I hope Straftat is 2024’s breakout shooter, because the demo’s 25 maps are gloriously unwholesome


“Do you have a ping of 1000 or something,” my opponent asked, during my inaugural bout of Straftat. Ah yes, this is it, that sense of unpleasantly intimate sheepishness. That‘s the withering late-90s chatbox scorn I’ve been missing, in this age of glossy live service multiplayer. I hid under a stairwell in order to meditate upon my response, then laboriously typed: “No, I just suck.” Right on cue, the other player tumbled into view and shredded me with an AK.

The player I met in my second match was more forgiving. “I honestly think the characters need more HP,” they said, generously. My wrists need more HP, actually. My eyes and reflexes need urgent patching.

Read more

I really hope turn-based horror RPG Lurks Within Walls gets combat worthy of its lovely claustrophobia


My default movement mode in horror games that actually scare me is: meandering. I seek to approach without approaching, scooting back and forth across the path like a stray hamster, worrying at the corners and avoiding clear perspectives of the route ahead, while keeping the route behind me in my peripheral vision. I have been trained to do this especially by Amnesia, where tilting your gaze too decisively at anything nasty drives your character nuts.

Lurks Within Walls has no time for my hamstery antics. Developed by Here Be Monsters, it’s a grid- and turn-based first-person dungeon crawler – a long-lost cousin of Etrian Odyssey that has wound up in an asylum jammed with internet cryptids, reminiscent in cinematic texture of F.E.A.R. In keeping with other grid-based dungeon crawlers, it only lets you turn the view by 90 degree angles and travel in straight lines. Going by the demo, it’s a promising restraint for a horror game, though they really do need to expand on the combat, which is currently a slight waste of some terrific creature art.

Read more

40 Acres review: a gruesome parable about finding hope in the end times

In a media landscape saturated with post-apocalyptic films that focus on white families and whose survival stories are considered relatable, co-writer and director RT Thorne’s debut film 40 hectares stands out as an inspired new entry in the genre's canon. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, the film goes straight to the point with … Read more

url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url