Hammer Space
We’ve got video games and cartoons in our pocket
Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games 2020 is destined to become Figure 19.2 in a future textbook about the cultural impact of Covid-19; or at least it would, if textbooks weren’t soon to go extinct to be replaced by educational TikToks. With the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games being delayed by a year, the game is now a relic from […]
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla isn’t the only time travelling Northern European adventure game coming this year. The End Of The Sun, built off Slavic imagery and built by a core team of just three developers, has been in the works for the past three years and next week its Kickstarter is going to officially launch. Over at Indie Game Website, I’ve […]
Despite having very little in common apart from their creator, Futurama always seemed to be living in The Simpsons’ shadow. It’s ironic that now it’s been cancelled, we see Groening’s new show Disenchantment being unfavourably compared to Futurama, with Dreamland in the shadow of New New York. That’s all probably an argument for another time though, as The Sting highlights […]
South Park says things other shows won’t. That’s always been its schtick. 300 episodes in, it’s still able to shock, as the most recent season showed through Band In China and Board Girls, which tackled Chinese censorship and trans women in sport. Both important issues of our time, and South Park handled then in a typical South Park way. We’ll […]
The outcome of the current football season is still up in the air. Will Liverpool win the title? Will Villa stay up? Will the season resume to see Newcastle continue to windmill their way to FA Cup success? Hey, stranger things have happened. While we wait for play to resume, Leyton Orient have been making sure we don’t get too […]
If you’ve had Animal Crossing since launch, you’ll likely have played it long enough to have made your island your own. That might mean creating mazes, building football stadiums, or re-enacting horror flicks. It’s even reached the level of popularity for Business Insider to harvest hate clicks by explaining how it’s a dumb game for babies, you dumb baby. It’s […]
After debuting in selected screening of Pixar’s Onward, the latest Simpsons’ short recently hit Disney+, demonstrating that, when it really wants to, The Simpsons can still put on a show. It centres around Maggie Simpson and her crush on a baby she meets at the playpark, Hudson. Featuring zero dialogue, the five minute short is chock full of brilliant animation […]
Sonic Forces is not a good game. Even by Sonic’s erratic standards, the levels are very hit and miss. It combines classic 2D speed platforming, 2.5D mazes and not-quite-fully-open 3D levels, letting you play as classic chubby Sonic, modern charismatic Sonic and a character of your own creation. The gameplay in all three options have glaring flaws, but together they […]
The Old Sugarman Place is a terminally underrated episode of BoJack Horseman, and comes in Season 4, Season 3’s only competitor as BoJack’s best season. While Stupid Piece Of Shit and particularly Time’s Arrow steal the headlines, there’s an insular charm to The Old Sugarman Place. It has only a minor bearing on the continuity, revolves around a character we […]
For our second Golden Era + feature, it’s another Lisa episode in The Squirt & The Whale. Lisa’s actually the character I feel has gone off the rails the most since the Golden Era ended, so the Lisa episodes I like are few and far between. That said, because of their relative rarity, they’re a lot more special, which probably […]
What if there was a global disaster and we had an arrogant buffoon in the White House? That’s the question posed by reality in 2020 Saint’s Row: IV, after an alien invasion conquers humanity. You play through the game as Boss, leader of the Third Street Saints gang, who thanks to their exploits in the previous game is currently working […]
When Aerith Gainsborough is asked by Shinra to identify herself, her response is ‘local florist!’. It’s one of many lines in the Final Fantasy VII that showcase the personality of the characters, but it also highlights how important flowers are to Aerith. I tackled the what the flowers mean generally to Aerith & Final Fantasy VII’s mythos for Rock Paper […]
Prior to the coronavirus, the amount of immigrants, refugees and displaced people around the world was one of the most discussed issues of our time. While games have tackled the issue head on – Papers, Please being an obvious one – none have quite captured the feelings of helplessness in the face of disaster the way Mass Effect 3 does. […]
For the first Golden Era Plus feature, I couldn’t look past Halloween Of Horror. Though not my runaway favourite episode post Golden Era, it is one of the best put together. It changes up the stale Halloween formula to tell one of the show’s most human stories in years. Watch If You Like: Lisa The Greek, HOMR, Moaning Lisa, Bart […]
