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Category: Excerpt

Feature Excerpt

Hideo Kojima Hates You

By Emma Kostopolus • January 23rd, 2023

A study in difficulty scaling.

Feature Excerpt

Time Loop of Trauma

By Alma Roda-Gil • January 20th, 2023

There is no catharsis to be had at the end of Returnal’s time loop. It becomes clear, as the player finishes the story, that it will keep going.

Feature Excerpt

An Ode to Little Freaks

By Phillip Russell • December 20th, 2022

On a surface level, Gremlins is a movie that evokes classic horror tropes, but when you dig deeper you find a meta horror satire that attempts to comment on American excess and consumerism.

Feature Excerpt
In key art from the videogame Stray, a robotic citizen kneels down to pet a stray cat in a neon-lit city street.

Surviving Humanity

By Jon Bailes • November 21st, 2022

The cat, the fox and the apocalypse.

Feature Excerpt

Lost in Translation

By Aidan Moher • November 18th, 2022

The Sega Saturn is one of the best JRPG consoles of all time…just not in the west.

Feature Excerpt

Monsters Built by Human Hands

By Hyacinth Nil • October 20th, 2022

A close reading of Lakeview Hotel.

Feature Excerpt
In a still from Jason and the Argonauts, three armed skeletons are lined up ready for battle.

Stop/Motion

By Orrin Grey • October 20th, 2022

Ray Harryhausen and the magic of stop motion monsters.

Feature Excerpt

To Be a Bird on an Island

By Taylor Hidalgo • September 23rd, 2022

During unsteady times, it’s easy to get caught up in the sadness of uncertainty. Thankfully, there are little animals tromping around an island to remind us that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Feature Excerpt

Shark Party

By Michael Lee • September 22nd, 2022

The kinds of relationships people form in online spaces can be as meaningful and socially rewarding as physical encounters with human bodies.

Feature Excerpt
A sorceress in bone-accented armor wields blue-tinted magic with her outstretched hands, which appears to sever souls from bodies.

The Horror of Finding a Home

By Andrei Filote • August 25th, 2022

Path of Exile doesn’t end when the story concludes but when the player’s will to imagine the next character fails.

Feature Excerpt
Moody, two-color pixel art depicts the rigging of a ship at sea during a full moon.

The Chaos Detective

By Daryl Li • August 24th, 2022

The Return of the Obra Dinn supports a detective fantasy by casting the player into the role of textual interpreter who seeks to organize the chaos into coherent solution.

Feature Excerpt
A drawing featuring the main protagonist in DOOM. A muscular soldier in a helmet holds a large gun.

Misremembering DOOM

By Ben Sailer • July 27th, 2022

In this revised reprint from 2018, Ben revisits the SNES version of DOOM, and destroys part of his childhood in the process.

Feature Excerpt
A hi-res telescopic image of the red planet Mars.

Blue Keys on a Red Planet

By Ollie Hardy • July 26th, 2022

An excerpt from Ollie Hardy’s cover story for our special all-DOOM edition of Unwinnable Monthly.

Feature Excerpt
In a screenshot from Demon's Souls, a beleaguered knight stands in the ruined courtyard of a great grey cathedral.

Why Aren’t There Treasure Chests in Demon’s Souls?

By Jon Thumas • May 25th, 2022

Not having treasure chests is a provocative decision for a Japanese action RPG to have made in 2009, but it was far from a transgressive one.

Feature Excerpt

Cyberpunk 2077 is a Haunted House

By Alma Roda-Gil • May 24th, 2022

Just because death permeates Night City doesn’t mean it’s a privilege afforded to everyone.

Feature Excerpt
A red-headed woman rides a bicycle down a cobblestone street, scarf flying wildly behind her. A man in jorts and t-shirt chases after her on foot, arms flailing.

Imagine the Possibilities

By Noah Hertz • March 23rd, 2022

How a college course in Second Life taught me everything I needed to know about the Metaverse.

Feature Excerpt
A silver sports car makes a left-banked turn on a professional racetrack. Lush trees line the outer perimeter of the track.

Missing Mediocrity

By Van Dennis • March 22nd, 2022

The extinction of regular cars in racing games.

Feature Excerpt
Five soldiers in heavy gear and camouflage fatigues wade through what looks like a pool of fiery lava.

Hell is Other Shooters

By Andrei Filote • February 22nd, 2022

If we organize our play to prepare for the demands of later life, then is it possible to create a new set of values simply by the games that we choose to play?

Feature Excerpt
A giant human eye is projected on an electric-framed screen in a room that seems to exist in a liminal space.

Comfort in the Abyss

By Luke Rotella • February 21st, 2022

My relationship with That Night, Steeped By Blood River.

Feature Excerpt
The top of a towering spire disappears into stormy, swirling clouds.

Become Cursed: Doubt

By George Umbarger • January 21st, 2022

Slaying uncertainty via an unusual in-Spire-ation.

Feature Excerpt

Children of the Night

By Alma Roda-Gil • January 20th, 2022

Vampires, blood libel and Midnight Mass.

Feature Excerpt

The Sixties That Weren’t, or, How Psychonauts 2 Forgets Politics

By Christian Haines • December 22nd, 2021

Double Fine’s videogame Psychonauts 2 draws on the experimental energies of the 1960s only to mute that decade’s political fervor.

Feature Excerpt
An angled shot of a laser-lit, futuristic shop called "Citiadel Souvenirs."

This Is My Favorite Shop in the Citadel

By Emma Kostopolus • December 20th, 2021

The ethics of Mass Effect roleplay.

Feature Excerpt

Roleplaying Freedom: Joel Rosenberg and White Fantasies of Oppression

By Noah Berlatsky • November 23rd, 2021

Rosenberg’s depiction of liberation is less about those liberated and more about the moral awakening of the white liberator.

Feature Excerpt

Rebels Without a Cause

By Gerry Hart • November 19th, 2021

Watchdogs: Legion could have been a powerful or at least insightful piece of cultural commentary. It’s more like the Kylie Jenner Pepsi advert.

Feature Excerpt
A screenshot from the Pendragon videogame.

Pendragon and Anti-Fascist Medievalism

By Ruth Cassidy • October 29th, 2021

“Camelot has, for the moment, fallen, but the dream of Camelot – of a sane Government by consensus, led by an Arthur and not a Mordred – must and will live on.”

Feature Excerpt
A mummy reaches for a man lying in bed.

A World Beyond: The Inadvertent Sci-Fi of Universal’s Original Mummy Sequels

By Orrin Grey • October 27th, 2021

If you think about it, mummies are the original time travelers.

Feature Excerpt
A black and white drawing of an old time canon.

Blasting the Canon

By Andrew Goddard • October 7th, 2021

What classical music can teach us about constructing a videogame canon

Feature Excerpt

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Crises of Faith

By Ryan Stevens • October 6th, 2021

Assassin’s Creed has long been able culture clash, but what about clashes of faith?

Feature Excerpt
A naked person holds a tamed snake up for entertainment.

On Orientalism and Exoticism in Videogame Music

By William Dowell • August 18th, 2021

The insidious way that Orientalism exists in videogame music.

Feature Excerpt
The Vault Dweller from Fallout 3 walks among the ruins of Washington DC.

The Mutated City

By Zsolt David • August 17th, 2021

The world living in the husk of another.

Feature Excerpt
A house with a filter showing multiple time periods.

Ecstatic Truth in Games

By Ben Rueter • July 28th, 2021

What nonfiction games offer if you can find them

Feature Excerpt
Tasi sits against, a wall, illuminated by only a lantern. A massive shadow is cast behind her.

Mother Loves You: Monstrous Parenthood in Amnesia: Rebirth

By Emma Kostopolus • July 27th, 2021

There’s a deeper, more metatextual horror to Amnesia: Rebirth.

Feature Excerpt
The desert landscape of Tatooine whips past with two pod racing engines connected by a purple beam.

Podracing Towards an Absent Future

By Samuel Kendall • July 26th, 2021

Because Star Wars isn’t really Star Wars anymore.

Feature Excerpt

Imagining the Future in Games

By Ruth Cassidy • June 24th, 2021

A vision of tomorrow, today!

Feature Excerpt
A living room with an empty pizza box and a couch with cushions strewn about.

The Personification of the House

By Matthew Brown • June 22nd, 2021

The walls could always talk, we just have to listen.

Feature Excerpt

Dancing in Solitude

By Clint Morrison Jr. • June 10th, 2021

Dance has a long history of media representation during and following “plague” years.

Feature Excerpt

Your Dearest Kin Below the Skin

By Emily Price • June 10th, 2021

Liquidity in Hades.

Feature Excerpt
An armor clad figure draws their sword to do battle with a dragon.

Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Middle Earth

By Jamie Redgate • April 29th, 2021

How does one go about making a modern fantasy touchstone?

Feature Excerpt

Dungeons and Comrades: The Capitialism Catharsis of Going Under

By Andrew Kiya • March 19th, 2021

“Disrupting” is great if by that you mean smashing up corporate hell.

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