As a massive fan of the original Painkiller games, I played the life out of Battle Out of Hell. When I saw they announced a “NEW” Painkiller game, I almost jumped out of my skin. This series has been quiet for a long, long time,…

Every so often, a game appears that doesn’t just borrow from its inspirations but feels like a lost relative, a familiar soul from a different dimension. Dreamed Away, the solo-developed passion project from Nicolas Petton, is one of those games. It wears its Earthbound and…

For 25 years, a certain type of strategy gamer has been chasing a ghost. We are the fans of 1999’s Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim—a game that did the unthinkable. It put you on the throne and then told you, “You’re not in charge.” You…

There are games that test your reflexes, games that test your mind, and games that test your patience. And then, there are games from Bennett Foddy. The name itself has become a genre, a warning label for experiences that are less “played” and more “endured.”…

There is a unique romance to the railway. It’s the deep, resonant rumble of a diesel-electric engine, the rhythmic clack-clack over the tracks, and the immense, tangible weight of pulling a mile-long freight train over a mountain pass. It’s a hobby of precision, patience, and…

The Black Phone was a grounded, tense horror film that balanced supernatural elements with gritty, serial-killer realism. Its sequel, Black Phone 2, looks at that balance and throws it out the window. Director Scott Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill have returned to craft a…

The world comes back into focus through a haze of pain and the coppery taste of your own blood. Your head feels like it’s been split open—and it has. A phone rings somewhere in the abandoned warehouse you’ve woken up in, an insistent, screeching demand.…

City-builders often ask us to spread out, to conquer vast lands and paint the map in our color. STARIO: Haven Tower, from developer Stargate Games, asks us to look up. It’s a game that trades sprawling continents for a single, impossibly tall spire — a…

There’s a unique, creeping dread that comes with being the last person to lock up for the night. The familiar hums of daytime commerce fade into an unsettling silence, every shadow seems to lengthen, and the mundane transforms into the menacing. Take IT Studio! has…

Disney’s relentless attempt to make Tron a viable blockbuster franchise continues with Tron: Ares, directed by Joachim Rønning. Starring Jared Leto as the titular AI program who crosses over into the real world, the film is a stunning technical achievement backed by a pounding Nine…