Another Look Evil in Residence By Yussef Cole • November 7th, 2022 Resident Evil is a Hellraiser puzzle box; an invitation to partake, to play along, only to realize (too late) that the controller itself is a portal through which the game itself can reach out and draw its horrifying tithe.
Another Look End of Zelda By Yussef Cole • October 7th, 2022 Perhaps in Hyrule, which was apparently inspired by the local woodlands of its designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, we could grasp some of that same fantasy, that escape.
Another Look Starry-Eyed Fox By Yussef Cole • June 6th, 2022 “I’ve been trying to clear Star Fox,” she ventured, holding up the rectangular cartridge with a question in her eyes.
Another Look Killing My People By Yussef Cole • March 4th, 2022 My mother once walked in on my brother and I playing a PlayStation game called SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs. She interrupted our session, asking why we were “killing our people?”
Another Look My Cousin’s Atari By Yussef Cole • February 4th, 2022 Yussef receives a shock to the system (in more ways than one).
Another Look Better Late than Never By Yussef Cole • December 7th, 2021 On always being a few steps behind in a never-ending videogame console race.
Another Look Solitary Masculinity By Yussef Cole • December 1st, 2021 The solitary, prepper-style know-how in 2018’s Leave No Trace feels eerily familiar to the masochistic “git gud” approach which has long plagued videogames.
Another Look The Real Quake Was The Friendships We Made Along The Way By Yussef Cole • November 9th, 2021 Razor-sharp precision. Chunky symmetry. Beauty.
Another Look Performing Interactivity By Yussef Cole • June 11th, 2021 The hyper specificity and performativity of play.
Another Look Revisiting Destiny 2 By Yussef Cole • May 10th, 2021 Yussef returns to a world that’s moved beyond light and beyond him.
Another Look Digital Distractions By Yussef Cole • March 8th, 2021 Yussef finds Lightning for the first time. Gets lost along the way.
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 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.
