Middle Kids’ recent release Today We’re the Greatest is better produced than their first work Lost Friends, but there’s not much deviation here in terms of style, and the song structures are unvarying, causing the album to blend into itself. The album’s opener ‘Bad Neighbours’ is an interesting albeit slow start, an acoustic piece which…
Gaming
The Best AAA Games
Fire Emblem: Three Houses As a big fan of indie games, I rarely play AAA titles. The Call of Dutys and GTAs haven’t ever really appealed to me that much — they are fun, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve never really been games I could play for hours on end. I certainly wouldn’t play…
Music
You need to listen to LONG SEASON
LONG SEASON is an album and the name of its only track, produced by the Japanese dub group Fishmans in 1996. It’s the spiritual successor to their ’96 single, ‘SEASON’, which is similar in tone but not in ambition. LONG SEASON is a well-known piece among indie circles and online music forums, and certainly Fishmans’…
Gaming
Women in the Gaming Industry
Over the last few decades, the proportional makeup of gamers has increased to 52% women in 2014 according to a study by The Guardian, a statistic which challenges the gamer stereotype. Why then are so few women developing games? Only around 20% of game developers are women, and it seems strange to me that with…
Music, Venue
SINGLE REVIEW: Wolf Alice – The Last Man on Earth
Wolf Alice are back with a surprise single ‘The Last Man on Earth,’ the first for their album Blue Weekend, set to release 11th June via Dirty Hit. The single is a slow and beautifully atmospheric piece which showcases Ellie Rowsell’s ethereal vocals alongside dramatic, orchestral instrumentation. As the song progresses, each member of the…
Music
REVIEW: Pale Waves – Who Am I?
Pale Waves are back with their sophomore release Who Am I?, the successor to 2018’s My Mind Makes Noises. It’s a more complex album than their debut: both thematically and sonically, with mature lyrics (concerning the deconstruction of identity amongst other ideas) and more prominent guitars. Noticeably on the album, Heather Baron-Gracie’s vocals have a…
Gaming
Favourite Indie Games
Wide Ocean Big Jacket is one of my favourite games I played last year. It’s gorgeous, it’s stylistic, it’s funny. It just has that indescribable something that lends it this storytelling charm. The story begins with a young man and woman taking their thirteen-year-old niece and her first boyfriend camping, and develops as you inhabit…
Gaming
The Soulsborne Series: A Masterclass in Storytelling
Many people have heard of Dark Souls, the notoriously punishing game set in a dark fantasy world. I’m sure many have also heard of its successors or even its predecessor, Demon’s Souls, which has recently been remade for the PS5. Amongst gamers, the Soulsborne series is considered both an example of gaming elitism (git gud)…
Gaming, Venue
The State of the MMO Genre in 2020
MMOs – that’s Mega Multiplayer Online games – first (commercially) began in the 1990s with the release of Neverwinter Nights. Since then, we have seen countless titles: some which remain powerhouses today. One thing we have also seen is the stagnation of the genre, an inertia resulting from similar formulae being reproduced each new release….
Latest Comments