any connection between real-life violence and video games. What follows is an examination of the representation of violence and…...

4+ mon, 2+ week ago   (269+ words) Time passed. Dates came and went. A war didn’t help. Innovating new lighting technology slowed things down even more. But finally, finally, I have played Replaced. I have finished Replaced. And I can finally say, out loud, that Replaced is…...

5+ mon, 1+ week ago   (624+ words) The year was 2005… or perhaps 2004. Maybe even 2006. I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that it was my birthday, and I had invited my friends over for a fun time. Naturally, turning 10 (or, again, 11, or something) meant there was…...

5+ mon, 2+ week ago   (706+ words) A few months ago, I was scrolling on TikTok one evening when I was suddenly faced with a video promoting a spooky game called Project Songbird. As a lover of horror (particularly of the psychological horror sub-genre), the game sounded…...

7+ mon, 3+ week ago   (551+ words) I still wasn’t expecting much. After all, how could a 2D point-and-click ever be as enjoyable as the likes of Final Fantasy XIV or Horizon Zero Dawn? Never in my life have I been so spectacularly, pleasantly, wrong. Depending on what…...

7+ mon, 3+ week ago   (789+ words) The machine hums. It’s looking for something; so am I. We’re both seeking answers, trying to speak each other’s languages, parsing out information. People are depending on us. We better make this next attempt count. While it’s much shorter than…...