Maybe it’s because I’ve just played through several hours of teen rebellion, but I feel like breaking some rules. Unfortunately these are rules of video game reviewing, which I am paid to care about (and do actually care about, because I am sad) but which I really ought not to ever burden you with because they are, let’s be honest, incredibly dull. So apologies and also: please adjust your excitement downwards, because the circumstances around Mixtape mean I’m obliged to start talking about them. Read more

Stop me if you’ve heard this one (or something like it) before: the Earth is dying, and humanity’s last hope is a lone inhabitable planet, light years from home. A crack crew of humanity’s finest is assembled for an eight-year space mission to survey the planet, but when they finally awaken from their four-year cryoslumber, an unknown organism has infiltrated their ship, turning their voyage of hope into a paranoid nightmare. And does the mega-corporation funding this whole endeavour know more than it’s letting on? Of course it does. Directive 8020 builds its story like a sci-fi horror best-of that only feels marginally less derivative the longer it goes, and while it also marks a welcome advancement for developer Supermassive’s Dark Pictures Anthology formula in certain respects, it sadly never quite comes into its own. Read more

Protect the egg? Why not. Except the egg is a football, and this particular football is a playful and punishing presence. Keep the football alive – a football can die now? – and you’ll get a great reward of some kind. Let the football perish and you’ll have to forfeit more than you might be expecting. No wonder, really, that this singular opportunity for football ownership comes with a payment up-front. You’re paid in advance for the privilege and terror of looking after that football. And remember: the football itself is probably an egg. What to do? Read more

Moon’s haunted. We’re living on the remains of a long-dead mausoleum, built to honour the bones of this city’s previous avatars, clinging on to the hope that the moon won’t eradicate every last bit of us. This particular moon belongs to the planet Amber, and our city is named for the deep subterranean spire that defines our core. Amberspire does not belong on the moon, but in this universe, it is locked in eternal war with the four horsemen of ecological warfare: rust, fog, water, and grass. Read more

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give Valve’s new Steam Controller is that in the week or so I’ve been using it, I haven’t really thought about it much at all. With its heavily Steam-Deck-inspired design, it improves on the original Steam Controller in almost every way – and it’s certainly vastly more convincing as an everyday controller – but the things it does best are specific enough that, even with those upgrades, it remains a bit of a niche proposition. Read more