Despite being a J-POP radio/podcast host for many years, I

To be able to manipulate gravity is an awesome ability, as anyone who's played Half-Life 2 will tell you. So why, I wounder, was Traverser not an incredible experience for me? Introductions first: Traverser is a sci-fi action puzzle game published by Adult Swim Games and developed by Gatling Goat Studios. Traverser is a post-apocalyptic game. Humans, once again, have made the earth a hard place to live, leaving them with the need to constantly purchase oxygen to breathe. There is one corporation that controls the air supply, and it's the Raven Corporation. Taking the role of a young girl named Valerie Bennet, the player takes control of her and becomes the eponymous hero.

Valerie's father, Linus, is a very important person in Traverser's world, so when ill befalls him, this sends Valerie on an adventure to discover the truth. After some tutorial events to get you familiar with using objects and manipulating gravity with your Traverser glove, you basically get to roam around the world, learning objectives to push you towards the next piece of the story.

For awhile the phrase "walking simulator" has popped up in

Many car trips and late nights with my reading lamp were spent reading the popular Choose Your Own Adventure book series as a kid. I loved both the agency it gave me to help effect the outcome of the story and the ability to go back and make new choices on a second run just to see what happens. With horror being my favorite genre therein, I enjoyed one about space vampires quite a bit, the first time I saw Until Dawn I knew it was tailor-made for me to enjoy. Though the branching paths are less drastic than I initially suspected, Until Dawn is the first interactive cinematic experience to really nail it on every front.

I remember it well. It was the year 2000, and

If there's one thing I learned from Handsome Jack, it's