Video Games

It only took me a little over two hours to knock The Station over but I’m stilling idly thinking about it whenever I’ve nothing else to occupy my brain. For a game this short, there’s a surprising amount to unpack once the credits have rolled. It’s not perfect — the edges are rough like shark’s…

SXSW Gaming is a relative newcomer to the sprawling media show-and-tell that is the annual South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. A work in progress, the SXSW Gaming is out to prove in 2018 that it can compete with other gaming trade shows, starting with its lastest tournament and panel lineup update.

Those who grew up in the 80’s and early 90’s will remember the heady days of the video game arcade. Magical places full of light and noise and games you couldn’t play anywhere else. Going to the movies meant visiting the arcade next door, and I would beeline for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet. Streets…

Onrush is looking like one of the year’s most entertaining arcade racers. The new trailer spots everything you could possibly want in a destruction derby style racer — crashes, explosions, crazy stunts and people on rocket powered motorbikes.

PAX Australia is returning to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in 2018. The show’s organisers have confirmed October show dates for this year’s event via the official PAX Aus Facebook and Twitter.

Gfinity Esports Australia have announced the first two clubs to join their Gfinity Elite Series Australia City league. The newly minted Sydney Chiefs and Melbourne Avant will move the long-running argument over which of Australia’s two largest cities reigns supreme into the esports arena. It’s Melbourne though. Everything’s better here. Obviously.

Earlier this month we saw the rather surprising news that Nintendo was finally allowing their mascot Mario to make the trip back to the big screen for the first time since the disastrous 1992 Super Mario Bros. film. Not to be outdone, Sega have reminded everyone that their own 16-bit-era mascot Sonic the Hedgehog is…

The long-awaited Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt content drop for Assassin’s Creed Origins will arrive tomorrow. The update bringing with it a feature that many players have asked for since the series inception — the ability to learn more about the game’s painstakingly recreated Ancient Egyptian history using its interactive setting.

It’s not often that a game leaves me open mouthed in awe at its beauty — games like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Witcher III have elicited a smaller, less impressive inhale, but Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom absolutely took my breath away. The anime style of the game is simply phenomenal, and travelling…

With March now looming in the middle distance, Xbox have announced the titles that will be going free across their network this month and it follows a similar trend to last month — something for the grown ups and something for the kids.

Broadly speaking, whenever a game receives an expansion pack, they tend to take that word”expansion” rather literally. Typically what they bring to the table is more of everything you could already do in the base game. More units, more characters, more places to visit, things to do. Civilization expansions take a very different approach. They…

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is a game about cause and effect – the consequences of fate, and how the smallest decisions can change an entire history. In Radiant Historia, the kingdom of Vainqueur is under siege on all sides. Tensions are rising in the cities of Alistel and Granorg, and a mysterious force known as…

Kingdom Come: Deliverance attempts to give players a realistic medieval action-RPG, complete with a dense and diverse open world. Being heavily based on historical fact, the experience is mostly aimed at history buffs, but can also be enjoyed by casual fans thanks to its capable combat mechanics.

Australian and New Zealand players who think they’ve got what it takes to play in the Overwatch League can put their skills to the test when the Overwatch Contenders league touches down locally next month.

The Soul Calibur series makes its long awaited return in 2018, after a six-year layoff. Soul Calibur V featured brilliant gameplay, and an all-star cast, and included fan favourite Assassin’s Creed character Ezio Auditore – joining a long line of guest appearances from the likes of Heihachi Mishima, Darth Vader, Spawn, Link and Kratos. Known…

With the Overwatch Puppy Rumble now in full swing, it seems like everyone’s getting in on the Lunar New Year and Year of the Dog shenanigans. Xbox are the latest to board the doggos-in-cosplay train and you’ve got to see what they’ve come up with. I mean, its dogs dressed up like video game characters….

With Stage 2 of the Overwatch League’s inaugural season set to begin next week, Blizzard have announced a few changes to their broadcast lineup stemming from viewer feedback across Stage 1. This means a few timeslots are going to change. What does that mean for you, ANZ viewer?

Boy, Bayonetta 2 is … a lot, isn’t it? There’s so much going on with this game that I barely know where to start talking about it. Maybe let’s start with the fact that its been re-released on the Nintendo Switch and go from there.

It’s hard to imagine that Bayonetta was released nearly 10 years-ago now and the apparently superior sequel Bayonetta 2 was 4 years ago! With the newly released Switch port arriving this month, for the most part, it honestly feels like it was made for it today, it just ages well and for a guy that…

The Inpatient for PlayStation VR is a psychological horror game designed by Supermassive Games, who were the minds behind the awesome PS4 exclusive Until Dawn and is set 60 years before that aforementioned title. Those merits alone will sell the game to VR enthusiasts and horror buffs such as myself. After the VR games Resident Evil…

Trying to market Account + VR would be like trying to drag a pizza delivery man away from dancing on the side of the road and showing him the power of social media advertising. It’s pointless, the only thing that can help advertise this wonderful, engaging, hilarious adult experience is to just yell at people…

You ever sit down with a game, settle in with it, familiarise yourself with the controls and prepare for the inevitable hook that will lead you on your quest? My experience with Fe was fine right up until the part where the hook was supposed to arrive. It never did. Forty minutes after booting the…

Amongst the litany of genre revivals going on in the indie games space right now, there’s one or two that are appearing more than others — Metroidvanias and ultra-hard, skill-centric platformers. Both are born of genres with audiences long-starved starved for content, and it means that interest is high. But, if I may, there’s a…

With Stage 1 of the Overwatch League now complete, and with trades and player buys now in full swing ahead of Stage 2’s launch next week, we’re starting to see squads announce the newest additions to their lineups. The Shanghai Dragons are leading the Stage 2 charge with the signing of the OWL’s first female…

By now its fairly common knowledge that Rare’s upcoming multiplayer pirate title Sea of Thieves would be launching on Xbox One and Windows 10. The question for PC owners after seeing the game in action during the recent beta, particularly those on lower spec machines, was “can my machine ever hope to run this thing?”…

For independent game devs in Sydney, the dream of having a version of Melbourne’s The Arcade to call their own is still a pipedream. Be that as it may, The Studio Incubator, a communal media work space opening in March, might be the thing that fills the gap until such a place arrives.

Lost Sphear has finally been released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC. A successor of sorts to developer Tokyo RPG Factory’s fantastic I Am Setsuna, while it’s not all bad, its hard not to feel like Lost Sphear has lost the things that made Setsuna special.

Review enough games for a living and eventually you’ll come across one that feels like it has everything going for it — looks, concept, the lot. The Deer God falls squarely into this category. On paper, it has the makings of an indie darling. In execution, it is a muddled little game that doesn’t seem…

Independent game developers in Australia, particularly those at the beginning of their careers, find themselves stuck for ways to connect and network. In a games industry as small and tight-knit as Australia’s, connections are the best step a person can take toward landing a job in the local dev scene. Networking events are a semi-regular…

One of the harder asks in this gig is playing a hundred hour RPG for a preview piece. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, like its predecessor and the historic Black Isle Studios RPGs that are its inspiration, is a deep and multifaceted creature which makes diving in without a tutorial a bit daunting. What I…