Games don’t exist in a vacuum. If you make games, the games you make will be influenced by the games you’ve played. The trick is to put your own unique spin on things.
It’s what the good people at Compulsion Games have done with their third-person action game South Of Midnight (Xbox Series X|S, PC), which is like Shadow Of The Tomb Raider…but only if Lara Croft was a Jedi who lived in a Southern Gothic world of magical realism.
So, y’know, not all that Tomb Raider-y after all.
At a time when some people worry they may never be able to afford a home, it seems cruel to make a video game in which a kid gets a free mansion.
But you won’t feel that way after you see what he has to do to get it. In the video game Blue Prince (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC) a fourteen year old kid has to search his grand uncle’s massive estate for the secret 46th room in a 45 room mansion. But to do so, he has to get through what I can only describe as a cross between a board game, an escape room, and a sadistic puzzle game.
When we play such post-apocalyptic games as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Metro Exodus, or The Division 2, we expect them to be set in dark, moody places.
But in Atomfall (Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC), an open world, first-person post-apocalyptic survival action game from Rebellion Developments, the decimated world has a sunny disposition, and is all the more interesting for it. If only other aspects were as engaging as the setting.
At a recent event held at Los Angeles’ City Market Social House, the good people from iD Software and Bethesda Softworks gave game journalists (myself included) an opportunity to play the upcoming sci-fi / fantasy first-person shooter Doom: The Dark Ages, which is slated to be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on May 15, 2025.
What follows are my impressions of the game.
(Note: All screenshots were provided by iD Software and Bethesda Softworks.)
While some of mobile gaming’s less appealing aspects have been carried over to console and PC games — we’re looking at you, loot boxes — one that hasn’t that often, but should, is the idea that it’s okay to have a game you only play in short, quick bursts.
But that’s exactly where we find Mullet MadJack (Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC), an over-the-top, cyberpunk sci-fi arcade first-person shooter on a timer that can be a bit much if played for too long, but is ridiculous fun in small bits.
I don’t know if they still do it, but back in the 1800s, when I took the SATs, there were these analogy questions along the lines of “Broccoli is to green what carrot is to _______.” And if you had to deal with that crap, too, you probably remember thinking, “When am I ever going to have to do this nonsense in real life?”
Right now. You have to deal with it right now.
Because the best way to describe the action-packed, epic fantasy, role-playing adventure game Avowed (Xbox Series X|S, PC) is by saying “Avowed is to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as The Outer Worlds is to Starfield.”
Or you could say it’s really good; that works, too.
When Capcom and Konami released their respective remakes of their classic survival horror games Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill 2, they not only updated the graphics, but the movement and camera controls as well, replacing the fixed position cameras and tank controls for a third-person, player-controlled approach. Which seemed to work out, given how some people — myself included — really appreciated these updated versions.
So it was rather surprising when, last week, I got the opportunity to play the upcoming survival horror game Post Trauma, and was told by producer Paul Wilson that it has controls and cameras similar to the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, not the remakes. And that it was done intentionally.
What follows are my impressions of my time with this game… and its controls.
We’ve all read books, seen movies, and watched episodes of Scooby-Doo in which someone must spend the night in a haunted house so that they can inherit said house from their sadistic dead relative.
But in the upcoming first-person puzzle game Blue Prince — which will be out on PC this spring — the house isn’t haunted, but its constantly changing configuration makes things difficult for its hopeful new owner.
Or so I found out when I recently had a chance to play this intellectually challenging game.
Violence is never the answer, even when you inflict it on someone terrible. Y’know, like Nazis.
But virtual violence? Like in, say, a video game? That’s okay. And, if done well, can be as cathartic as it is fun.
It’s why I’d never punch a Nazi in real life, but absolutely love playing the Sniper Elite games, a series of fun third-person stealth action shooters set during World War II in which you undermine the German military by, well, shooting, stabbing, and blowing up Nazis. And German soldiers. And their stuff.
I enjoy them so much, in fact, that I don’t even mind that the newest installment, Sniper Elite: Resistance (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), is basically just the previous one, 2022’s Sniper Elite 5, but with new locations and one new mode.