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Stephen Gillespie

South of Midnight (Series X): An Aesthetic Triumph Hampered by Repetition

South of Midnight (Series X): An Aesthetic Triumph Hampered by Repetition

In positive and negative ways, South of Midnight feels like a very pretty PS2 game. Admittedly, the art design is stunning, and is underpinned by technical chops; it’s the act of playing it that will take you back. A linear, action adventure game that’s heavy on simple platforming

Avowed (Series X): RPG Comfort Food with Flashes of Genius

Avowed (Series X): RPG Comfort Food with Flashes of Genius

This latest RPG from Obsidian feels very familiar. In reductive terms, it's an amalgamation of a lot of popular, modern Western RPGS. The first person perspective, with a focus on combat and exploration, brings Elder Scrolls to mind (a breezy, colourful fantasy world that's more Oblivion

The Monkey: Always Banging on the Same Drum

The Monkey: Always Banging on the Same Drum

It is poetic, really, that Osgood Perkins' adaptation of the Stephen King short story, The Monkey (1980), matches the prop itself. In the short story, the wind-up toy monkey hits cymbals together. It turns out, due to Toy Story 3 (2010), a wind-up toy monkey that hit cymbals together

The Anarchic Realisation of Self in Tetsuo: The Iron Man

The Anarchic Realisation of Self in Tetsuo: The Iron Man

The mechanisation of work is presented as an extreme metaphor of the mechanisation of self, lost in a seductive moray of the industrial. Each machine is taken into the self, every new implement morphing your physical identity.

A Game About Digging a Hole (PC): A Review About a Video Game

A Game About Digging a Hole (PC): A Review About a Video Game

You can just dig. Forget the sandbox, this is a mudbox: a limited environment but one that offers impressive freedom in specific restraints. It is an exercise in pure game mechanics where you have one key verb and you execute it.

Monster Hunter Wilds (Series X): Refining the Kill at the Expense of the Hunt

Monster Hunter Wilds (Series X): Refining the Kill at the Expense of the Hunt

2018's Monster Hunter: World felt like a realisation moment for the franchise. Though it streamlined certain elements, and while I'd personally still take the Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate over it, the execution cemented it as a real step forwards. The base structure of Monster Hunter, still

Caught by the Tides: The Ebb and Flow of Time

Caught by the Tides: The Ebb and Flow of Time

Caught by the Tides is like nothing you’ve seen. On paper, there’s similarity, after all it is a yearning love story told over a long period of time. This kind of story, of the arc of a relationship positioned over a backdrop of social change, is hardly original.