Dispatch Review
Telltale Games burst into the public’s eye in 2012 with The Walking Dead as a point-and-click adventure game driven by a grim “choices matter” narrative. Wikipedia calls this genre “episodic graphic adventure” but I’m the one writing here so we’re sticking with “point-and-click”. After The Walking Dead‘s success Telltale immediately bit off far more than they could chew by getting as many licensing deals as they could get their hands on and just six years later had to be shut down. Telltale’s death effectively killed this style of game as well but the community interest lingered and now the former developers have returned in two separate companies: LCG Entertainment (dba Telltale Games) and AdHoc Studio. The “return” of the genre was the new Telltale’s launch title The Expanse: A Telltale Series, which was good in its own right but didn’t capture the hearts and minds the way AdHoc Studio’s Dispatch…
Game of the Year 2025 – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
My games of the year awards have a history of being plagued with ninjas. Sekiro, Ninja Gaiden, Mark of the Ninja, and Blades of the Shogun have all been game of the year winners for me, so it’s especially funny to me that in the “year of the ninja” with three surprisingly good ninja video games practically all in a row (Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, Shinobi Art of Vengeance, and Ninja Gaiden 4) that I’m going with close to the exact opposite of a ninja game for game of the year: a turn-based French RPG. If you’ve paid attention to any game news over the past seven months you’ve probably heard of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as it has had near universal acclaim and has at time of writing the most ever nominations for the Video Game Awards. Rather than bucking trends I’m here to say that yes, Expedition 33 is…
Hades 2 Review
At this point I’ve written so many reviews that I’m sure I’ve given a generic introduction about each game genre. For a refresher on roguelikes: I think having to restart the game every time you die is an overly harsh punishment, I find replaying the same thirty minutes to three hours of a game over and over again boring, and I dislike how most of these games don’t have a story beyond the loosest background excuse for why your character is here. Despite these feelings there are a few roguelikes that I’ve truly enjoyed and the first Hades is near the top of that list thanks to its heavy focus on characters, story, and a feeling of progression even when replaying the same game fifty times. The best I could hope for with Hades II is that it would be a similar experience. The nicest and most important thing to…