Another Look Alone at the End of the World By Yussef Cole • April 1st, 2019 Why developers continue to make post-apocalyptic games is well studied. Yussef Cole instead examines why players like himself love returning to their ruined worlds.
Another Look Art School, Demystified By Yussef Cole • March 11th, 2019 With Art Sqool, Yussef deals with his academic FOMO.
Another Look Corrupted Architecture By Yussef Cole • January 8th, 2019 In both Bloodborne and The Favourite, wanton avarice rots leaders from within, spreading like a plague to their surroundings.
Another Look Writing About Games: Learning to Love the Compromise By Yussef Cole • December 6th, 2018 There is only so much compartmentalization you can do in separating a game from its production process and the worldview it espouses before you, as a writer, become morally compromised.
Another Look The Snowman Gets the David Cage Treatment By Yussef Cole • November 8th, 2018 Paper-thin characterizations and women stripped of their power? Yep, sounds like a Cage game.
Another Look Couples Fighting By Yussef Cole • October 5th, 2018 Unlike the anonymous nastiness of online competition, “couch co-op” games like Overcooked engender a different, more personal form of stress.
Another Look The Grandeur of Overwatch League’s Grand Finals By Yussef Cole • September 11th, 2018 An arena’s gravitas and a bit of Blizzard showmanship make OWL feel like a real sporting event
Another Look Hood Cyberpunk By Yussef Cole • August 7th, 2018 Cyberpunk stories don’t generally want, or need, to change society. It seems, rather, that they’re perfectly content partying in the rubble.
Destiny 2’s Quiet Moments Do the Story’s Heavy-lifting By Yussef Cole • July 13th, 2018 While much of Destiny 2’s narrative is delivered to the player in bombastic cutscenes, its strongest storytelling can be found in the game’s margins, through the quieter mutterings and conversations of its non-playable characters.
Feature The Origins of Assassin’s Creed By Yussef Cole • June 26th, 2018 Yussef Cole explores the complex relationship between Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Egypt and blackness.
Another Look The Mass Effect Issue: Artificial Immortality By Yussef Cole • June 6th, 2018 Mass Effect makes us question our preconceived notions about artificial intelligence.
Another Look Edge of Titanfall By Yussef Cole • May 17th, 2018 Titanfall 2, Edge of Tomorrow and the detachment of war as entertainment.
Another Look Surrounded by Strangers By Yussef Cole • March 28th, 2018 It is uniquely difficult coming to terms with your own identity when parts of your family, whether through language, distance or culture, feel like strangers.
Another Look PaRappa and Me By Yussef Cole • March 7th, 2018 Playing PaRappa now, I feel nostalgic about not only its mechanics and aesthetics but also its place in the long, weird journey I’ve taken with coming to terms with hip-hop and its implications for my own identity.
Another Look “Villains” By Yussef Cole • February 12th, 2018 Assassin’s Creed Origins is too quick to dispose of women of color antagonists who deserved a chance at redemption.
Another Look Dujanah By Yussef Cole • December 22nd, 2017 There’s a responsibility that comes with using the art, language and symbolism of another culture.
Another Look Cuphead and the Racist Spectre of Fleischer Animation By Yussef Cole • November 10th, 2017 I see a game that’s haunted by ghosts; the specter of black culture, appropriated first by the minstrel set then by the Fleischers, Disney and others.
