Jam Walker
(They/Them)
As seen in:
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Award-nominated freelance writer (GamesHub, Kotaku Aus, Stevivor, PowerUp!, Byteside, Player 2, Checkpoint). Highly opinionated on games & wrasslin'. They/Them.
Articles by Jam Walker
MINI REVIEW // Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is a game I’ve wanted to play for over 20 years. I’m not the biggest kaiju fanatic out there. I think the most recent film in the canon that I’ve seen is unfortunately the 1998 Matthew Broderick one. I’m not evaluating Remastered on the authenticity to its source material or on faithfulness to its GameCube origins. In my cultural vacuum though, I’ve had a jolly old time monster mashing the hours away across the last few days.
MINI REVIEW // Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun II
I’ve been an evangelist for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun for three straight years now. I fully believe that it’s not only one of the best modern day boomer shooters around but it’s also easily one of the best Warhammer 40k games ever. It’s fun as hell, sports some great level design, and just absolutely gets the satirical heart of the 41st millennium. I am thrilled to say that Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun II doubles-down on all of these points.
GAMING: “People love this event”: Parallels returns despite funding cut
He’s referencing a famous thought experiment. If you replace all the parts of a ship, is it still the same ship? Or in Parallels’ case, the same showcase? Parallels is invariably a highlight of Melbourne International Games Week. A industry melting pot and celebration of games as art. “People love this event,” Smith said. “Shuhei Yoshida [the former president of Sony, credited with building the Playstation brand] has said that it’s one of his favourite game events on the planet.
REVIEW // Star Wars: Galactic Racer
I am 38 years old, which means that I was precisely positioned for The Phantom Menace and Episode 1: Racer to land as fairly monumental capstones of a sort to my childhood before I transitioned into my teens. 27 years later I still have an extraordinary degree of affection for both, and so I’m kind of both the perfect mark for Star Wars: Galactic Racer and also someone who would invariably hold it to some degree against perfect childhood memories.
REVIEW // Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is an intoxicating thrill ride at odds with itself
You know how you sometimes get politely yelled at for years to check out a game/book/film/whatever and just never do? That was me with Ace Combat; and so I came at this review with minimal prior knowledge of, and zero prior experience with the series. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve’s 30-mission campaign thrilled and delighted me from start to finish, but also had me feeling pretty uncomfortable right from the jump. It’s one of the strangest experiences I’ve had with a video game in many years.
REVIEW // Star Wars: Zero Company provides zero compelling reasons to complete it
I did complete it though, because I am committed to the work. As Kieron discussed in their preview some weeks back, Star Wars: Zero Company is a turn-based tactics game that takes place as the Clone Wars are in full swing. It’s a brilliant idea, and centering that framework upon a band of mercenaries trying to turn a profit amidst the conflict is a tantalising canvas, ripe with opportunities to explore incredibly rich themes and take characters on a real journey.
Forza Horizon 6 Review
Or if you play like me, Bush Basher Tokyo Edition. I am not a car person – I drive a 1999 Mitsubishi Lancer that carries less resale value than the laptop I am writing this review on. Yet, the Forza Horizon series has been an immense source of joy for me since I first gave the Australia-set Forza Horizon 3 a bash several years ago.
Battlestar Galactica Scattered Hopes Review
Nothin’ but the rain. I’ve long held Corey Koniecska’s 2008 Battlestar Galactica board game as the absolute high watermark for game adaptations. It’s a masterwork of design where every one of its mechanics plays deftly into the tone and theme of the 2004 Syfy show that serves as its basis.
REVIEW // Directive 8020 could be 80 percent better if it was 20 percent shorter
It’s been said that there are no original stories left; that every narrative we get now is simply at worst a retread or at best a remix of what came before. None of that really matters if the execution is good, but that can’t always be the case. These potential pitfalls are felt more sharply in horror than really any other genre, as it’s basically impossible for a scare to land as powerfully the second time you’re experiencing it, let alone the third or fourth.
Star Trek Voyager Across the Unknown Review
Galaxy questing. Star Trek Voyager was the first series in the franchise that I ever really watched. Chaotic, late-night scheduling plagued it for much of its Australian airing, but I was the kind of kid who would typically fall asleep with the TV on anyway.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Review
Jam Walker Feb 17 6 min read Thanks, I hate it. Yes, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is as mid as you’ve probably heard by now. Let's get that out of the way right from the jump. More pointedly though, the unusually selective and narrow manner in which review codes were distributed for it ahead of embargo, compared to the last few games in the series, would seem to suggest that SEGA knew it to be so.
Terminator 2D: NO FATE Review
Timeless cool I saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day at far too young an age. I’m pretty sure we taped it from what was probably its first Australian TV airing back when I was about six years old and I instantly became obsessed.
Europa Universalis 5 Review
An epic of (truly) epic epicness. I was obsessed with real-time strategy games as a kid, and when I hit my teens I gained an intense love for tabletop wargames and Civilization. I find myself firmly in the back-half of my 30s now, which feels just about bang on time for a foray into the world of historical grand strategy games.
Jackbox Party Pack 11 Brings You & Friends Together For 5 New Games
I miss my wife. I’m an Australian who recently eloped with their American partner after being together, mostly long-distance, for almost four years. Long-distance is never easy, but we’re incredibly fortunate to have found each other in a time where we can remain connected via video call pretty much round-the-clock. I’ve been incredibly fortunate too to have been embraced by her circle of friends in the years since we met.
Freeplay’s Mads Mackenzie Talks Indies at Games Events
In addition to being the co-organizer of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival for the past few years, Mads Mackenzie has also been co-running the tiny independent games studio Fine Feathered Fiends who have been deep in production on their debut video game Drăculești for the last several years.
Equity, Intimacy, and Investment – A Preview of the Esports Australia Summit 2025
Equity, Intimacy, and Investment – A Preview of the Esports Australia Summit 2025 October 7, 2025 Written by Jam Walker The Esports Australia Summit 2025 is soon to happen as part of the stacked Melbourne International Games Week 2025 lineup. I caught up with co-organisers Dr. Emma Witkowski and James Manning of RMIT University to get the lowdown in the lead up to it. “Esports is all about playing,” stated Witkowski emphatically. “It’s all about playing,” she further underlined.
Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition Review - Your popularity is falling
Skip to content Reviewed July 26, 2025 on PC PC July 15, 2025 FireFly Studios FireFly Studios 2001’s Stronghold has held a delightful little home in my brain ever since I first played the demo off of some magazine cover disk. It was wickedly addictive, utterly gorgeous, and had a wonderful British humour that helped set it apart from other historical strategy games of the era.
Orchestra Victoria Brings Indie Symphony II to Melbourne
The first week of July saw two spectacular nights of video game music given the full symphonic treatment. These nights were hosted by Orchestra Victoria at the legendary Hamer Hall in Melbourne, Australia. Meena Shamaly had the hosting honours, known for a show on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio which is about, you guessed it, video game music.
Death Stranding 2 On the Beach Review
Better game, lesser art. 2012’s Far Cry 3 is undoubtedly one of the most influential games of the HD era. It wasn’t the first open-world action game of course, but its enormous critical and commercial success quickly made it the blueprint for just about any and every such releasethat followed.
Magic: The Gathering – Aetherdrift Review | Player2.net.au
I’m pretty sure that when I first saw the news of the motor racing themed Magic: The Gathering – Aetherdrift set I just chuckled and immediately rejected it as being entirely not for me. I’m not a car person, I’m not really into racing of any kind, and historically I haven’t loved the way vehicles work in Magic gameplay either. Despite all of this baggage I’ve been enjoying Aetherdrift quite a bit. Probably more so than any other themed core-set from the past year in fact.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Review
The Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has been telling interlocking stories with overlapping characters over the course of eleven core games now and with more expected in the future. While this can be a great way to keep an audience engaged, it also inevitably turns the entire thing into an increasingly impenetrable behemoth.
Avowed Review: A Game Pass Original
Flashy... but memorable? I never played Pillars of Eternity, so when Avowed showed up offering a whole new angle on its universe, my reaction was pretty much that of a shrug. I’m so glad I jumped into it though, because not only have I loved playing it through, it’s also gotten me invested enough in the Pillars world to download and install the original game. Avowed drops you in the role of the Aedyrian envoy to the politically tumultuous and environmentally hostile island of the Living Lands.
the Absolute Most game
In 2012, celebrated American novelist Neal Stephenson and his team ran a successful Kickstarter for a video game called Clang, which promised to deliver the most immersive, realistic sword-fighting the medium had ever seen. Two years and USD$500,000 later, the Clang project was mothballed, with Stephenson stating simply that “it wasn’t very fun to play.” Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is Clang brought to term.
Yes, but do you have a flag?
Back in August, I got the chance to play the first few hours of a game of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII. At the time I said I was tremendously impressed by how the team had worked to construct the freshest Civ sequel yet. Having now completed several full games of it across both PC and Steam Deck, this sentiment remains true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be my new go-to entry any time I’m in a Civ mood.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
Recently, GamesHub was invited to Los Angeles for some hands-on time with the hotly anticipated Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. The event was held at a delightfully absurd pirate-themed dinner theatre venue, which fortunately happened to be situated on the opposite side of town from the devastating fires which had broken out only a day earlier.
The Thing: Remastered Review - At its B-Grade best
Skip to content Reviewed December 23, 2024 on PC Xbox One, PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S December 5, 2024 Nightdive Studios Nightdive Studios I’ve always had a soft spot for earnest ‘B’ games. Games that clearly had aims of being a top-tier product that just couldn’t quite get there. Typically they fall short for reasons of time and budget, but often also for being burdened with an overly ambitious vision to begin with.
Two Point Museum Preview: Restoring the past
... and breaking toilets?! For years I’ve been aware of Two Point Studios and its efforts to revive the quirky British business sim genre of the 90s. I’d never really made the time to play the studio’s games before now though. I held a deep love for Theme Park on the Mega Drive as a kid, but having not become a PC gamer until the early 2000s, the golden era of such games largely passed me by.
Magic: The Gathering – Foundations Review | Player2.net.au
From there player’s can progress to the Starter Collection box. At $129.95AUD it feels like a significant leap to make, but its structure is such that it’s pretty perfect as a thing to 50/50 split with a friend. For the money you get a short but informative deck-builder’s guidebook and a pre-determined selection of over 300 cards consisting of uncomplicated creatures, spells, tokens, and lands.
Tetris Forever Review: Timeless and essential
Play Tetris Forever, my friends. The video game industry is shockingly bad at preserving its history. Outside of a small number of near-mythologised figures like Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto, it’s also long been terrible at telling the stories of the people who built its foundations. The team at Digital Eclipse has been doing tremendous work to change all of this over the last few years with its Gold Master Series.
Fallout: Factions – Nuka-World tabletop review
I played Warhammer 40,000 a lot as a teenager in the early 2000s. While I absolutely adored the 3rd edition rules system of the day, it was the 40k-universe set gang warfare campaign game Necromunda that I truly loved more. Games Workshop largely abandoned support for it after just a few years, but then mounted a hugely successful relaunch in 2017 under the design leadership of James Hewitt.
Slitterhead Review: A colossal headache
The debut game from Silent Hill and Gravity Rush creator Keiichiro Toyama’s new venture Bokeh Game Studio, Slitterhead, is finally here. I’d been looking forward to it ever since it was announced almost three full years ago, and so it truly brings me no pleasure to tell you that pushing through Slitterhead to its conclusion this past week has been the single most aggravating and miserable review experience I’ve yet had (and I reviewed Gollum).
Bolt Action: Third Edition tabletop review – realism can be fun
I’ve been in and out of the miniatures gaming hobby for over 20 years, but in that time I never managed to get into the vast realm of historical wargaming. I always viewed such games as being mechanically more concerned with hyper-detailed ‘realism’ than actual fun, and I just had no interest in going there. Not long after I packed up my Chaos Space Marines in favour of Chaotic Nights Out, a number of the Warhammer designers and writers whose work I’d loved began pursuing other ventures.
The secret identities that birthed Freeplay
This year marked two very special anniversaries for the Australian games scene: ten years of the government-backed Melbourne International Games Week, and, incredibly, 20 years of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival. Freeplay was founded by then Melbourne House developer Katharine Neil in collaboration with Marcus Westbury, who at the time was directing the long-running This Is Not Art festival.
Magic: The Gathering – Duskmourn Review | Player2.net.au
Right on time for the spooky season comes Magic: The Gathering’s latest release, Duskmourn: House of Horror. The house itself is the plane upon which this set takes place. Or rather, the plane is the house. The house is a sentient realm, but still a house. A BIG house, where even the woodlands and water-bodies are technically rooms within.
‘Basic, quite unresponsive, and you can’t really win’, Rotted Luck is a must-play during MIGW 24
Melbourne International Games Week is almost upon us once again, presenting a stacked schedule of events for industry professionals and public punters alike. One of the more curious features of this year’s lineup is the free installation game Rotted Luck. An original work commissioned by the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI), the game is a collaboration between noted Melbourne indie game developer Ian MacLarty and writer and performer Vidja Rajan.
The Mandalorian: Adventures tabletop review
Sometimes timing can be a curse. The Mandalorian: Adventures is a one-to-four player cooperative board game based on a beloved space opera property, utilising a spiral-bound book of hex-grid dungeons in conjunction with an unfolding narrative device to grow and deepen the complexity of each of its player characters as its campaign unfolds.
Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz review
Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz had a high barrier to clear for me. I was born in November of 1987, which means that I’m precisely the perfect age to have experienced the Mass Effect trilogy during the stretch of years where I transitioned out of teenage-dom and into early adulthood.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - Review
Thirteen years is a heck of a long time to wait for a sequel. Not only can tastes and trends shift hugely in such a lengthy span of time, but the framework of an IP, and general optics can also. When Space Marine launched on the PS3/XB360 generation back in 2011, it did so at a time when Warhammer 40,000 itself was transitioning from niche hobby to truly mainstream. It also came amidst a marked shift in how Games Workshop was handling its universes.
fresh and impressive
Earlier this month, GamesHub had the privilege of being invited to visit strategy game makers Firaxis, nestled a short drive north of the U.S. city of Baltimore. While there, we got to take a hands-on preview with the eagerly awaited Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, and talk to the Civilization team’s executive producer Dennis Shirk, and game designer Carl Harrison.
Dark Deeds review: Delightful devilry
I first got into Warhammer 40,000 a few months after starting high school in 2000. Nostalgia surely plays a part in my indelible fondness for that era of the hobby, but to be fair, a lot of long-time fans seem to look back on the early 2000’s with particular affection. The ruleset was tight but thematic, and the narrative fluff surrounding it struck a fun balance between grim and silly.
Magic The Gathering: Bloomburrow Review
Magic: The Gathering – Bloomburrow is so fluffy I’m gonna die. Riffing heavily on Brian Jacques’ beloved Redwall series, this latest set pulls planeswalkers into a realm of anthropomorphised fuzzy animals; ‘a tiny idyllic land’ as its creators themselves describe it, full of bird bards, raccoon rogues, and all manner of other good citizens of the fantasy forest.
It's been forever
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine instantly became one of my favourite games on the Xbox 360 when it landed back in 2011, so getting a preview code for the long-awaited sequel in the same week as the 360’s online shutdown felt strangely poetic. Thirteen years is a long damn time though.
Magic The Gathering – Assassin’s Creed Review | Player2.net.au
Magic: The Gathering’s Universe’s Beyond I.P. collaboration imprint shows no sign of slowing down after wildly successful Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who and Fallout runs in the past 12 months alone. Now it’s back with Assassin’s Creed, a fittingly lethal set with a surprisingly muted product lineup. Assassin’s Creed has always been a property squarely centered on its characters and the historical locations in which they operate.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess - Review
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess feels like something that got lost on its way to launching on the Wii-U, and I mean that as the highest of praise. It’s one of those uniquely odd games that we rarely get from AAA publishers anymore, with development budgets now being as high as they are. Set on a wooded mountain in Edo-period Japan, you play as a katana-wielding warrior named Soh.
How does Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs fare as an in-flight experience?
If you’ve had even a casual interest in tabletop or video games over the last few years, then you’ve probably heard the name Gloomhaven. A kind of all-in-one role-playing board game with legacy elements, it’s consistently held a top 10 spot on BoardGameGeek’s best list since its 2017 release. It’s also renowned for being an expensive and super-dense beast of a game, which weighs almost as much as a slab of beer and takes about as much space to store.
The Plucky Squire
Ever ones to remain overly-committed to the bit, Devolver Digital invited us to celebrate their, actually only one year old, mascot Volvy’s 15th birthday at a party held at Summer Game Fest. There were custom-printed hats, there was a themed cocktail, and there were hands-on sessions with a trio of the publisher’s upcoming titles.
Tales of the Shire preview
Cosy sim games are all the rage these days, and it’s not really shocking to now see one of the classic literary and cultural inspirations for the whole genre finally be turned into one of its own. What is surprising is that it’s being made by the very effects studio responsible for catapulting that particular property into irrepressible modern day cultural prominence. So it is that Tales of the Shire has come to be; an upcoming Hobbit life-sim from Wētā Workshop’s games studio.
PlayStation preview round-up
My Summer Game Fest kicked off with a PlayStation appointment first thing on day one. With both LEGO Horizon Adventures and Astro Bot on the cards, here’s how my previews went for these exciting new titles.
Monster Hunter Wilds preview - Beauty, brutality, and birbs
Monster Hunter has long felt like my gaming white whale – and the new Monster Hunter Wilds instalment had felt no different. I’ve long admired the franchise from afar, and the attempts I’d made to get to grips with the series with Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise had just left me feeling resigned to the idea that I’d never be able to understand its systems and rhythms.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess preview
When I approached one of the demo booths for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess at Summer Game Fest, the PR representative from Capcom immediately asked if I was familiar with the game. “I saw the trailer during last year’s Xbox showcase,” I told them. “Okay… Well it’s deeply weird,” they replied, with what sounded almost like a hint of exasperation in their voice about just how they were going to explain it to me. “It’s sort of a tower defense but you also fight and command guys.
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