2014 Games of the Year

Wolfenstein: The New Order – In terms of pulpy genre fare Wolfenstein: The New Order is as good as it comes. The game is filled to the brim with absurdist alternate history imagery. The game uses this alternate history to set up some really great set piece moments from assaults on German castles to the […]

2015 Games of the Year

Fallout 4 – Fallout 4 is a problematic follow-up to one of my favorite games of all time, yet I can’t deny it has its charms. Fallout, as a series, intrinsically appeals to me. The setting, aesthetics, and atmosphere are all great allures of the series and Fallout 4 manages to deliver on those aspects […]

Women in Territorial Utah 1875 – 1895: A Paradigm of Crime

(written in the spring of 2019) What traits defined a woman in the American West? Was it her ability to raise her children or maintain the homestead in even the most dire of times? The immediate answer to this question may raise images of the dutiful wife following her husband onto the prairie with dreams […]

Change in a Culture: The American Reaction to September 11th, 2001

(written in the autumn of 2018) “A day that will live in infamy”—that is how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt referred to December 7th, 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.[1] Over two thousand would lose their lives in that attack which would send the United States to war in Europe and the Pacific. The […]

The Decline of the British Empire

(written in the spring of 2018) The rise and fall of great empires defines the history of our world. The boundaries of the world ebb and flow with their rise and descent. As various empires spread around the world, they left an impact that lasted for centuries, or perhaps even millennia as traces of their […]

Japan’s Development Following World War II: Early Industrial Revolution to Sustained Major World Power

(written in the autumn of 2017) The necessary road to travel to become a dominant nation is an unclear one. Each nation has different strengths and weaknesses. For much of history, the most important question is not when something happened, but why and how it happened. A country is not defined by the hand it […]

2016 Games of the Year

(I have been playing games for a while now. Yet, I only have two games of the year lists written going back two years to 2017. Going forward these lists will be retroactive. Any game released in 2016 is open to be listed even if played in the years after. If I played them that […]

Night In The Woods and the struggles of our time

I don’t think I have ever played a game quite like Night in the Woods. It is a truly fantastic experience that I regret took me over two years to play. While the actual gameplay is nothing special, it essentially boils down to walking around talking to people and interacting with things, there is such […]

2018 Games of the Year

(This post was originally written on Jan 15, 2019) Red Dead Redemption II – Red Dead Redemption II is fantastic in spite of some of its worst elements. The gameplay especially is about as basic as you could get from Rockstar with a clear desire from the development team to make the experience as cinematic as […]

2017 Games of the Year

(This post was originally written on Jan 16, 2018) Horizon Zero Dawn – I had a long debate with myself over what my favorite game was this year. Yet, when it came down to it, it was the consistency of how much I enjoyed the games. This year that was most certainly Horizon Zero Dawn. […]