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What makes us human? Is it our physical body, our intellect, our spirit — or all of the above? These questions permeate an underwater world where everything’s gone mad. The machines have lost it, taking over all that was once run by mankind — including the very nature of being human.

Despite the fact that most of the spinoff Metal Gear games are good in their own right, they just don’t get me excited the same way the mainline console editions do. Every core Metal Gear entry has something new, and offers up some sort of revelatory storyline event that has fans talking for years on end.

[Note: This review is based on a retail PlayStation 4 copy of Batman: Arkham Knight, not the PC version that is so broken publisher Warner Bros. temporarily delisted it from sale]

I have an odd history with The Witcher series. I absolutely fell in love with the first game near launch, at the behest of a friend, and adored the way it approached morality. Typically, games of that era would offer up black and white options, which I felt was a lazy way to incorporate the concept of karma into a game.

Hidetaka Miyazaki created a legacy with Demon’s Souls. With three Armored Core games under his belt at From Software, Miyazaki dared to capture the spirit of the King’s Field series for a new era, and thus the Souls series was born. His philosophy of “less is more” served as a driving force for the franchise’s allure, and his influences permeate throughout.

Every so often I come across a game that just makes me smile. I mean, I play videogames almost daily because I have fun doing it, but certain titles have me grinning from ear to ear the entire journey for a myriad of different reasons.

As you may have heard, we got our Dying Light review code pretty late. As in, the day before launch. A late show doesn’t necessarily instill confidence in a project, especially since a lot of fans had no idea what to expect from Techland’s latest.

Dragon Age II felt like a great action game that was outsourced to a lesser developer. It lacked the polish BioWare typically puts into its titles, and almost the entire affair felt like a gigantic step back from everything Origins had established. What was once a promising franchise that reminded me of the glory days of RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate became a shadow of its former self, with lazily re-used assets and no sense of scale.

From the old school “20th Century Fox” opening to the first few seconds, Alien: Isolation wants you to know that it takes after the first film from the series it was based on. One alien, one spaceship, one chance at survival.

Developing a licensed game can be extremely difficult. Not only does Monolith Productions have the Lord of the Rings film series to honor with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, but the developer also has to work in many aspects of Tolkien’s other works to weave together a story that calls from multiple sources.

Along with Catacomb, Wolfenstein was one of my first FPS games. One of the fondest memories I have of my father is playing it “co-operatively,” where one of us moved and the other shot enemies and opened doors.

It’s hard to divorce David Cage, the public figure, from the games Quantic Dream makes. He is, after all, a man who put himself in Indigo Prophecy‘s tutorial, immortalized as the movie director he’s always dreamed of being. The self-styled auteur fiercely believes in being the one man with the one vision, and gladly takes credit for his games’ success in doing so.

Writing an introduction to a Grand Theft Auto review seems unnecessary. If you know videogames, you know Grand Theft Auto. Hell, even if you don’t know videogames, there’s a better than low chance you know Grand Theft Auto. The “bad boy” of the games industry for many years, few titles have generated as much controversy — and sold as many copies — as Rockstar’s premier crime series.

In the past five years, the notion of a zombie apocalypse has grown from cult horror amusement to worldwide mainstream fascination. The videogame industry latched onto it with eagerness, and this generation has drowned us in undead adventures. Dead Rising, The Walking Dead, Plants vs. Zombies, Dead Island. It’s been all about the zombies this generation.

A game of exceptional quality is exceptionally rare, rarer than generous review scores and excited praise in the high profile videogame market may indicate. There are games of unquestionable caliber that, while few in number, become games that define a generation. BioShock was one such game.

A game of exceptional quality is exceptionally rare, rarer than generous review scores and excited praise in the high profile videogame market may indicate. There are games of unquestionable caliber that, while few in number, become games that define a generation. BioShock was one such game.

How do you top something that was already considered over-the-top? Especially when this particular brand of over-the-top has become pretty familiar since in past eight years?

It seems that once or twice a year we get some new intellectual property demolishing the idea that only sequels perform well, shaking up the market in some exciting way. Despite having no big franchise name attached, it catches the eyes of gamers based on the sheer merit.

Half-Life is a great game, but it’s been over ten years since its release. What if Half-Life were made in 2007 instead of 1999? Black Mesa is a re-imaging of Half-Life using Source, the engine powering Half-Life 2. Valve has already created an HD remake of Half-Life called Half-Life Source, but that was a simple port over to the new engine. The textures, level design, and models remained the same. Black Mesa is more than a simple remake of the original game. It’s a complete re-imaging of the cor

[Disclosure: Anthony Burch, the writer of Borderlands 2, was previously employed at Destructoid. As always, no relationships, personal or professional, were factored into the review.]