A Link to the Past lets players discover Hyrule twice. This essay explores how the Dark World transforms familiar places into puzzles and unsettling reflections, making the player’s memory of the Light World their most valuable tool. It asks why witnessing a world’s transformation can be more powerful than simply finding a new one.
Before Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding, OD and PHYSINT, there was Snatcher. I look back at Kojima’s 1988 cyberpunk classic and how its obsession with cinema, identity, technology, and pushing the limits of video games laid the foundation for nearly four decades of his work.
Final Fantasy VI explores grief as something that cannot simply be defeated or undone. Its characters must accept irreversible loss, carry the memories of those they loved and find new reasons to continue. In doing so, the game argues that hope does not mean restoring the past, but choosing to build a future in a world that can never be made completely whole. Spoiler warning: This article contains major spoilers for the story, characters and ending of Final Fantasy VI.
What does it really mean for a retro video game to hold up? An essay on design, technological ageing, nostalgia and the difference between influence and enjoyment.
A Bridge Too Far is a large-scale war epic that uses its spectacle to tell a much sadder story about overconfidence, failed planning and the human cost of military ambition. Rather than celebrating victory, the film shows how bravery on the ground is undone by flawed decisions at the top. Its great strength lies in combining historical scale with a clear sense of tragedy.
I argue that Sony should revive LittleBigPlanet on PS5 because the series represented something modern PlayStation has been losing: imagination, creativity, and personality. It says Sony has become too reliant on polished, prestige-style exclusives and needs a game that feels playful, communal, and distinctive again.
Studio Consolidation, Creative Risk, and the Changing Shape of Video Game Innovation
Introduction Few video game creators have attained the auteur status that Hideo Kojima commands. Best known for the Metal Gear series, Kojima has long blurred the boundaries between film, literature, philosophy, and interactive design. His work is characterised by expansive narratives, cinematic ambition, and thematic provocation, covering topics such as nuclear deterrence, surveillance, identi...
We are often told that in times of great crisis, human morality is put to the test. In Fallout 3, the test has already failed. The bombs have dropped, and Civilisation has crumbled. What remains is a wasteland—scorched earth and scattered remnants of a once-gleaming society, where radiation poisons the air and memories of the old world flicker through rusted radios playing cheerful 1950s jingle...
I hope that now GiantBomb is fully independent, that the content on the site doesn’t have to be SEO driven but more driven by the community, and that this place is a home for gamers to write, hang out, create, and support one another. So what I’m going to write below are more long-term goals I would love to see for GiantBomb, and at the moment, are just random ideas that I’m spitballing. User R...
Authors note before reading: I've wanted to write a more in-depth article or essay about games for a very long time—something that goes deeper than an actual review. I have been writing such articles on films for a while and now want to transfer the same in-depth style over to video games. The article will include spoilers for the game. Any feedback and comments will be greatly appreciated. An...
Gaming has long been a beloved pastime for many, providing an escape from the rigours of everyday life and allowing players to immerse themselves in fantastical worlds and thrilling adventures. As a longtime gamer, I have always cherished the time spent playing video games, although as responsibilities have grown, finding the time to indulge in gaming has become increasingly challenging. This d...
In the realm of video games, where digital conquests and high-score battles unfurl, few documentaries have plunged so compellingly into the heart of the joystick-clutching human spirit as The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007). Director Seth Gordon, like a maestro conducting an orchestra of arcade cabinets, orchestrates a symphony of competition, camaraderie, and controversy that rivals...
I got some really nice feedback for my review of Segagaga , so I thought it would be somewhat cool to share some pics of the collector's edition. I bought this in 2007 on eBay for about €150 at the time. I was going through a big importing games from Japan phase, and it's when I bought the vast majority of the Dreamcast games that I own, I even bought a second-hand Japanese Dreamcast. Any quest...
In the ever-evolving tapestry of video game history, certain consoles emerge as true pioneers, leaving an indelible mark on the industry's landscape. One such groundbreaking device was the Nintendo Famicom , short for Family Computer, which debuted in Japan on July 15, 1983. Often heralded as the progenitor of the modern gaming console, the Famicom revolutionised home entertainment and set the...
I started writing again... For the first time in years, I feel that writing itch and now love the feel of stretching it. I've written a few video game reviews here, most of them are reviews that I started a few years ago and for one reason or another didn't finish, most of them just stopped after the first or second draft. I've decided to somewhat retire from filmmaking (or at least semi-retire...
This will be a short one...I promise you. Over the past few years, I kind of stepped away from gaming. Not really games but more gaming culture. Just over two years ago I decided to try the Film 365 Challenge, which is where you watch one new movie per day. I kept doing it for just over two and a half years. Now that I'm burnt out with movies, well at least watching movies at home. I want to ge...
To say the Final Fantasy VII Remake was divisive would be underselling it quite a bit, I think. Even to this day, I feel like a lot of people are really unsure what to make of it. I don't see enough discussion around the meta-narrative and what it says about gaming. Final Fantasy VII grapples with the game's identity and reason for existing in a way I honestly did not expect it to. Fans clamour...
Anytime this quote is brought up nowadays, it’s either dismissed outright or treated as a joke, but does the quote have a place in the current gaming era? It’s easy to look at the quote and say, “Well, a delayed game can still be bad, and a rushed game can be updated, so the quote means nothing.” But unfortunately, despite both of these being indisputable facts, games still get released in inco...
With video games, timing is everything. Whether it's a rhythm game, a fighting game, or even a visual novel, pressing the right button at the wrong time will mess things up. This fact applies to making and releasing games, too: Video game history is littered with almost-sure-fire hits that had solid ideas or mechanics at heart but failed to find the audience another later product managed to gra...
I don't think we as a society talk enough about Mega Man . Before Monster Hunter , before Resident Evil , and before Street Fighter II , Mega Man was a star on Nintendo’s Famicom (and the NES soon after that). Capcom made a lot of wonderful games for Nintendo's 8-bit console, but none have had the staying power of Mega Man. And this week's topic is a big reason why: Mega Man 3 . The blue bomber...
I don't know if coincidences are real or if everything we encounter is a deliberate arrangement of events for the benefit of an unseen force. Still, one funny thing I thought of recently is how closely the rise of video games matched the fall of westerns. Cowboys were a staple of film and television in popular culture for decades, lasting well into the 1980s. Still, just as video games grew in...
There is no shortage of stories about vampires; they all have their own guidelines on what does and does not destroy these creatures who consume human blood to survive. A wooden stake to the heart is a standard method of slaying vampires, as is decapitation. Still, depending on the author, their weaknesses can also include holy symbols, silver, garlic, and sunlight. Yet the Castlevania series b...
When can inevitability and evitability co-exist? When can something be a sure thing yet remain entirely up in the air? Ask Capcom : In 1991, Street Fighter II , a sequel to a modestly successful 1987 arcade game, connected with such force that it became a pop culture phenomenon. Street Fighter II cabinets circled the globe, occupying just about any commercial real estate space available. The ga...
I started playing video games from a very young age, and it didn't take me long to imagine what it would be like to create my own game. I can still vividly remember two ideas I had back when I was in middle school in the late 1980s. One was an ultraviolent beat-em-up about cleaning up the streets with an assortment of weapons, both melee and ranged, because I was such a fan of Double Dragon . T...
Over the last few months, I've had a real itch to make a game. I would love to make a story-driven RPG adventure like " To The Moon ". I'm wondering is it worth doing an online course in RPG Marker MV? Or should I just buy the software on Steam and figure it out by myself. Has anyone here used RPG Maker? What did you think of it?
Over the past few months, I've stepped away from games and just threw myself into my film hobby. I tend to go through phases where I'll dedicate more time to one over the other. So I decided to do the Film365 challenge, purely to make it through my movie backlog, and after six months of watching a new movie every day, I'm really starting to miss playing games. Don't get me wrong I haven't compl...
I was chatting the other day with a friend and he's moving home, and he was saying that he has to pack up all his games into boxes and such. Then he asked me jokingly, "How many boxes would it take to move my game collection?" I just said "One, I'm all digital since about halfway through the PS3's lifecycle. I can't even remember the last time I went into a Gamestop and bought a game." I buy al...
A lot of my favourite games from the previous console generation were from Valve, from The Orange Box, Portal 2 and the Left4Dead series. Over the last few days, I've been on vacation from work and I started to get back into Team Fortress 2, I find it to be a fantastic game to play while listening to an audiobook or podcast. And I started thinking, why haven't Valve ported TF2 to the PS4 and Xb...
Sorry I've been away from this blog for the last few months. It's not like I didn't have stuff I wanted to blog about; it was more I just couldn't find the time to blog it correctly. What I mean is, when I am writing something I will write it and rewrite it in my head a couple of times before I sit down and put fingertips to keys. Not every sentence exactly, but I will have a general outline of...
Intro : Why Game? I've been asking myself a question for the past few weeks, why do I play video games for a hobby? Is it because I am of a generation when video games started to break into the cultural zeitgeist with Mario and Sonic or were it something else that lead me to play games? Maybe a combination of both? Who hasn't felt a tinge of regret after spending a beautiful Saturday afternoon...
I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day and we were talking about what difficulty a game should be played at. He told he that he prefers to play all games on the hardest available level as he will garner the most trophies from his playthrough and "playing on the hardest level is how the developer wants you to play it" I was always under the assumption that Normal was the way a develo...
A few years ago a friend of mine wanted to get into PC gaming, this is circa 2010, so I gifted him The Orange Box as a "Welcome to PC Gaming" gift. He had never played any of the Half-Life series but he had heard a lot about them and how good they are. So a few days later I was chatting to him and asked him what he thought about the gift I sent. He loved Portal and Team Fortress 2, but found Ha...
When I was growing up, we had two ways to experience movies, the cinema and VHS copies. For me, the cinema was always king when it came to the movie going experience. The bigger screen, widescreen, cinema sound, stuff you could never get a home in the late 80's early 90's. Until of course the advent of DVD's in 1997. It's with DVD's that really started to collect films as a hobby, but I also st...
Will anyone read this blog? (It has too many words and not enough pictures.) Does anyone read video game magazines anymore? (Every article in them wants and tries to be a meal, not a McNugget.) Is anyone reading video game journalism these days? (It lacks the punch, the clips, the thumbs.) Can anyone still read? (These days, it’s more fun and less work just to watch.) I've started to notice ove...
For the last year to eighteen months, I have been debating if I should get a 3DS or not. There are some great games on it that I would love to check out, but I already have an iPad and a PS Vita so I always felt my handheld needs were taken care of. When I took out a loan last November to update my car (nearly wrote upgrade there) I had a small chunk of change left over and the whole 3DS debate...
I kept saying to myself leading up to the new year that I need to start blogging more. It's something I used to love doing when I blogged at 1UP but since that site was taken out back and shot I've never really had much of a blogging itch since. I've tried a few times to start it but most times I would write a few blogs and then get bored or not keep up any kind of proper schedule. So I was thi...
I kept saying to myself leading up to the new year that I need to start blogging more. It's something I used to love doing when I blogged at 1UP but since that site was taken out back and shot I've never really had much of a blogging itch since. I've tried a few times to start it but most times I would write a few blogs and then get bored or not keep up any kind of proper schedule. So I was thi...
Since Destiny has been described to me by a number of people as a MMOFPS Ian's we are about to receive the final bit of DLC for the game. It got me wondering about a sequel. I think that everyone here can agree that Destiny will have a sequel. Will it be shown at next years E3? or E3 2018? I have a feeling that it will be next years with a Xmas 2017 as the release window. But I could be totally...
I'm planning to upgrade my PC in the new year, but I would like to get a new monitor probably before Xmas. Should I go for a 4K monitor or a 21:9 one? for example this As much as I think 4K looks great, I do love that whole cinematic feel you get with 21:9 What do you guys think? Here is an example of 21:9 compared to 16:9 and 4:3
Was thinking over the weekend about films I watched when I was younger and haven't seen since. Film like Flight of the Navigator or Battle For Endor, but I also realised that a lot of those films scared the shit out of me. I don't mean the time I watch Alien when I was 8 and the chest buster scene scared me so much that a few weeks later when I had a stomach ache I told my mom that an alien was...
I was reading Mark Kermode's book "The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex" the other day, where he started to talk about films from Asia and Europe being remade by American studios. He believes the reason for this is that US audience refuse to read subtitles (a trend he has noticed slipping into the UK & Irish film scene too). He then goes on to talk about how these remakes are losing a lot in tra...
I haven't really blogged that much since I blogged over at 1UP. I just never really found a place since then to call a blogging home, but I really like the community here at GB; I've been having a blogging itch as of late, and I think it's time that I start to scratch it. I'm not totally sure if I will blog all the time about games. Usually, I like to blog about my other interests and hobbies t...
I was thinking the other day, what game do I always play just to kill time? For example, I was waiting for a soccer game to kick off last Tuesday evening and I had just over 30 minutes to wait so I turned on that game that I always turn to in times of boredom - Team Fortress 2. I know most people debate whether Halo or Call Of Duty give the better online experience, sometimes the Battlefield se...