James Bentley

James Bentley

Hey there, thank you for stopping by. If you're here, your either thinking of commissioning me or you're very nosy. Either way, greetings and please give me your money. I'm a freelance games journalist and I've written over 200 pieces over a multitude of sites like GamesRadar, Prima Games, VG247, God is a Geek, Techraptor and more


Hey, don't stop reading just yet, keep reading this line please and the next one. I make video content too and can do pretty much any form of content you can think of. Send me a message if you'd like to talk about it!


I'm sure by now you're thinking "Boy this portfolio intro sure is long"  and I have but one thing to say. 


Yeah, you're right and-


Prima Games •

Little Nightmares: A Postmortem Analysis

Grief, loss, pain. These are all such funny things. Outside of the small vacuum they persist, they make no sense. Random actions, violence, even more pain. What point do they have? If we look outside the inexorable pull of that vacuum, we can piece it together. We can see a little nugget of humanity festering at the heart of bad actions. Little Nightmares knows this more than most games I've ever played and I'm not even sure it’s intentional. I think it's very important to preface this piece w
UploadVR •

Grabbing The Bull By The Horns: The Importance Of VR Hands And Presence

We spoke with several VR game designers and developers about the important (and difficulty) of creating believable and immersive hands in VR. VR hands are a strange thing to ‘get to grips with’ so to speak. Not only do they allow you to interact with the virtual world in front of you but they allow you to become part of it. As you shape yourself to fit into that world, it does the same to fit around you. In real life, you have limited strength and ability but VR gives you that rare opportunity
TechRaptor •

Game Grooves: Exploring the Untitled Goose Game Vinyl

Music is an incredibly important part of the way we see games. It can add levity to a tense situation or creativity to a normal one. It has the power to engross you or the ability to gross you out. A gaming soundtrack is more dynamic and grounding than a soundtrack in any other medium, and that sense of now is what makes them just so charming. In Game Grooves, we explore the physical medium of gaming soundtracks by analyzing the vinyl/tape/CD itself and use that as a device to really engage wit
TechRaptor •

"Just Remember That You've Made It This Far": The Story Behind Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium has always been a bit of a strange game. It’s inspired by those old-school tabletop RPGs but it replaces combat with a more methodical one-shot approach and replaces stats with a strange form of personality test. Instead of upgrading your strength, you increase your empathy, intelligence, and deduction. In line with this, the game itself is raw and empathetic, humanizing painful rhetoric and inhumane stances. This deep, vibrant humanity at its core is what makes this compassion com
Prima Games •

Biomutant Review | Raining Cats and Bugs

Biomutant is a game that’s hard to review. I’m going to do my best to fully take in and express the experience I got out of it but this is one of those games I could see being incredibly polarising. There are too many issues and poor design decisions for me to call it a great game but there’s just too much heart to not recommend. This is not a game I can guarantee you’ll like but it is certainly something you should play. Biomutant has you take the role of a mutated rodent creature in a world

How Dying Light 2's Open World Compares to the Original's

Dying Light is a game that has managed to cling onto players for over six years now. Unlike their previous effort, Dead Island, Dying Light has had a real sense of staying power as tonnes of free DLC came out and players explored that open world over and over again. There are so many aspects responsible for this, but a central one is just how great its world is. Now that we’ve received some solid information on Dying Light 2, it’s time to go back into that world again to see what makes it so ir
TechRaptor •

Vokabulantis and the Language Barrier: How It Broke Through

It's hard to understate just how important language is. It's used to express love, confusion, anger, and sometimes even used to prove a point. Imagine how hard this sentence would be to read fi ti saw sdrawkcab? Vokabulantis, the new co-op game from Morten Søndergaard, Kong Orange, and Wired Fly, attempts to add a stop-motion style to a moving story about language and, if its Kickstarter is anything to go by, they’ve started on the right animated foot. After some predictably ironic technical di
GodisaGeek.com •

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure review

I’m not entirely sure if it’s intentional but “Alba: A Wildlife Adventure” and “Alba: A Wild Life Adventure” feel equally applicable to this title. It’s cute, comforting, yet also quite sad in a way. Feeling thematically similar to the likes of Beyond Blue and Abzu, it deals with topics like the destruction of wildlife and touches briefly on the systems that cause it. Despite this, it always has a sense of humanity at its core. It doesn’t feel disjointed from the central narrative, focusing on t
gamesradar •

25 Best gaming soundtracks of all time

Music is a wonderful tool for expressing emotion, telling a story or to simply get your head moving back and forth. Whether it be distorted riffs, subtle synth keys or an entire orchestra, we can't understate the importance of music on the way we see a game. So with that in mind, we've rounded up the 25 best gaming soundtracks of all time, and you can even listen to them via this Spotify playlist we've put together. There's a good chance that if you've been a pokemon fan for a while, its soundt
Prima Games •

Little Nightmares 2 Review | An Enchanting Fever Dream

I sit here – moments after finishing Little Nightmares 2 – and there’s a pit in my stomach. That feeling you get when a game finishes but you aren’t quite finished with it. Its treacherous world, enchanting visuals and truly captivating story held me in its grasp, unable to move. This Nightmare was scary, occasionally quite complex and will stay with me for a long time. I don’t plan on waking up anytime soon. From the get-go, Little Nightmares 2 treats you to the subtle ways it plays with your
gamesradar •

Best roguelikes to keep you saying "just one more round"

Taking its name from 1980 classic Rogue, the term roguelike is a little contentious. Categorized through things such as procedurally-generated levels, elements of permadeath and more, it can be hard to distinguish a roguelike from a game with roguelike elements. A roguelike will traditionally feature grid-based dungeons, permadeath and each run will be totally unique where rogue-lites will generally punish death but have a degree of incremental progress. If it punishes for death and has randomly
Prima Games •

9 Digital Only PS Vita Games to Play Before the Servers Close

With the recent news that the servers for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and PS Vita are closing down, there comes with it a lot of questions. What happens to the games I have digitally? What about the games that don’t have physical releases? Does this mean we won’t get a Vita 2? While we don’t know the answer to the third question, we do have a rough idea of the others. The PlayStation Vita servers will shut down for good on the 27th of August and with that, an entire generation of ga
VG247 •

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies Easter Egg Guide

With the release of Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War comes the inexorable pull of zombies – loaded with references, new weapons and, of course, the Easter egg. Luckily this one is on the easier side than the esoteric secrets we’ve seen in the past, and can be done on your own with just a little skill. For this reason, we’ll tackle this as a solo player but it only gets easier with a full squad. This section will be dedicated to gearing you up beforehand. Aetherium is a valuable part of that pr
gamesradar •

Best relaxing games for letting your mind chill

It’s fair to say we all need a break sometimes. Relaxing games fit a niche that is badly needed now, two months ago, basically any time of year. No matter what you’re going through personally or otherwise, the ability for video games to whisk you away and offer you something a little different is unparalleled. Have a look at our pick of the top 10 best relaxing games, pick one at random and you are bound to have a nice chilled evening. Enjoy.
VG247 •

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Best Guns | What are the best weapons for multiplayer?

Your choice of weapon in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is possibly the third most important aspect in playing well – after having an internet connection and actually having the game, that is. Luckily, Call of Duty has always been a game open to different playstyles and this year, it shows. Whether you like to run and gun or camp and cower, we have you covered with the best guns you can get your mitts on. Let’s take it by class types and regroup at the end for some general advice, shall we?
Green Man Gaming Blog •

7 Games to quench your thirst before Bloodlines 2 | Green Man Gaming

If you’re here, chances are you’re a long time fan of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (VTMB for short) or have recently seen the Xbox trailer and thought “Hey, that looks kinda intriguing”. Well lucky you, VTMB has had a long legacy in gaming and you are fortunate enough to have 7 whole games to play while you wait for its release later this year. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is the long-awaited sequel to VTMB from way back in 2004. It promises an immersive sim-style environment
TechRaptor •

Ring Of Pain Review

Ring of Pain is a succinct name for this odd mix of 2000s youtube horror animations, card games and roguelikes. It’s painful, hard yet so cyclical. Right after getting utterly defeated and not wanting to return, I couldn’t help but go back in for another go. If you don’t want to also get stuck in the Ring of Pain, step no further. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic but this is, fundamentally, the fantasy Ring of Pain sells you and it does it so well. You are treated to very little story upon
TechRaptor •

Noita Review

The rogue-lite genre sits in an uncomfortable sphere, it is is both rather oversaturated and highly criticised. They all tend to be built of the same practices, ideas and mechanics leaving them feeling awfully familiar. Noita does not feel familiar. This is one of its biggest strengths and what’s kept me coming back over the last week. Starting off, I was greeted to the entrance of a deep cave and a few keys operating as a short tutorial. After reading them, shooting with the second wand and su
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