Sam Woods

Demon Tides Is Exactly How You Do A Sequel Demon Tides is a phenomenal sequel that not only builds on everything Turf nailed, but also greatly expands its scope and quality.

Demon Tides is one of my favourite platformers in recent memory, and one with some surprisingly grand ambitions that it absolutely lives up to - roll on Bubsy 4D! www.thegamer.com/demon-tides-...

Just finished Disco Elysium for the first time. Legitimately at a loss with what to play next.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s Switch 2 Version Could Be Here As Early As This Summer Sources have told TheGamer we could only have a couple of months to wait.

Dedicating this one to all the chuds on Reddit who said I was talking shit

www.thegamer.com/final-fantas...

Nioh 3 Is A Brutal New Peak For The Series Nioh 3’s open levels, new Ninja form, and even tighter combat cement it as the best game in the series.

First review of the year and kicking things off very strongly with the brilliant Nioh 3, which I’ve not put down over the past two weeks. My review: www.thegamer.com/nioh-3-review/

$1 pick up lessssgo

Five years later and I’ve played way more in the subgenre, so I’m taking way more time to appreciate all the nuances of the storytelling and world building. Game is great.

Playing through Bloodborne for the second time in my life and for the first time in five years and what a different experience it is. My first playthrough was my first time playing a souls game and I basically speed ran it because I was terrified.

Direct flight from Chicago to London was cancelled last night. This was the replacement flight they tried to put us on.

Tomb Raider's New Lara Croft Spills All About Stepping Into The Shoes Of An Icon We sat down with the legendary Alix Wilton Regan to discuss all things Lara Croft.

My last big one for the year is the second part of my interview with Alix Wilton Regan, aka Lara Croft.

A nice way to round out 2025, and now my break begins. Two days of Christmas festivities with family, then off to Chicago to celebrate my wonderful friend @peterspittech.bsky.social’s wedding.

Thanks mate!

Tomb Raider's New Lara Croft Spills All About Stepping Into The Shoes Of An Icon We sat down with the legendary Alix Wilton Regan to discuss all things Lara Croft.

My last big one for the year is the second part of my interview with Alix Wilton Regan, aka Lara Croft.

A nice way to round out 2025, and now my break begins. Two days of Christmas festivities with family, then off to Chicago to celebrate my wonderful friend @peterspittech.bsky.social’s wedding.

3 years ago I started work on a SIGNALIS video essay. It ended up feature length, and subsequently sat on my hard drive as a rough cut.

Until today.

After numerous passes, I've finally hit publish on The Emotional Horror of SIGNALIS.

Hell can be a place of healing.

I’m gonna do something I very rarely do and advocate for myself openly: This year I’ve done some pretty wild stuff, spoken to some amazing people, and broken a few big stories. My role has become less focused on writing guff (although there will still be a little, gotta keep the lights on)

Most of this was done since August. There’s eight months more of this that I won’t bore you with but yeah, 2025 has been the most fulfilling year for me, and I still have at least one more big piece to come.

Remember Ubisoft’s NFT Game? It’s Now A Free-To-Play Gacha-Style Title With Less Than Ten Players Everybody, act surprised.

And did lots of analytical, explorative pieces: www.thegamer.com/ubisofts-nft...

"Alright, Reboot, We're Starting From Scratch": Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Narrative Lead Talks Restarting Development, DLC, And That Act 1 Moment “When the dust settles, we will start thinking about DLC, but it's probably not going to be for a while.”

Flew to China to talk to the Where Winds Meet devs: www.thegamer.com/where-winds-...

Was one of, if not the first, to speak to Jennifer Svedberg-Yen about Clair Obscur: www.thegamer.com/clair-obscur...

Pragmata Director And Producer Talk Delays, Predicting The Future, And Pitching A New Game In An Era Of Endless Remakes We sat down with Pragmata director Cho Yonghee and producer Naoto Oyama at this year's TGS to discuss everything about Capcom's new IP.

I spoke to the Resident Evil Requiem team: www.thegamer.com/resident-evi...

And Pragmata: www.thegamer.com/pragmata-tok...

And Suda51: www.thegamer.com/romeo-is-a-d...

Did an exclusive interview with the Lies of P: Overture cast: www.thegamer.com/lies-of-p-ov...

Report: The Pokemon TCG's Turmoil Isn't Only In The West As Japanese Stores Are Facing Major Stock Issues And "Frequent Sell-Outs" On a recent trip to Japan, I investigated whether the issues English-language Pokemon TCG collectors were facing were prevalent in Japan.

I did multiple reports on the torrid state of the Pokemon TCG: www.thegamer.com/report-pokem...

Did a deep dive retrospective with one of the godfathers of Dynasty Warrios, where he admitted after he left, the games went a bit shit: www.thegamer.com/dynasty-warr...

Jennifer Hale Is Still Being Offered Different Rates To Her Male Counterparts For Appearances, Despite Her Resume Being “Quite A Bit Longer” The star also discussed how TV and Video corporations need to use video game actors more.

The legendary Jennifer Hale shared how she’s still being offered rates worse than male counterparts: www.thegamer.com/jennifer-hal...

Jennifer English told me how the BG3 cast was brought back in to record lines with They/Them pronouns: www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate...

Wuk Lamat Actor Says Yoshi-P Apologised For The Abuse She Faced For Playing The Character In Final Fantasy 14 "He was very kind, and we had a very kind little talk about it,"

Final Fantasy 14’s Wuk Lamar detailed just how bad the transphobic abuse towards her was, and that Yoshi-P personally apologised: www.thegamer.com/wuk-lamat-ac...

Aliona Baranova told me she wants studios to do more to protect devs: www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate...

Baldur's Gate 3's Writers Mapped Out Every Dialogue Option With A Tree That Looked Like "A Whole Brain" "When you zoomed out, it looked like a whole brain, all the nerve endings, synapses firing. It was crazy."

I spoke to Maggie Robertson who revealed just how wild Baldur’s Gate 3’s dialogue tree was: www.thegamer.com/baldurs-gate...

And that she’d still love to return as Lady D: www.thegamer.com/maggie-rober...

Joanna Dark Actor Had Recorded "Entire Chapters" Before Perfect Dark Reboot Was Canceled We spoke to Joanna Dark actor Alix Wilton-Regan who shared what she could about the now-canceled reboot.

Watch this space, because next year, I’ll be doing it all again, but in the meantime, here are some of the cool interviews I did and the stories that I ideated.

Starting with the one that goes against what I said about discovery and was everywhere last week:

www.thegamer.com/joanna-dark-...

And I’ve been given the time to focus on actual interesting stuff. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. Google sucks, discovery sucks, and many of my stories and interviews went under the radar (or just straight up nobody read) because of this but I hold my head high.

I’m gonna do something I very rarely do and advocate for myself openly: This year I’ve done some pretty wild stuff, spoken to some amazing people, and broken a few big stories. My role has become less focused on writing guff (although there will still be a little, gotta keep the lights on)

Devora Wilde’s Characters Are Not Mean Women, They Are “Unapologetically Themselves” Devora Wilde walks us through her role in Solasta 2 - and how she will always defend Lae'zel.

Hellllooo I had a lovely chat with Devora Wilde bout "mean women" and Lae'zel being gay (and Solasta 2 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33!) www.thegamer.com/devora-wilde...

I’ve lost track of the amount of interviews and articles I’ve translated from Japanese and covered this year, only for other sites to conveniently stumble across them from niche Japanese outlets. It’s clear you saw my coverage. A little (via X website) goes a long way.

Games media: a rising tide lifts all ships. Let’s source each other properly, yeah? If we all do that, we’ll get some level of trust from the hellscape that is google, and it will help to weed out the shitty scraper sites (I hope).

It’s very good and definitely my favourite “short” experience of the year!

Dead Letter Dept.

Joanna Dark Actor Had Recorded "Entire Chapters" Before Perfect Dark Reboot Was Canceled We spoke to Joanna Dark actor Alix Wilton-Regan who shared what she could about the now-canceled reboot.

Me and Alix Wilton Regan have been planning to chat Perfect Dark for a while now. We finally managed that yesterday. Sounds like, as you might expect, it wasn’t handled too well.

www.thegamer.com/joanna-dark-...