Author: David Smith

I’ve watched Google’s E3 Stadia Connect presentation three times and I still don’t know who the cloud gaming platform is for. Stadia’s thesis is that you don’t need a console to enjoy high fidelity AAA video games. Instead, it makes games an on-demand service — you tell Stadia what you want to play and a…

It’s finally time to come home to Baldur’s Gate. After two decades and a pair of high quality remasters by Beamdog Software, a new entry in the venerable Dungeons & Dragons CRPG series has been announced. Rumblings about the announce of Baldur’s Gate 3 began earlier in the week when Divinity: Original Sin developer posted a…

Sonic the Hedgehog’s been through a lot in the last twenty-five years. Repeated, flavourless sequels that cast a wide genre net have dogged the old blue blur, from 3D platformers to endless runners and puzzle games, and the less said about his upcoming movie the better. Team Sonic Racing is the third in Sega’s series…

E3 2019 is almost upon us. The year’s biggest storm of gaming news begins in earnest next week but the announcement-packed press conferences kick off as early as Friday morning Australian time. This year’s show promises to be a pivotal one, with two high profile changes to the lineup. The first change has to do…

I was only a few hours into my journey in The Outer Wilds, and I’d already run a gamut of emotions. I’d felt it all — anticipation, elation, awe, loneliness, dread and abject horror. None of it was planned, all of it occurred as a result of my own decisions and, often, my own hubris….

Brief Battles is a solid four-player party brawler from two-person Adelaide developer Juicy Cupcake that lands somewhere between Smash Bros, Worms and Bomberman. Its goal is to be a simple, fast, pick-up-and-play multiplayer experience and in this, it certainly succeeds. Each battle consists of moving your character — chosen from an array of sentient underwear…

After a bit of a quiet month for freebies in May, Xbox looks to be coming back strong in June with a suite of top tier Games With Gold titles, from recent releases like NHL 19 to verified Xbox 360 classic Portal. Here’s how the full list shakes out: On June 1, you’ll have access…

PlayStation Plus is offering up a whole lot of value for subscribers in June, with both Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and Sonic Mania going for the low, low price of zero dollars. Borderlands: The Handsome Collection features both Borderlands 2 and the Australian-made Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, along with all their respective DLC. Two of the…

PlayStation’s Days of Play promotion will kick off next month with a range of discounts across games, hardware and accessories. If you’ve been waiting, saving your pennies for the right moment to scoop some PS4 gear on the cheap, your moment has finally arrived. The Days of Play promotion will run from 7th – 17th June at…

Death Stranding, the first title from Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, has spent the last few years enjoying full blown enigma status within the video game community. Its appearances at events like E3 and PlayStation Experience always raised more questions than they answered. Kojima himself has remained coy about the game’s content — its…

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is fondly remembered as one of the best first person shooter titles ever made. One of the first examples of the series taking its single player campaign into full-blown Hollywood blockbuster territory, it also featured a multiplayer component that ranks among the series best. It spawned two popular sequels…

Despite having 45 years of history, revisions and different rulesets under its belt, getting into Dungeons & Dragons remains intimidating for many. Between the dense rulebooks and multifaceted character sheets, on-boarding new players has ever been the game’s most significant hurdle. It’s not a great look when accessing The Fun Part of your game means…

So you want to go to E3 but it’s in Los Angeles and you are very poor. Welcome to club, friend. Good news for you though, you can get a little taste of it for not very many dollarydoos at all! Xbox ANZ are holding GrE3n Carpet events at theatres around Australia and New Zealand….

Critical Role cannot be stopped. The popular Dungeons & Dragons live stream, an improvised fantasy novel played weekly by a group of veteran voice actors, is on an enviable run. Following their record-breaking US$11,385,449 (AUD$16,501,500) animated series Kickstarter, Critical Role has returned to its roots, raising money for charity with a pledge drive supporting Red…

Total War: Three Kingdoms steeps Creative Assembly’s venerable strategy franchise in Chinese history for the first time in its nearly 20 year run. Its campaign broadly encompasses the story known as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a period when the Han Dynasty was on the wane, hurling the entire country into a bloody, 60-year…

Rage 2 feels like two different games, both of them quite good, shoved inelegantly up against one another. As sales pitches go, it has a great one — Rage 2 is an open-world action game by Avalanche Studios with the meaty combat of first-person shooter royalty id Software. But there’s a strange lack of mechanical…

BIGSOUND Tech, the popular music conference’s tech showcase is returning in 2019, bringing with it the opportunity for entrepeneurs to strut their stuff and learn from the best and brightest minds in both the tech and music industries. Part conference, part networking event, part festival BIGSOUND Tech puts entrepeneurs with big ideas in front of…

PlayStation’s second State of Play video update was broadcast this morning, a short-and-sweet affair compared to last month’s inaugural episode. Sony used their fifteen minutes to hit on title expansions, smaller titles and a couple of high profile remasters. Opening with Monster Hunter World’s new expansion Iceborne, the broadcast quickly moved through a few cute…

Celebrated symphonic video game concert Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy will head to Melbourne this August for a single magical performance. Featuring music from numerous Final Fantasy games by long-time series composers Nobuo Uematsu and Yoko Shimomura, with music direction by Grammy-winning artist and conductor Arnie Roth, this will be a really special night…

On the list of most ridiculous things that have ever happened to me, being flown to the other side of the world to play a video game for an hour and a half may take the cake. On Monday, 2K Games ANZ flew a small pack of journos and influencers to Los Angeles to be…

**Updated 27/4/19** Due to an error with our form keeping folks from entering the competition, we’ll be running the Moto G7 competition for the next week! Entries now close on Friday, 3 May at 6pm AEST. Get your entries in now! How’s your mobile doing? Feels like you’ve been running with that cracked screen for…

I’m really upset that I’ve slept on the Anno series for so long. Developed by The Settlers team Blue Byte, Anno 1800 is a charming, clever, complex civ builder that recalls classics of the genre like Caesar or Pharaoh. There’s an adherence to the concept of balance in Anno, a core tenet of its design that…

Arguably the best title in the series long history, and inarguably its most popular entry, Final Fantasy VII has never been far from the gaming popular consciousness since its release in 1997. It was the first time Squaresoft (now Square Enix) had been able to truly convey every part of the world they’d created. Previous…

You wouldn’t think it’d be hard work for Australian teams to make an appearance at a global esports event held on their home turf, but you’d be surprised. The Sydney group stage of the Intel Extreme Masters Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition lands at Qudos Bank Arena next month, bringing with it some of the most…

The last time I properly played the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy was on the Nintendo DS Lite. It was a visual novel that felt at home on the handheld, an exciting courtroom drama that was never held back by the hardware it was on. Funnily enough, though those DS versions were the first…

I wasn’t expecting to like Microsoft’s Surface Headphones as much as I did. Not a brand known for producing premium tier headphones, the Surface Headphones are the apparent result of watching makers operating in the same space and careful note taking. The first thing you’ll notice about the Surface Headphones is how clean the design…

Edifier’s S3000 Pro home speakers are a bit of a wonder. They’re wireless, meaning, provided there’s an available power point, they can be placed just about anywhere you like in any given room and provide resonant, warm sound. The units themselves have been created in the now typical Edifier style. Edifier often leans toward more…

Sony are just really good at making TV’s. That’s the takeaway from every Sony TV review I’ve ever conducted. The A9F, one of the company’s more recent OLED offerings, is a great example of this. It takes its technical cues from last year’s A8F and cherry-picks the best aesthetic choices from the premium A1 line….

There were a lot of raised eyebrows going around when PlayStation announced late last year that they’d be pulling out of E3 2019. PlayStation’s departure from the show floor and the cancellation of their annual press conference meant that competitor Microsoft would be the last of The Big Three hardware makers to have a press…

Borderlands 3 has been in development at Gearbox Software for five years at two different studios. It has become the worst kept secret in the video game industry. Today, it finally gets its moment to shine and Gearbox gets to stop sidestepping the question everytime they’re asked about its existence. During the company’s hour-long PAX…