Author: Nic Reuben

Despite being released way back in the murky, pre-technology days of slightly over a year ago, Guerrilla‘s open-world masterpiece Horizon Zero Dawn continues to inspire a wealth of a new fan art, cosplay, and incredible photography. To celebrate Aloy’s one year anniversary, New Normative asked some of our favourite capture artists to share stories from their…

Apolitical Game is a game without any kind of politics. None whatsoever. Do you dislike politics in your games? Good. Because Apolitical Game has none. If you asked Apolitical Game what its politics were, it would say “None”. Partly because it’s a game, but mostly because it’s apolitical. As a white cis dude, I found it…

“Dear game devs You’re probably not going to like how I play your game.” When I asked Gametographer SpiffSnaps to write something that he felt summed up his Horizon Zero Dawn shots, this is how it started. Lost World “My screenshot posts should come with that disclaimer. I know you, the game dev, have spent years…

As I type this now, I’m listening to Valley of the Fallen Star – The Cosmo Canyon theme from Final Fantasy VII. Composer Nobou Uematsa‘s original arrangement is my favourite piece of music from a game I love. One of my favourite tracks from a videogame, in fact. Valley is perfect not only for what it is…

Is your teen dangerously obsessed with the Dark Souls Remaster? Learn the telltale signs of addiction…

Infinite Fall’s Night in the Woods has crimed its way into our hearts since its release early last year, even more so with December’s Weird Autumn edition. It’s also gained a whole taco truck full of attention at the upcoming IGF awards, pawing nominations for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Visual Art, and Excellence in Narrative…

As we all know, literature is the enemy. Real games journalists can’t read, fool. Real games journalists scream at you to smash that marshallow-fellating like button until your mouse clicking finger dissolves in a haze of sizzling hot takes about how games companies – get this – occasionally make decisions based on their profitability. Boom. Corruption…

If you’re a strokey-beardy-booky wanker like myself, you may be familiar with the concept of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Popularized by Proto-Sadboy Friedrich Nietzsche, it imagines the backbone of creative endeavors as a balancing act between order and chaos. Rationality and playfulness, clay and blood, foundational blueprints and architectural flourishes. Arguably, it’s not a…

Thanks to Andrew Borman – the Digital Games Curator at the NY Museum of Play – you can now play Caper in the Castro, the world’s first LGBTQ game. Caper in the Castro is a 1989 adventure game by artist and designer C.M Ralph. You play as private detective Tracker McDyke, on the trail of kidnapped…

A Museum of Dubious Splendors is a visual mythology of department store goods. A joyous paean to the mundane. An invitation to become intimately acquainted with giant toothpaste tubes, dress shoes, and cooling fans. As you explore this space, a story is gradually revealed, as if gentle winds were slowly whisking away sand from an engraved stone…

Here’s some delightful facts about capitalism:  It allows you to buy projectors in the shape of adorable trash-can, R2-D2  It regularly dropkicks you in the soul, then feeds off your pain  Like, fifteen different kinds of Mayo  It laughs in the face of malnutrition, smothering itself with exploitation avocados and gargling sriracha  I mean, Drogon is…

Ready, Player One? Dig up your artifacts, still warm from hype and channel static. Excavate your chipped neo-antiques; line the walls of your museum with references gouged from their frames. Haunt every shot with the specters of gutted franchises. Fan fiction is never enough. Consumer fiction is that new hotness. Shut up and take my…

Welp. The Monster Hunter: World beta has been and gone, and now we’re all left waiting patiently until January of next year to slice off the tails of ridiculously big reptiles with ridiculously bigger-er axes. The beta showcased some hallmarks of the series  – like lengthy, epic battles and insanely convoluted menu interfaces -but brought…

Here’s a quote I quite like from thinky French man, Jean Baudrillard: “If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.” Here is a slight re-arrangement of that quote, by me, who once read a couple books by thinky…

The Game Awards, eh? What a show! I’m actually still dizzy from all the reveals. There was that new FromSoftware game we know nothing about! That new Hideo Kojima game we know nothing about! That new Campo Santo game we know nothing about! What a time to be alive… Amidst all the glitz, sponsorship, and…

Impressionist composer Claude Debussy once famously remarked that “Music is the space between the notes.” The beauty of a song lies not the systems – in what can be defined, cataloged or scored and shared – but in the unique idiosyncrasies that the individual musician provides. It could almost be a mantra for Media Molecule,…