Death of the Critic

Sci-Fi

The Backlog - Starbound

Written by: Tom Blaich

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I have a confession to make. Like many of you reading this, I have a list of games that I’ve been meaning play for years. I have way too many games on Steam, and a stack of cases sitting next to my TV. Close to five hundred games now. Maybe more. It makes me feel guilty. I haven’t touched 90% of them in one way or another. I need to fix that. So this week, I dug deep into my backlog and pulled out a game. I want to play all of them; I’ve just never had the chance. Now’s the time.

Before we even noticed it, survival games came to dominate the indie PC space, pushing aside
roguelikes to utterly saturate the market. Taking their cue from games like Minecraft, the scavenging, mining/survival game industry is a big one but luckily Starbound manages to carve out a place of its own. Strongly influenced by Terraria, but with some excellent quality of life changes along with a decent enough quest system that actually gives you a reason to explore the world after you have established yourself.

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Anatomy of a Scene - Alien

Written by: Tom Blaich

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Alien has changed so much as a franchise since it was first made. It went from science fiction horror to action to crossover monster battles. But it all started with this, a few people trapped on a ship with their worst nightmare. When we talk about horror, we speak a lot to tension, that feeling of building unease that makes us worry about what is coming next. More importantly, it makes us almost beg for it to happen. Alien begins with almost an hour of it, moodily piling on the tension before taking it away all at once.

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Spectral - Review

Written by: Tom Blaich

Spectral


All things considered, this probably should have been a really bad movie. It is ostensibly about a group of special forces soldiers fighting against a bunch of ghosts, and that sounds about as B-movie as you can get. But somehow it all managed to come together in a way that really surprised me. They tried to make a hard sci-fi, modern military film, and for the most part, they succeeded.

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Prey - Review

Written by: Tom Blaich

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I loved the original
Prey, as there was something about the science-fiction shooter that just clicked with me. It was weird, wacky, and broke new ground with its gameplay mechanics while at the same time being something very familiar. And while the reboot is something completely different, separated entirely from the original title, it does evoke many of those same feelings within me.

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