Let's talk games.
Written by: Nick Farinola // Published by: Joe Ahart After playing the first hour or so of Kojima Productions’ ambitious Death Stranding, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed at how quickly time comes and goes. To this day, I remember the YouTube comments after the reveal trailer of the game back at E3 2016 following a similar trend of, “Hopefully […]
Written by: Nick Farinola // Published by: Joe Ahart Dozens of hours and 26-levels later, the official Call of Duty: Modern Warfare open, cross-play BETA has ended. Damn, this will be quite a year for Call of Duty. As an avid fan of the series, I generally buy – okay, I buy – every entry each year. It wouldn’t be […]
Written by: Nick Farinola // Published by: Joe Ahart In the spirit of Halloween, I downloaded Dead by Daylight through my Xbox GamePass subscription and logged on just under ten hours. For those of you living under a rock your entire life, Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where one player-controlled killer roams around an arena hunting four […]
Written by: Nick Farinola // Published by: Joe Ahart Remember, remember the eighth of November…for that is when Kojima’s much anticipated Death Stranding releases. Tokyo Game Show took place recently, and fans got a rather hefty look at some of the core gameplay loop. Though I can confidently say that I am no longer completely in the clouds on […]
Written by: Nick Farinola // Published by: Joe Ahart Let me preface by saying that this article is more of a way to help me decide what I want rather than an in-depth analysis of all the exciting new game releasing in Q4 2019. I’m having a personal dilemma; two vastly different games from two beloved franchises of mine are […]
Written By: Nick Farinola // Edited By: Joe Ahart Remnant: From the Ashes, developed by Gunfire Games (who you may recognize from Darksiders II and the recently-released Darksiders III), is a third-person, rogue-like, action RPG with many elements heavily borrowed from the “Soulsborne” series, developed by From Software. This game has been on my radar for some time now, but […]
Written by: Nick Farinola // Edited by: Nick Farinola and Joe Ahart As Doom Eternal’s release date slowly approaches, Nintendo stealth launched the original Doom trilogy on the Switch console. The Doom franchise, for those of you living under a rock, had solidified the FPS genre not too long after Wolfenstein 3D, the game that arguably created it. Doom and […]
Written by: Nick Farinola // Edited by: Nick Farinola and Joe Ahart When I think of video games, the first thing, or person rather, that pops in my head is Master Chief from the Halo series. Halo is the prime example of a jam-packed, epic AAA-game with a massive budget allocated to the developers and publishers to spend on […]
In Sekiro, if you’re having trouble with a mandatory boss fight, the only thing you can do is keep failing until you master the timing and overcome the wall. While this might sound eerily familiar to veterans and would-be veterans of Souls, it’s actually emblematic of the divergent philosophies driving the games.
Written by: Nick Farinola // Edited by: Joe Ahart You read the title correctly. A video game helped me through one of the most difficult times in my life. Sounds just as weird as you’d expect, saying it out loud or writing it down. How could a video game help someone overcome a difficult period in their life, especially a […]
Written by Nick Farinola // Edited by Joe Ahart Let me take some time out of your day to share with you my brutally honest opinion of Fallout 76. Ah, the infamous Fallout 76. By now, pretty much half of the videos on my YouTube feed cover Fallout 76…and how much of an “atrocity” it is on the gaming […]
By: Nick Farinola To say that I have a love-hate relationship with horror games would be an understatement. The horror genre in movies is a completely different story. I’m usually in the theater opening night with front row seats for every horror movie, whether it’d come out of Hollywood or some low-key indie director. I honestly can’t get enough […]
God of War IV is the latest example of a welcome trend in the modern game industry, where an established gameplay model is used as a vehicle to tell a moving, emotional story. It works for Spec Ops: The Line (third person shooter), Horizon Zero Dawn (open world action/adventure), and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (hack’n’slash action) and it certainly works here.
A certain kind of player will absolutely relish this challenge. You probably already know if you’re the kind of player I’m talking about–and if you are, by all means, buy this game.
Now, you’re probably wondering what about this game makes me so conflicted–since so far so good, right?
It doesn’t matter if Finding Paradise fundamentally needs to be a game— what’s important is that artists like Kan Gao are starting to tell more mature stories using the medium. There’s a real emotional heart to Finding Paradise, and it’s every bit as resonant a mediation on the human condition as any novel, film, play, or other form of “high art.”
Caught amidst a torrential storm of shit-posting, down-trending Reddit comments, and sheer mockery of their loot box progression system, EA was battered and beaten over a game that should have been a complete layup. So, what went wrong?
