Ranking the Worlds of KH: Birth By Sleep

As I continue my Kingdom Hearts marathon, my next stop was Birth by Sleep, a prequel that was originally released for the PSP, but which eventually came to consoles.  Each of the three playable characters has their own story, during which you’ll be exploring different portions of the same worlds and experiencing different pieces of…

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How Much Value is Actually in Gaming Subscriptions?

In the past, I’ve talked about Xbox Game Pass and how I don’t think it offers subscribers as much as it seems to. It’s not just Game Pass, though. It’s all of these monthly subscriptions: Game Pass, PlayStation Plus and Nintendo Switch Online. They all offer access to lots of games, but I wonder how…

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Viewfinder is One Terrific, Trippy Trip

In my post about Keeper, I made mention of my 2026 resolution to play new games on Sundays. This intention actually goes back to last summer, when I resolved to start clearing out my backlog, at least a little. With a glut of too many games to play over the holidays, I returned to this…

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Epic CEO Calls Out Steam…Again

Okay, so this isn’t important news, but I thought it was kind of funny, so here we are. Steam has been around for a very long time now, and it’s pretty much been the king of video game distribution on PC for most of that time. It’s not perfect, but it is, even to this…

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Do You Really Have to Oxygenate the Water in Jolly Roger’s Lagoon?

I’ve played Banjo-Tooie countless times over the years.  And so it’s hard to make one of my favorite games of all time feel fresh.  Partly, this is because I tend to do the same thing every single time.  For example, I always head left upon entering Terrydactyland and climb the vine behind the waterfall.  This…

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What Gives a Game ‘Heart’?

For a long time, I thought that good games, games with “heart” or “soul” were those that were made painstakingly from the ground up. They needed original gameplay, original music, original characters and artwork custom made to fit the developer’s vision. Whether it was an indie project or AAA giant didn’t matter, only that it…

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Let Your Light Shine in Keeper

When Double Fine’s Keeper was first revealed during last summer’s Xbox Games Showcase, it made quite an impact. Or so it seemed around me. I wasn’t immediately taken with this game that’d become known as “the one where you play as a lighthouse.” While I appreciate the studio’s dare-to-be-different attitude, its games aren’t in my…

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Highguard is Out And It’s Doing About as Well as Expected

After its baffling reveal as the “one more thing” closer of the night at the 2025 Game Awards, Highguard and its developers entirely disappeared from the web as the discourse surrounding it grew ever more negative. The strategy was, as some theorized, to wait until launch day, go for a big reveal and take gaming…

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