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…
Blood & Truth is the game that PlayStation VR sorely needed. For a long time, the peripheral has been seen solely as a gimmick, and been defined by self-contained ‘experiences’ rather than meaty, involving stories. You can become Batman, save a little robot army, play soccer with your head — but at the end of…
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…
I’ll be the first to admit it, I’ve never played a game like Observation before. While games of this nature have great examples in Night Trap and Manhunt, both of which use surveillance cameras as a narrative device to push the story forward, the introduction of an AI-based character is a wholly original way to tell…
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…
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is pretty unimpressive to look at. After all, when you’re retooling an already murky shooter from 2012, there’s only so much you can do to improve things. Thankfully, Sniper Elite V2‘s gameplay surpasses its muddy visuals and pushes them to the wayside because looks don’t matter so much when you can…
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…
You don’t see video games based on the infamous Black Plague hitting store shelves every day. While it suffers from a few technical hiccups and some repetitive gameplay elements, A Plague Tale: Innocence is an example onfhow to games can approach grim historical periods in emotionally resonant ways. It casts the plague itself as backdrop…
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…
Final Fantasy XII is the latest in the iconic franchise to head to Nintendo Switch. This edition, The Zodiac Age, is an expanded version of an existing remaster localised for the first time in 2017 on the PlayStation 4. Like the majority of Final Fantasy remasters, ports and what-have-yous, the game looks slick, plays smoothly and…
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…
Days Gone left me about as conflicted as I’ve ever been while reviewing a game. The past week has been a battle of emotions and opinions, as it’s easy to spot the overused tropes at this point in the lifespan of the zombie genre. However, a certain level of polish and attention to detail, an…
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…
With a rich, 27-year history to tap into, NetherRealm Studios has plenty to play around with for Mortal Kombat 11, the latest title in one of gaming’s most time-honoured fighting franchises. And they most certainly do not hold back, making clear efforts to best 2015’s Mortal Kombat X, which following release was considered one of…
All Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez wants is to be happy. With an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, her life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows – but perhaps a bit of glitter will solve her problems. Little Misfortune is the newest game from Swedish studio Killmonday Games, developer of one of our favourite creepy point-and-click adventures,…
First things first: World War Z wasn’t that bad of a movie. Released in a time when the undead genre had reached peak saturation, resurrecting the license with a worthy yet flawed video game adaptation a full six years later seems a strange move to say the least. That this IP resurrection is hitting shelves…
Nintendo Switch has had a brilliant run of ports to date, with most of them thoughtfully refined to fit onto the docked/portable hybrid system; Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is no exception. Though Capcom’s action-RPG has been re-released several times in the past, it’s position in the world of action-RPGs remains firmly as an underdog –…
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…
Final Fantasy X is often spoken of in the same breath as the phrase, ‘the best game of all time.’ Released in 2001, it was the first Final Fantasy title to receive a sequel, and both games have since been remastered for new audiences in the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster bundle. Originally released for…
Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown is the future of tabletop storytelling. It’s also one of the few games I’ve played lately that enthralled me so much I lost time. Coming from Melbourne studio Tin Man Games, this is just one in a long line of brilliant Australian games proving the depth and ingenuity of…
Here at the AU, we love a good Aussie game, and Table of Tales is one of the shiniest and newest of the bunch. Developed by Melbourne studio, Tin Man Games, the game puts you in the shoes of a virtual reality tabletop adventurer as you discover a magical, living board game in your Aunt’s attic. The game will…
My Time At Portia is a solid and inoffensive little farm sim. It has all the usual trappings of the genre – travelling to a new city, taking over a farm, building some things, farming other things. Remarkable moments are few and far between, and that’s okay too. Sometimes, a game can just be a…
They say you always remember your first time, but the original Borderlands was determined to prove this wrong. With a muted colour palette, confusing map system and generic post-apocalyptic worlds, it was good – but not memorable. Borderlands GOTY Edition is memorable! The original game has been given a complete facelift with this remaster, and…
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…
Mars Underground is a fascinating and fantastic tale from Canberra-based developers Moloch Media. The first time I saw the game was at PAX AUS 2018, but in the hub-bub of the show floor, it was difficult to give it the time it deserved. I’m glad I was able to revisit Mars Underground so many months…
Entering the world of Hob is a magical experience. With no dialogue, a minimalist soundtrack and a towering, robotic companion as your only companion, the world is beautiful – but empty. The wind whistles through the grass, trees sway and the earth breathes, but you appear to be the only humanoid around. It’s a world…
I was sceptical going into Space Junkies. VR, I’ve found, can be hit-and-miss, and nearly every title I’ve played has led to dizzy spells and nausea. Not only that, but this was a title set in the cold vacuum of space with rockets, guns and jetpacks. If anything was going to cause me problems, it…
