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Last night I restarted Ghost Of Tsushima, a game I played for a few hours at launch but never quite clicked with (I have a 400-word rant in me about dodge-button placement in action games, and the insanity of shipping a modern game without fully remapabble controls, but will save
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While we in the west talk a lot these days about China’s game industry, our discussions typically focus on its activities over here. That is quite understandable: it feels like scarcely a week goes by without Tencent or NetEase pumping investment into another renowned western developer or publisher. But
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Well, there goes not-Gamescom. It’s been a quiet week on the whole, but there are certainly a few things worth discussing. First up: further evidence of a creeping return to the bad old days of pre-rendered trailers. Why are we doing this again, when today’s hardware is so
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Now, look, I like live-service games. Some of my best friends are etc and so on. While it’s fashionable to complain about a breed of games that are not designed so much to be played as to be lived in — heavily social things that are endlessly updated and (hopefully)
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Despite spending ten years in the videogame media, I have never been to Gamescom. Early in my career, my employer didn’t consider it big enough to bother sending anyone to. (One former colleague used to pay his own way out there, then make thousands writing up what he’d
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Back in the mists of time — okay, the early 2000s — I put my nascent banking career on hold and briefly became a music journalist, working for a lifestyle and clubbing website as music editor. It was a wonderful time, until it wasn’t anymore, but 20 years later I naturally
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Today, an object lesson in what happens when a company gets too big. That, at least, is the kinder interpretation of what’s going on at Epic Games. Yesterday the company behind Unreal Engine, Fortnite and an all-out legal assault on Big Tech unveiled a new game mode for Fortnite,
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Last week, writing about Fullbright and the ongoing Activision-Blizzard misconduct scandal, I found a small crumb of comfort in the fact we were finally hearing the stories of people who had for years felt cowed into silence. It is the first painful step in a long, difficult, but vital process.
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Earlier this week, on a call with someone with a passing, and potentially professional, interest in the games business, I was asked what trends I saw emerging in games today. It was only after we said our goodbyes and hung up that I realised I’d forgotten the biggest one
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Ha! I decided to write about Evo today before making the #37 connection. Serendipity! Did you know it was Evo, the World Cup/Super Bowl/Olympics/etc of fighting games, this past weekend? I did not, which is crazy. Evo has been a highlight of my summer for the last
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Fullbright, then. If you’re not caught up on it all, Polygon has the details. This one stings, I must admit. I loved Gone Home. I’ve always liked Steve Gaynor. Moreover, Fullbright isn’t just an indie developer; it’s an indie poster child, an uncommonly diverse group making
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Hello! A quick opening note: there will be no Hit Points next week because I’m going on holiday (gasp). After 18 months staring at the same four walls I am looking forward very much to shushing the children, and trying to get the dog to sit still, in a
