Unwinnable

             

Unwinnable Monthly Exploits Games Movies TV Music | Store | Subscribe

Casting Deep Meteo

Netrunner, Begin Again

By Levi Rubeck • December 6th, 2018

Netrunner is an itch that will always need scratching.

Old Dog, New WASD

By Levi Rubeck • November 29th, 2018

Levi has controller problems, but the public stage of Overwatch is not the place to practice new configurations.

Restorative Hardcore

By Levi Rubeck • November 23rd, 2018

Hardcore has always struggled with this idea of restoration. As a sound it implodes buildings, razes the ground, acts as a cleansing flame.

Gwent for One

By Levi Rubeck • November 15th, 2018

Believe it or not, Carly Rae Jepsen’s new single sets the tone for Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales.

Diary of a First-Time Dungeon Master

By Levi Rubeck • November 8th, 2018

“I want to do a perception check on that guard’s butt.”

Call Dad

By Levi Rubeck • November 1st, 2018

Make noise, refuse to settle, share the heat with somebody, check in with your loved ones.

The Myth of Difficulty

By Levi Rubeck • October 25th, 2018

It’s not grit or will or skill. You survive on luck, pure and simple.

A Criticism of Adequacy

By Levi Rubeck • October 18th, 2018

Katamari Damacy blindsided videogames with style and simplicity, imploding the paradigm of violence for a brief, fantastic moment.

A Bus Full of Dogs in El Salvador

By Levi Rubeck • October 11th, 2018

As the world shrinks, Stonebot games shows the value of staying local, thinking big, and defending man’s best friend.

The Lifelong Labor of a Working Musician

By Levi Rubeck • October 4th, 2018

For every post-Nirvana success story, there are cemeteries choked with the tombstones of failed major label alternative and grunge bands.

Bullets are the Pennies

By Levi Rubeck • September 27th, 2018

Destiny 2 is penny slots, a string of tiny thrills occasionally punctuated with glowing ones.

The Loop Remains the Same

By Levi Rubeck • September 6th, 2018

In Dead Cells, The Prisoner is a loose G.I. Joe winding through a bedroom jungle by hand, a two-legged finger ninja pirouetting on the kitchen table.

In Defense of the Wrong Record

By Levi Rubeck • August 30th, 2018

Fans usually reach a consensus on a band’s best work, but what do fans know?

Seize the Sandbox

By Levi Rubeck • August 23rd, 2018

I don’t want to craft my own tale in the game, I want to live vicariously through a meticulously arranged narrative.

Chasm Emerges from the Depths

By Levi Rubeck • August 7th, 2018

Chasm ticks all the boxes, but at the same time suffers from its own success. I want it to be just a little bit more.

Mini-Operas in Grind and Glitch

By Levi Rubeck • July 26th, 2018

How grindcore taught me to appreciate Tierra Whack.

Daughters Split Open Their Satanic Chrysalis

By Levi Rubeck • July 18th, 2018

This country has had no shortage of crusty street preachers, split-lip soothsayers crawling across glass-littered asphalt to cough up a truth few are brave enough to bear.

Ill Considered’s Sublime Echolocation

By Levi Rubeck • July 12th, 2018

I watched Lost Highway alone at midnight, on a sweltering Northern California summer evening, and when it was finally over I only really retained two thoughts.

Netrunner is Dead, Long Live Netrunner

By Levi Rubeck • July 5th, 2018

It’s a lifestyle game, and like the word implies, to live the Netrunner life is to let it consume your thoughts at all times.

A Mandala of Space Bullets

By Levi Rubeck • June 27th, 2018

In bullet-hell, tactics, and life, man plans and god/nature/the universe laughs. You can drill those fingers or try to anticipate every possible outcome, but in the end we are flawed beings living at the whims of the cosmos.

The Swamp Sweat of Young Widows

By Levi Rubeck • June 20th, 2018

Young Widows tweaked their smoldering incantations from album to album, and DECAYED does more than collect the detritus.

The Ethics of a Human Whopper

By Levi Rubeck • June 14th, 2018

These ideas, of food in games as something more than a vessel of health or the act of consumption, settles like a river mist over Vampyr.

Red Hare Refuses to Fade

By Levi Rubeck • June 6th, 2018

What can be expected from a community mostly fueled on youthful energy? Life hits with a closed fist, and subsisting against the grain is suspiciously similar to a real job. Except working for yourself has even worse benefits.

Epistolary Voicemail

By Levi Rubeck • May 31st, 2018

Enjoying a recent New Yorker online poetry experiment where Natalie Diaz and Ada Limón are explicitly communicating with each other, and we are shepherded on the atmosphere that extends between them.

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.

  • « Previous
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next »
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