In my mind, the biggest reason (among many) that the games industry is struggling so hard right now is due to rapidly increasing development time and costs. There was a time when huge franchises like Final Fantasy and Resident Evil were getting new releases every year or two, but now AAA games are in an arms race to get the most lifelike visuals, the most prolific voice cast, the longest runtimes. This is a huge problem. As a result, a game that doesn’t recoup its dev costs o

Resident Evil Requiem, the 9th entry in the RE franchise, is quite an interesting game. It is in many ways a “greatest hits” collection for the franchise that references everything from the original games, to the remakes, to the non-canonical Paul Anderson films. In many ways, it is exceptional. In others, it ends up feeling like perhaps it hasn’t grown at all, and Capcom hasn’t learned as much as we thought from their previous games. What’s so interesting to me is how obviou

Today on Twitter, I saw a post about an upcoming game where you clean a library. My initial reaction was confusion and bewilderment, but as I watched the trailer embedded in the post, I quickly realized that I would actually love  to play this game, despite it essentially being a chore simulator. As I watched the books slot perfectly into shelves in correct order by volume, and the messy, crowded floor slowly opened up to create a ton of new space, this game has joined my lis

In preparation for Resident Evil 9 releasing at the end of February, I’ve been playing some of the series that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I’m a pretty big fan of the franchise, despite being someone who scares easily. I find the campy tone mixed with genuine frights wildly entertaining. The characters are among the most iconic anywhere, and their journey from regular people to basically superheroes in the later games is so fun. It’s a type of character-driven storytelling that I

The roguelike genre is unique in the way it is keeping the spirit of coin-operated games alive by forcing the player to start from the beginning every time they die. Someone unfamiliar with the genre might consider such a concept cruel. They are correct. However, recently there seems to be a breakout hit for the roguelike genre every few months that forces players to die over and over, and they can’t seem to get enough. What is it about roguelikes that make players start from

I found Alan Wake 2  to be not only by far my favorite game of 2023, it stands as one of the greatest games of all time in my opinion. It...

It is unsurprising that Bioshock  has caused so much discussion around games studies. I could see the argument being made that video...

Final Fantasy has become one of my favorite franchises in the past year or two. However, when I committed to playing the full mainline series in order after falling in love with VII and VII Remake, I heard from a few different friends that I would hate the original run up until “modern” Final Fantasy (Starting at IV, VI, VII, or X depending on who you ask), that I wouldn’t even make it through the first game. Clearly that did not end up being the case, as I am writing this re

This week I played  Journey on my PlayStation 5 for the second time, although it’s been three or four years since my first playthrough....

Final Fantasy XIV is a lot closer to a traditional Final Fantasy game than I ever could have imagined. Depending on who you are, that...