"Puppies in a Wasteland" (Editorial) from 2007

Unearthed from 2007, this editorial lamented the poor availability of great discourse when it comes to video games. I always liked the "Blue Plate Special" banner (the header) for this one and I think the box of puppies in a wasteland is a good metaphor given the topic.

Clayton Kauzlaric Interview (Beep Industries and Voodoo Vince) from 2003

As part of a larger effort to "re-print back issues" of The Armchair Empire (2000-2015), we present to you a ancient 2003 interview -- currently unavailable anywhere else, as far as we know -- with Clayton Kauzlaric (Beep Industries) regarding Voodoo Vince.

Click here to download the PDF.

Review: Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 (PC)

When a game title includes the word “Simulator” there's a justified expectation that there will be an exhaustive tutorial or at least an extensive manual to consult. Imagine dropping into a Jane's flight simulator or even something older like Falcon 3.0. Put in control of a jet at the end of a runway or on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and 99% of us would like explode or eject before getting the wheels off the ground. That's what Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is for the narrow field of car mechanic simulators.

Review: Codename: S.T.E.A.M. (3DS)

If you like Valkyria Chronicles, you are going to like this game. Maybe Fire Emblem or Advance Wars are more your thing? Codename: S.T.E.A.M. might be a good fit. Even if you have never played or heard of those games, keep reading because it still might be the kind of game you like.

S.T.E.A.M. stands for Strike Team to Eliminate the Alien Menace. That pretty much sums up what you need to do.

Instead of a top down view of a map in many traditional turn-based strategy games, Codename S.T.E.A.M. lets you view the game world from on the ground which is unique and refreshing.

The single player campaign in this game is great and balanced (much like the rest of the game). There are all kinds of missions and new aliens are doled out to you at a reasonable rate.

Review: Mario Party 10 (Wii U)

If you haven't played a Mario Party game I would be surprised. Starting out with three releases on the Nintendo 64, four on the GameCube and two on the Wii, Mario Party has seen a consistent release schedule since 1998. I'm not even counting the portable releases over the years on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS. There was even Mario Party-e for the e-Reader, but that's more obscure than finding game cheat codes in modern games.

Review: Splatoon (Wii U)

Splatoon is the new property from Nintendo with a cute premise: anthropomorphic squid kids participating in an ink fight. The colored ink you shoot, spray, and splatter actually paints the terrain of the combat area. Your character is able to "swim" in your ink color to not only fast-traverse across the map but refill your ink ammunition. This basic game control makes for a very different experience compared to other games where proper ground control will dominate lone-wolf or sniping tactics.

Review: Slow Down, Bull (PC)

I have to say, I was pretty bummed out that Slow Down, Bull l had absolutely nothing to do with a Night Court reboot. If you'll recall -- if you're old enough -- Night Court was a sitcom that ran on NBC for 9 seasons starting in the mid 1980s and Nostradamus "Bull" Shannon was the towering bailiff that featured prominently in nearly every episode I can remember.

However, once clear of that particular "Hurdle of Disappointment," I was pleasantly surprised that a game so "cutesy" and obviously designed for mobile devices or touch screens could be so engrossing for quick play sessions.

Review: Guilty Gear XX Λ Core Plus R (PC)

Any fighting game that asks you to "Solve for R" is generally a video game that is a pantless hobo doing a jig on a piece of cardboard while strumming a handmade banjo and reciting recipes from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (just volume 2). That is to say, entirely nuts but not without its own charm and sophistication. Guilty Gear XX Λ Core Plus R is one of those pantless hobos. (The "Λ" is stands for "Accent" in case you're looking for this one on Steam.)

Review: Shovel Knight (Xbox One)

I bought Shovel Knight originally on PC in the Summer Steam Sale last year in the midst of a purchasing orgy of akin to Shark Week. It quickly supplanted not only the games bought at the same time, but became my sole focus. There are very few games that can keep my attention for any appreciable amount of time, as the majority will get played for a stretch until they get unceremoniously dumped into the "to be finished later" pile. Having a very "pun"-ny sense of humor and an appreciation for odd visual choices in both character and level designs makes it a stand-out when compared against the typical battle for higher fidelity in all things.

Review: Evolve (PS4)

Welcome to the planet Shear. It's a roughly Earth-sized world containing a wide variety of flora and fauna, all of it inimical to human life. It's like Australia stretched out over an entire globe. Everything is either going to kill you deliberately or circumstantially.

So what could possibly be worth coming to such a choice hellhole of the Universe? Simple. Big game hunting. And we do mean BIG game.

Review: GTA V (PC)

It's safe to say that Grand Theft Auto V is one of those games that just keeps on giving. And two years after its initial release on consoles, GTA V has reached its most potent form on PC. Besides an extensive single-player story that stretches across an expansive world, the game packs in a full suite of video editing tools to create exportable films, a complete multiplayer mode that's heavy on action, and another awesome soundtrack that features just about every genre of music one can recall.

Feature: Comments on GTA V (Part II) - Climate Change

Why don't more GTA V citizens ride bikes?

At first I couldn't put my finger on why littering in GTA V sparked in me a mixture of irritation, a high level of anger, and sadness. At first I thought it might be due to the casualness of the littering. Michael finishes coffee with an FIB agent, and Michael leaves his coffee cup on the patio table, the agent throws his on the ground. I switched to Franklin at one point as he finished off a can of Sprunk. He then tossed it to the sidewalk.

In real life, littering does irritate me, especially when the item being tossed is recyclable. Is your life so damn busy you can't hold on to that empty can for bit to drop it into a recycling bin? Or hand it over to a can collector? After some deep thinking, I think the reason it grates on me so much because Los Santos/Blaine County is a closed system. For all we know, it could be a biodome on Mars or trapped in a snow globe on the desk of Tobias Funke. Either way, the boundaries of the world in GTA V are clearly defined and there's a definite "Here be Dragons!" hard edges to the map. (Other countries and nationalities are name-checked but we never see those places.) So the fact that all the characters in GTA V seem to treat littering like it's no big deal is incongruous with what daily life should entail, which is a lot of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Feature: Comments on GTA V (Part I) - "Realism"

The simple warning logo for airbags (see above) found on most vehicles sold in North America today (exceptions include motorcycles and Hoverounds), demonstrates why Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) is about as realistic as betting your rent and your insulin on winning the lottery and expecting everything to work out a-okay. As "real" as some people like to think the GTA series is there are these great big holes in "reality" that we all seem to willfully ignore.

Review: Tower of Guns (PS4)

Tower of Guns aims to try and mix a few popular ideas that show up in other indie titles, with the biggest one being procedurally generated levels, but a floaty control scheme and generally unintuitive gameplay makes this tower not worth the climb.

Video Review: Momodora III (PC)

Mr. Nash offers a video review of the indie title "Momodora III."

Review: Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (PC)

Quarter-munching video games used to be relegated to arcades. At least in North America, arcades, as a location, are basically extinct but somehow the DNA of those games were injected into games outside the confines of arcades. The so-called “Free to Play” games are always more than happy to take small bits of cash from you to shorten timers, provide boosts and buffs, or slap a new skin on your on-screen avatar. Traditionally though, arcade games were all about trying to squeeze every last quarter out of your pocket by making the games difficult, sometimes really difficult, and making the “Continue?” countdown seem like the most urgent thing in the world. That same DNA was infused into Hotline Miami 2, where reaction time and somehow dodging incoming fire from off-screen is the only way to prevent a level restart.

Review: Trapped Dead: Lockdown (PC)

Who doesn't enjoy Zombie games?

*random guy sheepishly raises hand*

It's cool, you're excused.

Trapped Dead Lockdown is a neat little isometric-view hack-slash-and-shoot zombie annihilation game. You choose one of five characters (each their own class) and live out their own personal missions inside a city gripped by a zombie apocalypse. The world is about as cheerful as you'd expect, with all the typical tropes of characters being the worst possible people you could imagine when things start to get hairy.

Review: Battlefield Hardline (PC)

Video games are an escape from reality. Where else can one explore strange new worlds and so on? Not only is it an escape from reality, it's an escape from consequence. Mow down a dozen (or more) mercenaries and it's no biggie -- you'll never be brought up on charges. It's fantasy, which makes it all the more confusing that Battlefield Hardline's main conceit feels so ridiculous. And most video games are ridiculous.

Review: Aaru's Awakening (PC)

Aaru's Awakening is an electronic version of patting your head and rubbing your belly. Some players will be able to “get it” right away because of some quirk of neuro-synapses or extra fibers in the corpus colosum, that important bridge between the left and right hemispheres of your brain.

For this writer, the game felt more like I was patting my head, rubbing my belly, hoping on one foot while trying to learn a dirty Russian limerick and deking between high-heat laser beams. That's my way of saying, the game isn't easy. In fact, most of my advancement felt more like an accident than anything connected to competence or “gam3r skillz.”

Review: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)

If there’s one thing that is an unequivocal downside to the increasing fidelity and realism of computer graphics, it’s the over-saturation of detail. Horror games are perhaps the worst offenders. What used to be creepy tableaux are now all too often gore drenched packages of jump scares.