If I know one thing, it’s that the Far Cry series has always found its beauty amongst the insanity. From highlights like Far Cry 3, it’s safe to say the series had morphed from a tropical survival experience into an insane holiday of blood, hallucinations and chaos. Far Cry: New Dawn stands as a worthy…
Now is as good a time as any for 4A Games’ Metro franchise to emerge from its dank subterranean setting and venture out into a terribly unforgiving post-apocalyptic Russia. It’s what series protagonist Artyom has strived for all these years after all, setting out on an ambitious adventure across harsh tundras, spooky desserts and mysterious…
I haven’t enjoyed any title in the Battle Royale genre before Apex Legends. Not one. To date, my firmly held opinion has been that BR is a multiplayer mode that has risen well above its station, lacking the substance required to be a genre unto itself. Apex Legends not only changed my opinion on Battle…
The Stillness of the Wind is a melancholy tale and one that frequently had me in tears, even if it was hard to articulate why. The premise is simple — you play as Talma, an old woman who lives on a farm. As the years have gone by, the people in Talma’s life have left…
There are only four good skateboarding video games, and the OlliOlli series are two of them.* Roll7’s OlliOlli and its follow-up OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood are side-scrolling skateboarding titles that are all about putting the sickest runs together and racking up massive score multipliers. Both games have a deceptively simple 2D look that belie…
Activision Blizzard has laid off 800 people, a total 8% of the company’s entire workforce after ~only~ making an extra $100 million in profit last year. As retrenched employees began to tweet that they were out of a job, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told shareholders the company had experienced a record year, raking in…
Astroneer has a lot in common with No Man’s Sky. It has a lot of the same ideas, the same goals, but its ambition is much smaller. This is in no way a bad thing. There’s less flying around the galaxy looking for planets and more spending time on planets, mining deep into their crust…
The day has finally arrived. Almost 14 years after Kingdom Hearts II was released to critical acclaim on the PS2, its long awaited follow up Kingdom Hearts III is here. But fans of the series — which melded the Final Fantasy and Disney universes a decade before the company acquired the Marvel Cinematic Universe —…
I really like HyperX’s keyboards. I’m on record as a fan of their gear. The thing is, I’ve really only had experience with their top-of-the-line mechanical boards. The HyperX Alloy Core RGB gaming keyboard is not one of these top-of-the-line boards. But just because it isn’t a mechanical board doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your…
There was a time when point-and-click adventures ruled the roost, with companies like LucasArts churning out hit after hit between Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. Since the 1980s, video game technologies have advanced unbelievably, opening up a diverse range of options for gameplay, allowing sprawling open world adventures…
Over the last week, I’ve been playing God Eater 3. It’s a snappy, mayhem-filled romp where you take down titanic beasts called Aragami with your team of fellow God Eaters. The game is filled with cool swords, cool guns and cool combat. One might say it just oozes cool. But, I’m not actually here to…
If you haven’t checked in on the original Tom Clancy’s The Division in a while, it might surprise you to know that that game is in the best shape of its life right now. Numerous development studios within Ubisoft, including lead developer Massive Entertainment and multiplayer specialist Ubisoft Annecy, have regularly added new content throughout…
It’s been 16 years since the release of Intelligent Systems’ Advance Wars 2, widely considered one of the greatest turn-based strategy titles ever made, and 11 years since Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (titled Days of Ruin in the US). The intervening period saw the popularity of Intelligent’s Fire Emblem series explode in the West, an unexpected turn…
Gamification in the tech industry is nothing new. Apps like Habitica have taken even the most mundane tasks like ticking items off a checklist and turned them into a role playing game in which you, personally, are the star. You might think that’s pretty full on, but hold on a sec because it gets way…
Pikuniku is an absurd, charming little game from the folks at Devolver Digital, and one that is absolutely fascinating. Styled after the whimsical platformer titles of the PS2 era like Loco Roco and Katamari Damacy, Pikuniku follows the struggles of a little red blob as he awakens in a strange land filled with shiny, happy…
Relationships are messy and fragile, and harsh words have consequences. Rainswept dives into this fragility wholeheartedly, and presents a grounded, if occasionally heavy-handed, tale about life, loss and the complications of love. Rainswept follows Detective Michael Stone as he investigates the seeming murder-suicide of a couple Chris and Diane. Their struggles mirror his own as…
I’ve had questions about Anthem ever since it was announced. It’s been about a year and a half since Anthem was first announced and my questions are finally getting some answers. While EA’s desire for an ongoing MMO shooter in the Destiny mould was understandable, it was the tapping of legendary RPG studio Bioware to create…
I’d been playing Far Cry New Dawn for about an hour when a dusty neuron in the back of my brain began to fire, two thoughts connecting in real time. New Dawn is a spin-off title in the Far Cry series, but is a direct sequel to 2018’s Far Cry 5. The cynical view of…
The following admission may be considered scandalous by Resident Evil devotees: My first experience with the series was when Resident Evil 2 was first ported to the Nintendo 64. It was no small feat getting the game to run on the N64, given the storage limitations presented by its cartridges. FMV cutscenes and large amounts…
Very few Nintendo DS games ever fulfilled the potential of the console’s unique dual screens, but one title came incredibly close. That title, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, has finally gotten the recognition it deserves with a brilliant new remaster for the Nintendo 3DS. Originally released in 2009, Bowser’s Inside Story is an RPG…
Gris is pretty special experience. It’s a game with a lot to say, but never actually says a word out loud. Instead, Gris uses its strident, beautiful art style to convey its every thought — linework, animation and colour all have a part to play in this story about finding your way back from a…
If you don’t own a Death Drive Mk II then who even are you? Don’t answer that question; one should not feel guilty if they haven’t heard of the latest gaming console to take the world by storm. That’s because the DDMKII is a fictitious, Black Mirror-esque beast of a machine that doesn’t exist; at…
It might be fair to call Days Gone the PS4 exclusive most of us kind of forgot about. PlayStation’s stellar year of exclusives in 2018, coupled with the decision to skip the end-of-year PlayStation Experience event, meant going a long while between trailers and announcements. It dropped off the radar a bit. But with the…
Ukrainian developer 4A Games have spent the last decade doggedly chasing the perfect adaptation of Metro, Dmitri Glukhovsky’s series of post-apocalyptic science fiction novels. In Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light, 4A gave it everything they had, attempting to execute on their vision with the tools and funding at their disposal. They met with differing degrees of success but…
Since its announcement at The Game Awards late last year, fans have been waiting for a look at Mortal Kombat 11 in action. This morning’s reveal livestream dropped a raft of new trailers for the NetherRealm Studios fighter, all focused on gameplay and characters. Following on from 2015’s Mortal Kombat X, MK11 introduces a time travel…
When we think about game design that could be considered “timeless,” the classic Super Mario Bros formula still leaps readily to mind. 34 years after its first appearance on the NES, Shigeru Miyamoto’s original push-forward platformer design remains as compelling as its ever been. New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe only proves this further, taking…
In mid-November 2018, popular Overwatch streamer and former pro player Brandon “Seagull” Larned posted a video to his YouTube channel titled The State of Overwatch. In it, Seagull breaks down a number of criticisms of Overwatch as a game at present. He takes issue with the state of the game’s ongoing GOATS Composition meta and the abundance…
Margaret Court Arena will play host to a massive Fortnite tournament for the second time in the space of six months. The Australian Open, the nation’s biggest and popular tennis event, is running on a pair of tournaments, the combined prize pool of which comes to $500,000. The first 500 players to register on the…
Choosing your favourite game of the year is hard. We’ve done it every year since we founded The AU Review’s games section in 2014, and it never gets any easier. In 2018, we played so many incredible games that it became impossible to list and number every last one of them, so we opted not…
I’ve been looking everywhere for what might be good gaming merchandise. I’ve trawled through official sites, brick-and-mortar stores and even outlets like Red Bubble. I have to admit, there’s not a whole lot of variety across all three of these, and what’s there is usually not that good, covered in brands or weird quotes or…
