Levi Rubeck

Poetry at the Crossroads of Self and State

By Levi Rubeck • May 23rd, 2018

Sharif, an American poet whose parents were exiled from Iran, is taking stock of her homes and houses in this and all of her work

Squaring the Circle Pit

By Levi Rubeck • May 16th, 2018

It’s shameful, because let’s be honest, moshing is the worst. It’s amateur rugby for shut-ins and ex-quarterbacks, almost totally disconnected from the music and a flying middle finger to the personal space of everyone else around.

A thin femme person with dark brown hair standing in front of a painterly green brushy background.

Boyfriend Dungeon Weaponizes Cuddles

By Levi Rubeck • May 9th, 2018

Boyfriend Dungeon wears a dating sim on its sleeve but bears a dungeon crawler as its beating heart.

Rend Wants to get the Team Back Together

By Levi Rubeck • May 3rd, 2018

Like Overwatch meets EVE Online crashing into Minecraft, Rend is an MMO sandbox RPG that requires a clan that can work together and evolve to confront not only the other online antagonists, but the toothy bite of the world itself.

Wavecrash!! Literalizes the Puzzle Brawler

By Levi Rubeck • April 25th, 2018

Dreams are often only interesting to the dreamer, but occasionally some gold can be dug up from a seemingly random, chaotic assemblage of our brain dumps.

Putting a Cooperative Hex on Fascist Scumbags

By Levi Rubeck • April 18th, 2018

Hexadecimate is a poignant reaction to the state of the world that has no false ambitions about singularly smashing the state.

Suda-51 Strikes Again

By Levi Rubeck • April 11th, 2018

That Suda voice just comes naturally to him, it is his default mode of expression.

Rest In Power Caleb Scofield

By Levi Rubeck • April 4th, 2018

A memorial for Caleb Scofield, bassist of heavy metal crushers Cave In, Old Man Gloom, and Zozobra.

A Tumultuous Smoke Break

By Levi Rubeck • March 28th, 2018

Emma Kidwell’s Got a Light? gracefully outlines the confusing and powerful internal combustion engine of sentiment, that heavy fire that drives us all to smoking and other activities hazardous to our health.

Polishing Up the Ol’ Dragonlance

By Levi Rubeck • March 21st, 2018

The War of Souls continues the Dragonlance series’ penchant for a willingness to let its characters fail—to be broken down completely while chasing meaningless power, given the chance for redemption, and convincing the reader when they stand or fall.

Hot Snakes Carves the Surf

By Levi Rubeck • March 7th, 2018

Rick Froberg still hollers in the key of vinegar.

Cascading through the Mud with Coalesce and Meatwound

By Levi Rubeck • February 28th, 2018

It was orchestrated chaos that kept even the die-hard karate kids in the pit at bay, which is no small feat.

A young white boy standing in front of a television, holding copies of Final Fantasy II and Metroid 2. The photo is blurry.

Your Spoony Speedrunner

By Levi Rubeck • February 21st, 2018

To watch Final Fantasy IV get flayed so fluently, with a mind-boggling grace not unlike a stolen car getting stripped for parts in seconds…

The Dioramic Ambiance of Overland

By Levi Rubeck • February 14th, 2018

It’s very Hemingway-ian in it’s simplicity, which fits the Overland modus operandi so far: by doing less they’re planting the seeds for player generation of the narrative, tending their own stories of failure and maybe success, eventually.

A woman in a large black hat and robe peels back the skin on her face to reveal the pink exposed flesh beneath. This is a promotional image for Cultist Simulator.

The Sweet Illogic of Cultist Simulator

By Levi Rubeck • February 8th, 2018

The body withers, decays, and rots with whatever insight you thought you’d gained back into the earth. Until you start a new game, echoing a past barely remembered.

Four bros sitting together under the night sky next to a fire. This is a still from Final Fantasy XV

Getting Tight with my Bros from Insomnia

By Levi Rubeck • January 31st, 2018

Eventually we meandered on separate paths, and while I still keep in contact with a couple, most have drifted away or explicitly cut themselves off from their teenage buddies, going incognito and evaporating out into the world.

A sullen looking man with long black hair, wearing a strange black future suit. Behind him the text reads "Blame"

Blaming the Unchecked Algorithm

By Levi Rubeck • January 25th, 2018

Nihei synthesizes the aesthetics of precision manufacturing with a cellular improvisation, crafting the humans and the silicon life out of the same inky molecules.

A box for the Bloodborne cardgame with text that reads "Bloodborne :the Card Game" The Hunters Nightmare

The Tentacled Spirit of Yharnam, in Card Stock

By Levi Rubeck • January 16th, 2018

The pitch void and tentacled spirit of Yharnam has come to your table, in a much more accessible package of thick board stock and gory ink, as Bloodborne: The Card Game.

A strange island in a black galaxy, figures surrounding a blue lake there.

Eat the Rich and Dance

By Levi Rubeck • January 9th, 2018

What better way to roll out 2018 than immediately accounting for what one may have missed in 2017.

A grim face mask from the game fallout - -this is the cover for the board game Fallout.

Cardboard Fallout is Worth its Weight in Caps

By Levi Rubeck • December 19th, 2017

These days I think about the collapse of civilization quite a lot, but this version of Fallout carries the series’s radioactive torch of wasteland fun.

Three Billboards and the Farce of American Society

By Levi Rubeck • December 12th, 2017

Her sushi-knife-sharp rebuttal to moral authority was exactly what I wanted and, upon receipt, I was sure her victory could not last.

Gunsword, Casual Repartee, Chess and Dragonlance

By Levi Rubeck • November 28th, 2017

Gunsword whipped my head right over with delicious high fantasy visuals that brought to mind the Larry Elmore Dragonlance covers of my youth, and the only thing better than guns and swords is the fusion of the two.

80's affected text on a pixelated screen reading Lazer Ryderz

Lazer Ryderz Bring Light Cycle Racing to Tabletop

By Levi Rubeck • November 21st, 2017

Lazer Ryderz is loud: it blasts your eyes with glimmering color, and each surfer praises their luck for snatching glory and curses their competitors for sniping it away

An anchor in a starburst with the word "Flinthook"

Saturday Morning Star Rides in Flinthook

By Levi Rubeck • November 14th, 2017

Where Flinthook oozes Saturday morning charm is in the sum of its parts, aesthetic and ludological.

California Gothic

By Levi Rubeck • November 7th, 2017

Nearly twenty years later, I’m afforded the chance to correct the failings of my youth and catch The Black Heart Procession on tour again

a thin, angry looking woman in a still from the Last of Us: Part 2

The Heart that Swings the Hammer: The Last of Us: Part II

By Levi Rubeck • November 1st, 2017

It doesn’t take much peeling to find implications that the Last of Us: Part II will contain something more than non-stop slaughter.

A white figure standing near a light, a still from the game Hollow Knight.

The Ecstatic Solitude of Hollow Knight

By Levi Rubeck • October 25th, 2017

While I delight in these various directions and surprises, my most sublime joy in this game is found as I walk the path of the humble insect warrior.

A black and white image of an open book.

Tables for Days

By Levi Rubeck • October 17th, 2017

The internet is the cow’s stomach, all us users the swirling sea of bacteria and acids breaking down and reconstituting the itinerant parts of language

A black clad stormtrooper, flanked by Darth Maul and Rey.

Just Another TIE in the Death Star

By Levi Rubeck • October 10th, 2017

The massive laser-based Battlefront II experience is not unlike kindergarten soccer.

A sweaty man in a black shirt singing into a mic and being carried by a crowd. This is a still from Touche Amore.

Symbiosis of the Troubadour and the Crowd

By Levi Rubeck • October 5th, 2017

But Nick Cave and Touché Amoré have earned their fans through honest expressions, powerful storytelling, a willingness to embrace the stains of humanity in order to shine light on our virtues.

A rich painting of a sort of bacchanal near orgy, a man in a tie and little else having his nipples painted by a thinner man who holds him aloft, a woman shielding his nudity from view. Around him rest similar older white men in states of undress, their colors rich and resplendent. This is the album cover for Veterans of Pleasure.

Aren’t You Glad to Be An American?

By Levi Rubeck • September 26th, 2017

A light shone on the gout-riddled veterans of pleasure above and a tribute to the mad oracles living in a Lovecraftian nightmare of our own making below.

A womans torso, in blue, on a pink background. She is holding a bat with bright orange gloves and midway along the bottom of the image it has "Parental Advisory Explicit Content"

Choir of the Mind, ASMR of the Soul

By Levi Rubeck • September 19th, 2017

Playlists, mixes, links IM’d by friends, auto-plays based on cookies, and radio, each a tributary spiraling out in serpentines towards and through the larger rivers of our shared musical canon.

Red faced, Winston from Overwatch screams at the camera.

Deathmatch: The Definition of Frustration

By Levi Rubeck • September 12th, 2017

These are just games, and I’m being a little dramatic. But it’s worth considering what we allow the media we enjoy to wring out of us—the catharsis of great pathos or joy from a safe distance.

A carnival like atmosphere with a sketch of a man upside down in a water tub, framed by two people. This is the cover for Ted Leo's the Hanged Man.

Helping Ted Leo Help Himself

By Levi Rubeck • September 5th, 2017

Perhaps I took Ted for granted, assuming he’d always tear through town again either on the festival footpath or in an Allston living room.

One man stands playing a guitar and singing, behind him a woman.

Come Sail Away, Mr. Roboto: future of the left and the Passion of the Medley

By Levi Rubeck • August 29th, 2017

future of the left have constructed this one around a song by their former band not simply out of obligation to their frothing followers, but because it’s fun to play.

A woman with brunette hair and deep set eyes stands in front of a black background, the women behind her blurred out in motion blur. This is a promotional image for Orphan Black.

Gang of Clones: The Heart of Orphan Black

By Levi Rubeck • August 22nd, 2017

Orphan Black mostly carried itself as a character-based mystery cop procedural, with main clone Sarah leading the charge against the many forces that sought to exploit her sisters and her daughter

Very intense macro shot of the magenta eyes of a fly, paired in the center of the screen.

The Leisure of Light Obsession & No Man’s Sky

By Levi Rubeck • August 15th, 2017

We all do this to some degree, despite current tiny home fads and trends in extreme minimalist lifestyles. I’m buried with guilt by books read and unread, records haphazardly purchased at shows and while travelling, Steam games, etc., so I’m a bit of a hypocritical son.