Author: Christian Valentin

Christian Valentin writes out of Yorktown, New York, and enjoys covering the wide spectrum of indie titles found across PC, console, and mobile.
The Hex
News

The Hex, a new mystery from one of videogames’ greatest tricksters

At its core, one could shave down a detective story to three basic questions: who, why, and how. Who was the victim, who was the perpetrator? Why and how they did commit the crime? From Sam Barlow’s FMV mystery in Her Story (2015) and Cole Phelps’ investigations across the seedy streets of 1940s Los Angeles in LA Noire (2011), to the forensics of CSI and the mental deductions of Sherlock, those questions drive players and fictional sleuths alike. Often the answers to the “how?” and “why?” are easy to fathom—jealousy, revenge, greed, and so on—but what happens when victim and…
Arms of Telos
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Arms of Telos is all about the thrill of moving at blistering speed

There’s an almost innately satisfying thrill in going fast, in moving beyond the limits of our biology. You see it in the one-upmanship of supercar speed specs, touting how rapidly the newest model can roar from 0 to 60 and push past the 200mph mark. In the excitement of plummeting towards the earth while skydiving or speeding through open air on a zipline, or just the joy of driving with the convertible top down and the wind whipping through your hair. In the rise of acrobatic activities like parkour and free-running, how they allowed one to ignore the typical walkways…
Death's Gambit
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Death’s Gambit enters the contest for the biggest videogame bosses

In 2014, game studio White Rabbit revealed what was perhaps the defining image of its upcoming fantasy action game Death’s Gambit: your mounted hero scaling the body of a gargantuan being, so massive that it loomed over the surrounding mountain range. It was clear then that while the sword-and-shield combat and gloomy fantasy world was influenced by titles such as Dark Souls (2011) and the Castlevania series, the legacy of Shadow of the Colossus (2005) also—and perhaps most prominently—lived on in Death Gambit’s towering bosses. That point is only nailed home with the release of the game’s most recent trailer, 90…
Cayne
News

The follow-up to Stasis is a mother’s worst nightmare

It seems only right that 2015’s grim industrial sci-fi adventure Stasis should get a spin-off chapter, called Cayne, and the same can be said for the fact that it is to explore the story of an expectant mother. Stasis was an isometric love letter to the dimly-lit isolated vessels, claustrophobic corridors, and weathered lived-in interiors of movies such as Alien (1979), Pandorum (2009), and Sunshine (2007), those derelict places where otherworldly horrors and inhumane activities exist far from prying eyes. Cayne takes place in the same world as that game’s protagonist and his struggles on the mining ship Groomlake, but plans to…
Thumper
News

Thumper is set to blow your damn face off this October

Thumper may not be the first rhythm game to feature a craft accelerating down winding paths in sync with the beat, but its aggressive assault of color and sound and speed promises to perhaps be the most hypnotic. The intense and otherworldly  “rhythm violence” of the game has been gestating since developer Drool formed in 2009, and now, like its titular chrome beetle, is finally set to emerge on October 13th for PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, and Steam. “an overwhelming sense of speed and monumental dread” In a recent PlayStation blog post, co-founder Marc Flury discussed what you should expect when…