Category: Reviews

It used to be easy to tell gaming apart from gambling. One was about skill and story, the other about luck and money. Now, if you look closely, they’re starting to share a heartbeat. Online gaming and online casinos don’t live in different neighborhoods anymore since they share the same street, sometimes even the same house. The Shift Online casinos were the first to change. The early versions felt flat like digital copies of slot machines that clicked but didn’t breathe. Then developers started borrowing from video games. They added levels, achievements, storylines, and even background music that shifts with…

Image: Within Der Artikel kann nur mit aktiviertem JavaScript dargestellt werden. Bitte aktiviere JavaScript in deinem Browser und lade die Seite neu. I’ve revamped my training routines. Here’s how VR fitness apps are helping with my daily workouts. My VR fitness self-experiment happened quite a while ago. Back then, I achieved impressive results within a month through regular training in virtual reality. Since then, I’ve gone through phases where I do more or less VR fitness. At the moment, we’re unfortunately in a “less phase,” which is why my summer clothes from last year have become a bit tighter. So…

Tales of Xillia, originally launched decades ago for the PlayStation 3, stands as one of the more distinctive entries in Bandai Namco’s long-running JRPG franchise. Now, years later, the title is available to a new generation of players across several platforms through the remastered version. While it divides fans in certain design directions, its combination of rich character dynamics, fast-paced combat, and dual-protagonist storytelling gives it a memorable identity within the series. Although it doesn’t fully escape the limitations of its era, it offers a deeply engaging journey for players who value strong party chemistry, thematic depth, and energetic action…

The Terminator franchise’s overlap with video games is full of mixed results. Despite it being a universe overflowing with video game catnip-like explosions, robot skeletons, and laser guns, there have been plenty of misses and only a few hits. The same could be said of the film franchise, as well, but Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an undeniable classic – a defining action film of its time that is still entertaining more than 30 years later. Terminator 2D: No Fate is exclusively an adaptation of that film and seeks to recall both the movie and the era in which it was…

The Oculus Quest and Quest 2 changed the game for VR, taking the medium from the prohibitively expensive and cumbersome realm of tethered PC headsets, and propelling it into the mainstream. When the Meta Quest 2 launched, amidst the pandemic, the timing was perfect. Everyone was looking for an escape, and what better way than investing in a VR headset for the first time? Now, millions of people have already experienced the joys of VR gaming, and Meta is looking to replicate its success in a new frontier – mixed reality, or MR. It’s not just MR that Meta Quest…

Total Chaos’ headlines over the years as a public-facing project center on it being a total conversion mod for Doom II. After more than a dozen hours with it, that’s the least interesting aspect of this game. Total Chaos is about one man’s escape from an isolated and desolate coastal mining town run amok by a rotting disease that’s infected both his mind and the very town itself. Its story is vague and mysterious, but reveals itself plainly in metaphor as a fight against cancer, leaving a particularly personal mark on me as someone who’s lost family to that terrible…

Farming “slice-of-life” style sims are nothing new, with one of the earliest examples being Harvest Moon (also known in Japan as 牧場物語, or ‘Farm Story‘), but the genre is filled with gems – and one of the latest, Fields of Mistria from the small developer NPC Studio, has proven itself to be a diamond. Note: All information regarding Fields of Mistria at time of writing only details material available in the game’s Early Access, which is currently available on Steam. Boasting over 100,000 downloads on Steam, Fields of Mistria, at a glance, has an aesthetic that blends the pixel sprites…

A free-roam immersive VR installation in New York City explores the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1912.Titanic: Echoes From The Past is from Eclipso, a company focused on large-scale location-based experiences. The experience lasts over half an hour as it places guests in walk-around virtual reality aboard a modern ocean research vessel investigating what remains of the infamous sinking in the North Atlantic in April 1912.The Titanic ExperienceAfter a brief narrative setup establishing guests as explorers aboard a research vessel, the experience begins with a 3,800 meter descent to the Titanic wreck site alongside a deep-sea submersible. The mangled…

Image via Studio Folly, Toot Games, and Foot Dogpile is a Suika Game like puzzle, which isn’t uncommon as of late, but it’s one of the most intriguing due to its deck-building nature and implementation of roguelike elements. While there is a barebones, straightforward sort approach that just involves matching dogs, the real fun comes from playing around with your deck, dogs’ traits, and other elements to keep successfully adding more pups to your yard.  In Dogpile, you start with a yard and no dogs. Which is no good. You need puppers in your life! Fortunately, there are small and…

There are a lot of decoration applications that sort of fall into the cozy game category, even though they are light on the actual mechanical elements. Little Corners is one of those. There are some interactive elements and opportunities to combine stickers for certain reactions. However, it’s largely an opportunity to relax and set up scenes without too many extra features like a zoom or snap-to element. Playing with Little Corners is essentially like playing with the reusable Colorforms sticker sets. Now, when I say that Little Corners feels like Colorforms, it’s almost the exact same experience. There are eight…