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.
Welcome to the latest edition of Punished Notes! In this piece, I cover the intriguing universe of The Outer Worlds, the familiar but phenomenal Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Death Stranding, and more. Also, a few words on a recent Netflix film you ought to watch.
Last year, I decried the overuse of gaming terms like “metroidvania,” as often such words and phrases do little to actually describe the experience any game presents. While I understand why someone might lean on a certain vernacular when describing various works, the time has come for us to rethink how we talk about games in order to describe them in a more accurate manner. I’m not calling for the obliteration of such terms, either; I just believe we should know what we’re saying when utilizing these words.
Here are five particularly notable examples.
Welcome to the latest Punished Notes, a series of my always-evolving and rarely consistent thoughts on the video game world. For this latest edition, I get into how Gears 5 criticizes military superpowers, the lovely remake of Link’s Awakening, and the annual joy of pumpkin-flavored stuff (happy fall)!
Welcome back to Punished Chat. In this edition, I spoke with The Punished Backlog founder David Silbert to discuss the difficulties trying to manage our gaming backlog, how writing about games has changed how we play and what we play, and how there are too many damn RPGs we’ll never finish.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, Team Ninja’s latest crack at the long-dormant Ultimate Alliance series, is far from a perfect game. Still, the game as a whole just works, and not merely in the sense that its mechanics and systems function as intended; everything comes together conceptually, with the tone of the story and art style perfectly matching the chaotic ebullience of the gameplay. The game combines basic brawler systems with a cartoonish presentation and doesn’t try to be much more than that. Simply put, the game knows what it is and stays true to itself at all times.
Welcome back to Punished Notes, where I (occasionally) release all of my blandest and most anodyne takes on the world of video games. This week, we’ll be looking at some of my favorite user-created stages in Super Mario Maker 2, why I can’t get into a recent game everyone adores, and how I got emotional over a movie trailer after three seconds.
When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took the gaming world by storm two years ago, it amazed players with its massive open world, improved traversal mechanics, weapon variety, and breathtaking scenery. … After playing Cadence of Hyrule, the latest Zelda spin-off, which uses the mechanics of Crypt of the Necrodancer, I now realize what was missing: the integration of music as a core gameplay mechanic (Kass doesn’t count).
E3 2019 is officially over, y’all. Though the world’s biggest gaming expo came and went faster than Elon Musk swiping that 2B artwork, the conference left us with plenty in the way of announcements to dissect and games to fawn over. As with our pre-E3 2019 coverage a few weeks back, your favorite panel of dream chasers — David Silbert, Sam Martinelli, and Kei Isobe — will be doing a rapid-fire post-mortem on the best and worse of this year’s show. Easy peasy, Keanu Reevesy?
I love The Witcher 3, but don’t like Dragon Age: Inquisition. I can’t get into most JRPGs, but I kind of like Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I’m a huge Legend of Zelda fan, but I’ve never loved the original. The Super Nintendo is my favorite console ever, yet I don’t think I’ll ever finish Super Mario RPG or Super Metroid. … Why am I like this?
Ahead of E3 2019, several Punished Backlog writers compiled lists of predictions for each press conference. Who will win? Who will lose? Here are our initial thoughts.
