When the blue shell hits, please try not to have a meltdown in public. Mario Kart Tour, the latest entry in the storied racing franchise, is coming to iOS and Android mobiles in September. The game seeks to provide a complete Mario Kart experience for your mobile with the iconic tracks, items and Nintendo racers…
Control had me scratching my head in the lead up to its release. Nothing I saw about its main character, its world or its premise engaged or excited me. I can safely say that I have never been more glad to be proven wrong. Control puts players in the shoes of Jesse Faden, a young…
Boy, Nintendo sure have been dropping high profile titles like there’s no tomorrow. It wasn’t that long ago that we got our hands on Fire Emblem: Three Houses and here now we have Astral Chain. This Switch-exclusive got its hooks in early, keeping me from sleeping on a 12-hour flight and some subsequent nights after….
Rad marks another genre turn for developer Double Fine, the studio behind classics like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango and Broken Age. Inkeeping with Double Fine studio lead Tim Schafer‘s abstract sense of humour, Rad is an imaginitive, colourful and wonderfully wacky rogue-like dungeon crawler. Bursting with colour and character, Rad might not be the best game…
Fans of Gears 5 will treated to a pretty special night in Melbourne next week when Gears Ink kicks off in Docklands. The one night only Gears Ink pop up event will be hitting LA, London, Berlin, Paris, Mexico City and Melbourne throughout September. Melbourne’s turn is on Thursday, September 5 from 7pm-10pm. The event,…
After suffering something of a false start at its cinematic-only E3 reveal in June, Marvel’s Avengers has finally pulled back the curtain with a lengthy look at gameplay. The trailer clocks in at just shy of 20 minutes, and focuses on what appears to be the early part of the game, beginning with Thor fighting…
Damsel is the debut title from Brisbane-based developer Screwtape Studios, and a that weilds is distaste for corporate culture like a cudjel. It’s a balletic, side-scrolling arcade shooter about a special agent on a mission to investigate Red Mist, a drink created by a corporation owned and run by literal, actual vampires. Damsel’s pulpy, comic…
This one feels like it’s been a long time coming. Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games have been acquired by Sony. The acquisition makes Insomniac a first-party PlayStation developer within Sony Worldwide Studios. Insomniac’s history with Sony goes back as far as the PlayStation 1. It’s a company responisble for numerous Sony exclusives…
The Coalition has used Gamescom 2019 to lift the curtain on the few remaining details surrounding Gears 5 ahead of its September 10 launch. One of the most vaunted aspects of its Gamescom appearance was the reveal of Horde, the return of a beloved multiplayer mode from earlier Gears of War games. The trailer promised the…
I never used to be the kind of person who was interested in collecting coloured or limited edition controllers, but that’s all changed in the last hardware generation. Both PlayStation and Xbox regularly release beautiful, stylish new controllers and every one of them demands I buy them immediately. Perfect example: look at these beautiful new…
Here’s a video game truism for you: Given a long enough timeline, all games in the Civilization tradition will eventually find their way into a sci-fi setting. The Age of Wonders series is no exception, using its fourth full instalment to trade high fantasy for science fantasy. This is not to suggest that it strays…
In early May, I was among the first in the world to play Borderlands 3 at the official gameplay reveal event in Los Angeles. That preview gave us access to two of the game’s four classes — the muscular Siren Amara and the cloak-and-dagger Operative Zane. We were promised then that we’d get to spend…
For the first few hours, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order feels very much of a time and place — specifically 2006, which was when the previous installment was released. My first impression was of a game that felt rather samey, and a touch clunky at times. Critically, and despite its 13 year hiatus,…
In the last few years, I’ve watched on as friends with happy, Super Nintendo-infused childhoods got to grips with the SNES Mini. The SNES Mini is a recreation of Nintendo’s legendary machine that is as elegant as it is functional — a curatorial showcase of its greatest titles, controllers that were made of the same…
Whatever the reason we had to wait so long to get this in Australia, I for one am just glad that it’s here and that it exists. Adelaide-based indie developers Team Cherry truly blessed the gaming community when they released Hollow Knight a few years ago, followed by a widely acclaimed roll-out on all current-gen…
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne feels like it’s got a lot it wants to do. It has the unenviable task of expanding and refining a game that is known for its high level of technical and mechanical complexity. Fans keep coming back to the series because they love that complexity. Thus a lot of fans are…
Another month, another bundle of kick-ass PS4 freebies from your buds at PlayStation. Following on from last month’s Horizon Chase Turbo and last-minute sub-in Detroit: Become Human, two new titles step up to the plate for August. Starting August 5, you’ll be jumping into WipEout Omega Collection and Sniper Elite 4. WipEout Omega Collection is…
Another month, another four-pack of free games for Xbox One owners. August tees up some of the Xbox One’s bigger releases for later this year and continues a thread from last month’s Games With Gold titles. You’ll be able to grab Gears of War 4 in its entirety, for the entire month of August, for…
Let’s face it. The release of Wolfenstein: Youngblood has been predictably depressing. Angry men whining that the game has a SJW agenda. Angry men whining that it’s putting politics in their gaming. Angry men just being, you know. Angry men. And 2019 is peak angry internet man season, let’s be real. Parcel out a gleaming…
PlayStation’s Winter Sale has begun, taking steep discounts — as much as 60% — off some of the PS4’s greatest and most popular games. If there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that gamers love a discount. Everything from 2019 new releases to platform exclusives and must-haves have been discounted. Instant classics and platform…
If you’re hype for Ubisoft’s forthcoming games lineup, you’re going to want to get along to The Ubisoft Experience, a travelling fan event coming to Sydney this September. The show is, at its heart, a charity drive for the R U OK organisation who promote suicide awareness and prevention in Australia. Tickets for entry will…
Fire Emblem: Three Houses is made up of so many narrative and mechanical moving parts that it feels like it should be collapsing under its own weight. Instead, like one of its steely tactical field commanders, it never wavers in its vision or its confidence in itself. A far cry from the Fire Emblem games…
My Friend Pedro plays almost exactly like an old Xbox game called Total Overdose, which is to say that it sits somewhere between Max Payne and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s a game about stylish murder, one that teaches you to look for ways to make the most of your carnage. It rewards effective play,…
F1 2019 is in many ways, still the best Formula 1 racing game on the planet. But in doing so, it slows down its revolutionary formula for an evolutionary approach. While it makes enough changes year-to-year for this to remain a stellar instalment, I can’t help but feel it already had perfected things a year…
The surrealistic horrors imagined by New England author H. P. Lovecraft have always bled into the open plans of fantasy, which is why the eccentric writer has long been such a heavy influence on the video game world. With survival-horror picking up massively in popularity, especially since The Last of Us, his indelible prints have…
I’m a huge fan of the fighting game genre. Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur. You name it, I love it. But Samurai Shodown, a venerable SNK franchise I had heard of but never played, had eluded me. Part reboot, part sequel, the latest entry in the long-running series (which reduces the title back…
July’s range of free titles in the Xbox Live Games with Gold program are a bit of a mixed bag — a pair of games considered era-defining master works within their genre, a cute, chaotic four-player multiplayer party game and also Meet the Robinsons, a game based on a Disney movie you’d forgotten about until…
It’s a very one-or-the-other month for PlayStation Plus subscription holders. July’s rotation of free games has been revealed and its sure to be polarising. Your titles are: Pro Evo Soccer 2019 and Horizon Chase Turbo. Some of you, those who don’t like sports games, are maybe feeling a bit deflated right now but we urge…
It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Crash Team Racing released on the original PlayStation, a game determined to set itself apart from genre titan Mario Kart. Thankfully, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled recaptures the experience of playing CTR again for the first time, bursting with flavour, variety and fun, and packed with…
You don’t appreciate how many different kinds of Mario levels there are until you try to make one of your own. Super Mario Maker 2 had only been running on my Switch for about fifteen minutes, unfettered latitude to design the greatest Super Mario Bros title ever made at my fingertips, and I could already…
