Unwinnable
r f t m o
Unwinnable Monthly Exploits Games Movies Comics TV Music Store Subscribe

Category: Another Look

Heaven from the Other Side

By Yussef Cole • February 8th, 2021

Blasphemous serves as an aesthetic exploration of the mind of the devout.

Another Look

Take a Look

By Yussef Cole • January 11th, 2021

Take a load off. Soak it in.

Another Look

Crowded Apocalypse

By Yussef Cole • December 7th, 2020

“A vibrant wasteland, a sparkling new way to experience a dull old formula.”

Another Look

Sing It Out

By Yussef Cole • October 30th, 2020

Lovers Rock, one of the films in Steve McQueen’s brilliant new “Small Axe” anthology about the UK’s West Indian community from the 1960s through the 1980s, is full of a palpable and irresistible energy.

Another Look

Tragedy Erased

By Yussef Cole • October 5th, 2020

“Bury my mother, pale and slight, bury my father, eyes shut tight! Bury my sisters, two by two, and then when you’re done, let’s bury me too!”

Another Look

Learning How to Share

By Yussef Cole and Vivian Chan • August 14th, 2020

Sharing credit shouldn’t feel like sacrificing your reputation or taking away from what you have accomplished, especially when you are sharing it with someone close to you.

Another Look

The Grind

By Yussef Cole • July 15th, 2020

Yussef reflects on what loving the peculiarly bristly and uncompromising style of the Souls series says about him.

Another Look

Software Object Crossing

By Yussef Cole • June 8th, 2020

Animal Crossing’s villagers are carefully calibrated to fall somewhere between comforting, digital companion and glorified gashapon capsule.

Another Look

Resource Extraction

By Yussef Cole • May 4th, 2020

Why not have a game that recognizes that in order to have that perfect garden world, that communal utopia, you must endlessly fight and sacrifice for it?

Another Look

Fantasies of Fatherhood

By Yussef Cole • March 13th, 2020

In Death Stranding, players get a chance to parent less a child than the idea of one.

Another Look

Spectating at the End of the Universe

By Yussef Cole • January 29th, 2020

Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds rebels against the shortcomings of traditional perspective.

Another Look

Fallen Men

By Yussef Cole • January 10th, 2020

Like most Star Wars IP, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order isn’t interested in shaking the status quo of its narrative universe.

Another Look

Tea and Warfare

By Yussef Cole • December 9th, 2019

In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, tea is a pleasant diversion that holds a deeper meaning.

Another Look

Planting Seeds in the Apocalypse

By Yussef Cole • November 7th, 2019

Mutazione owes its narrative to those who now survive in spite of colonialism and it’s world-ending tendencies.

Another Look

Making Lore Personal

By Yussef Cole • September 4th, 2019

Yussef sees a reflection of his own relationship with games in others’ deep dives into the minutia of their mythology.

Another Look

Evangelion and Endings

By Yussef Cole • August 1st, 2019

Twenty years later, what’s it like to watch the anime that made you stop watching anime?

Another Look

Dogs and Cities

By Yussef Cole • June 4th, 2019

One very good boy navigates newfound sovereignty in the upcoming indie game Home Free.

Another Look

The Silent Rot of Sekiro

By Yussef Cole • May 9th, 2019

Repeated failed attempts in Sekiro have wide-reaching consequences, but does the player’s persistence leave permanent scars?

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
A purple clad figure with a dice for a head and a pencil thin moustache over top of a gambling board. This is a still from the game Cuphead.

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.

Video Games - Comics - Sci-Fi - Pulp

© Unwinnable, LLC.

All content is owned by Unwinnable and the fine folks who contribute to it, so just back up off it Mr. Sticky Fingers. Support criticism with your clicks, quality publications with your bucks and always tip your bartender.

  • About
  • Staff
  • Advertise
  • Submissions
  • Privacy