Welcome to Punished Notes, a new series of (hopefully) weekly articles outlining many of my random thoughts on games I’ve been playing, reading about, or even watching on YouTube or Twitch. This week, I’ll be…
Author: Sam Martinelli
Sam Martinelli
Sam has been playing video games since his earliest years and has been writing about them since 2016. He’s a big fan of Nintendo games and complaining about The Last of Us Part II. You either agree wholeheartedly with his opinions or despise them. There is no in between. A lifelong New Yorker, Sam views gaming as far more than a silly little pastime, and hopes though critical analysis and in-depth reviews to better understand the medium's artistic merit. Twitter: @sam_martinelli.
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Looking Back on the Past Six Months in Gaming How’s everyone’s 2018 going so far? Terribly, I would guess, but at least we had plenty of video games to get us through it all! Another…
Subtraction by Addition I recently tried my hand at State of Decay 2, an Xbox One/PC exclusive where the player attempts to build a functioning community in a world ravaged by a zombie apocalypse. The…
The One Zelda Game Nobody Talks About The Legend of Zelda is one of the most famous and highly regarded franchises in the history of video games, but that doesn’t mean every entry in the series…
Was This Ever Really the Best Gaming Could Do? Before I begin my parade-raining, dream-crushing, actually-what-you-like-is-bad analysis of one of the most popular video games of my lifetime, let me make something clear: I like…
If Rare’s Latest Adventure Were Named Cartoon Pirate Simulator, Would People Feel Differently About It? In hour three of a five-hour session of Sea of Thieves recently, I found myself standing at the bow of my…
How Donkey Kong Country Crafts a Foreboding Tale of the Unknown Donkey Kong Country is among the finest 2D platformers ever and one of the best-looking and best-controlling games of its time. On the narrative…
Climbing the Mountain Within You Minutes into my first playthrough of Celeste, I found myself breathing more heavily than usual. The 2D platformer certainly presented some light challenge early on, but that wasn’t what was…
Putting Old Classics Under the Modern Microscope Though video gaming as a medium is still relatively nascent, enough time has passed since the original Pong that we as gamers have begun to set aside many…
The most jarring scenes in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Bethesda’s latest Nazi-shooting sim, occur not during bloody firefights, brutal executions, or in the midst of a completely obliterated New York City. They occur in…