Blake Hester
GameSpot
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Past articles by Blake:
The Town of Light Review
The Town of Light examines mental illnesses and the hospitals meant to treat them in the early 1900s, but ultimately fails to stick the landing. → Read More
Horizon Zero Dawn and the Morality of Playing God
Humankind has its own parallels to the conflict underlying Horizon Zero Dawn. → Read More
NBA Playgrounds Review
NBA Playgrounds matches NBA Jam's irreverent take on basketball, but it doesn't do enough to stand out on its own. → Read More
Let's talk about all the animals in the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer
We all sat around in hushed anticipation, our hearts racing for our first glimpse at Rockstar Games’s official foray into the current generation of consoles. We could hardly wait, our noses nearly touching our screens we leaned in so close, as if to not miss a single polygon. And then it started, and for one minute and eight seconds, we got our first look at Red Dead Redemption 2. Which is all… → Read More
Red Dead Redemption 2 is real and definitely has cowboys
If you were listening, you could hear most of the internet gasp at the exact same moment. After two days of obvious teases, Rockstar Games has officially announced the long-rumored sequel to Red Dead Redemption (2010). And it’s called Red Dead Redemption 2. Who’d have thought? All we know about Red Dead Redemption 2 at this point is that it’ll be coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in fall… → Read More
Surprise! Thumper is out now and it's fast as hell
Originally scheduled to release on October 13, it appears the team at Drool decided to say, “To Hell with schedules,” and release Thumper a few days early for PlayStation VR, PlayStation 4, itch.io and Steam. For the uninitiated, Thumper is an insane “rhythm violence” game that puts players in control of a chrome beetle, firing down its track at breakneck speeds, all the while fighting metal… → Read More
Mafia III is a big "f*ck you" to its predecessors
There’s an attractive quality to the crime stories of the first two Mafia games. Two protagonists down on their luck—Tommy Angelo in the first and Vito Scaletta in the second—find success through a life of crime, wanting nothing more than to rise through the ranks, to be wealthy, to be a “Made Man.” Mafia III doesn’t care for that. Were it a different Mafia game, you may look at Mafia III’s Sal… → Read More
Slayer Shock is the videogame equivalent of a vampire B-movie
Slayer Shock is an effort to make a tense, smart vampire survival game, but it ends up feeling more like a B-movie version of a classic genre. It’s not offensively bad or anything like that—it has a worse fate. It is bland. In the wake of a vampire epidemic, Slayer Shock tasks you with wandering a procedural Nebraskan town, completing tasks such as going on patrol or killing elders. As you walk… → Read More
The Outlast 2 demo made me scream in front of my dad
Red Barrels Studio decided to suddenly release a demo for its upcoming survival-horror game Outlast 2 yesterday. It’s available now, for free, via Steam and the Xbox One and PlayStation Stores. And it’s scary as shit. Outlast 2—as you might have guessed by the name—is the sequel to the relatively successful Outlast (2013). It puts you in the role of Blake Langermann, a cameraman who, after… → Read More
Guts and Glory is trying to kill you and your family
If you mixed MTV’s Jackass series with Bob Guccione’s Caligula (1980) film, and sprinkled a healthy dose of Super Meat Boy (2010) on top, there’s a good chance the result may be developer HakJak’s upcoming game Guts and Glory. Recently launched on Kickstarter, Guts and Glory asks its players to do one thing: race to the finish line while “everything tries to kill you.” Giving you control of such… → Read More
Cyberpunk 2077 may feature a "huge living city," seamless multiplayer
Grants submitted by CD Projekt S.A., the head company of developer CD Projekt Red and GOG.com, have surfaced online, giving some insight into the prospective scope of its upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077. That’s the next game from the people who made The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, if you didn’t know, aka Kill Screen‘s game of the year 2015. Submitted to the GameINN program (translation via… → Read More
New game lets you throw paper planes to people around the world
Today, I sat alone in my house on my phone, catching, stamping, and releasing virtual paper airplanes with over 150,000 people from all over the world. I was alone, but I felt part of such a large, positive community. Created by Active Theory in celebration of Peace Day at Google’s I/O 2016 conference, Paper Planes is a mobile and desktop-based browser game that allows its users to catch and… → Read More
Clustertruck is an absolutely truckin' wild time
Even the best poker players are playing a game of chance. That’s exactly how it feels to play Landfall Games’ upcoming Clustertruck. No matter how good I thought I was getting at it, no matter how well I had done in the prior level, something unexpected would come along and put me in my place. Part Hotline Miami (2012), part The Floor is Lava, Clustertruck’s objective is deceptively simple: jump… → Read More
Alleged pitch for an unreleased Silent Hill game turns up
An alleged 2006 pitch for a Silent Hill game has shown up online. Created by Climax Los Angeles—also responsible for Silent Hill: Origins (2008) and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (2009)—the game was originally planned as a PlayStation 3 exclusive title. The pitch was uploaded by the YouTube channel PtoPOnline, and shows us that the game would have taken place in an old military base,… → Read More
Direct your own music video in the infinite landscape of Streamer
The easiest way to describe Streamer is to say it’s a sublime trip through an infinite lake, where a floating avatar traverses endlessly through a colorful landscape. But, it’s a little deeper than that. A collaboration between electronic artist and co-founder of Driftless Recordings Joel Ford (or Airbird) and Ryan Sciaino (also known as Ghostdad), Streamer is an interactive music video for the… → Read More
A museum is trying to reunite people with their old game cartridges
“Did you ever write your name on game cartridges?” That question greets you at the top of the Museum of the Preowned Games Collections’s (MPGC) homepage. It is, at first, a bizarre ask of an adult, complacent with their belongings that rarely leave the house or pocket. But its meant to bring back memories of being a kid going to sleepovers, sharing Super Nintendo cartridges, and wanting the… → Read More
Drive through the roaring Italian 70s when Wheels of Aurelia arrives this month
Milan-based studio Santa Ragione has revealed its game Wheels of Aurelia will be out in full this month on September 20th for PC. It’ll cost $9.99. That price includes the game’s full soundtrack, comprising four songs written, composed, and performed in the style of Italian 70s music. The game is also coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 5th. Wheels of Aurelia puts players in control… → Read More
Upcoming FMV game is set in a real decommissioned nuclear bunker
The Bunker is coming out this month, bringing with it what looks to be a fresh take on the full-motion video (FMV) game genre. It’s a psychological horror game that will have you assume the role of John, a boy born in a government bunker “the day the bombs fell,” July 3, 1986. Three decades later, all of John’s loved ones are dead, yet he continues his circadian rhythms and routines, following… → Read More
After nearly a decade of waiting, Owlboy will leave the nest this November
After nearly 10 years of work, D-Pad Studio recently announced at PAX West that its action-platformer Owlboy is releasing on November 1. Owlboy began life back in 2007 as an attempt by pixel artist Simon Andersen to show that 2D could still be better than 3D, and it quickly gathered the attention of other artists, who ultimately joined Andersen’s team. Six years ago, it was nominated for an… → Read More
The Oxenfree alternate reality game you probably didn't know about
It all began with a phone number hidden within Oxenfree’s in-game radio stations, or “anomalies.” When called, it played the song “Beacon Beach,” by artist scntfc, the composer behind the game’s soundtrack. Well, so what? Go back and listen again and you’ll find lines of morse code in the song, with messages such as “Maggie,” “All is lost,” and most interestingly, “Search Twitter 4 num.”… → Read More