Review
Doki-Doki Universe: the game for no one
What’s that chestnut about trying to make everyone happy?
Author: Filipe Salgado
Review
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag wants you to think really hard about Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
The medium is the message. The message is the medium.
Review
The agony and the ecstasy of 868-Hack
Michael Brough’s latest treasure is a simulacrum of modern existence. It’s also hard as shit.
Review
Shelter shows life as lovely, brutish, and short
The developers of Pid take things in a more primal direction.
Review
Papers, Please makes you a cog in the machine
Lucas Pope’s immigration agent sim explains the mechanics of oppression
Profile
The Quizmaster
It takes a lot of smarts to win at pub trivia, but what about the host? Filipe Salgado follows Toronto’s most beloved Quizmaster, and gains insight into how this descendant of television quiz shows is built to be lost gracefully.
Review
Max Payne 3 Makes Us All Ugly Americans
When does Die Hard illuminate the gravity of a bad situation? In Rockstar Studios’ Max Payne 3, the player-protagonist plays the ignorant American in Brazil, with only his brute force to save him.
Review
Prototype 2 Offers a Lot of Deity, Not a Lot of Definition.
What makes a man a “hero”? James Heller, the contortedly violent star of the Prototype 2, asks that question, but the answer leaves our reviewer strangely wanting.
Essay
Too Little, Too Late
Environmental simulation Fate of the World lets you advance the world, only to end up destroying it. Filipe Salgado wonders why futility leads to such persistence.