Video Games

Games Review: Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions (Nintendo 3DS) is well worth the remaster

Often to their detriment, Nintendo are big fans of the remaster, pulling games from the past and updating them for a new generation seemingly to fill a release schedule plagued by a lack of strong, ongoing third-party relationships. I don’t buy into it half the time, but things are a bit different with Mario &…

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Games Review: Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017): The good and pure game we need right now

Super Mario Odyssey is the good and pure video game that this awful world needs right now. It is the kind of game that gives you hope for the form. It reminds you that AAA games can still be more than pretty window dressing for a microtransaction storefront. That they can actually still be fun. It’s a…

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Games Review: The Evil Within 2 (PS4, 2017): Great survival horror that fights through its flaws

The Evil Within 2 is an interesting sequel of sorts. If falls into a weird mix of fun, frustrating, wonderfully weird and scary all at the same time. While it’s not a bad game by any means, but for every positive, there’s a negative. Presenting players with a sequel that attempts to carry on an…

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Games Review: Fire Emblem Warriors (Switch, 2017): A great idea in theory

Fire Emblem Warriors attempts to mash up the long-running series of turn-based tactical RPGs with Koei Tecmo’s equally venerable Dynasty Warriors. On paper, this seems like a novel idea — these are two properties that seem like they’d be a good fit. In practice, Fire Emblem Warriors is the video game equivalent of swigging orange juice after brushing your…

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Games Review: Gran Turismo Sport (PS4, 2017): A great racing sim, but fails to take first place

Gran Turismo Sport is one of the most interesting racing titles I’ve played in years. This is for many different reasons, some good, and some surprisingly bad. While it has its rough edges, rest assured this is most definitely a great game with a ton of things to love — but dated and bland ideas…

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Xbox is opening a pop up gaming hotel in Sydney because, sure, why not

Xbox Australia and Eventbrite are opening a pop up gaming hotel in Sydney that will allow guests a chance to go hands on with the new Xbox One X console ahead of launch. Feel like a sleep over?

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Win one of 10 virtual tickets to BlizzCon 2017!

For fans of Blizzard Entertainment titles like Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and Hearthstone, there’s no bigger date than BlizzCon. But for Australian fans, BlizzCon 2017’s home at the Anaheim Convention Centre in Los Angeles is a pretty epic trip to make. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Blizzard ANZ to give away 10 Virtual…

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Games Review: WWE 2K18: (PS4, 2017) throws a folding chair in the face of good design

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and WWE 2K games. As each year rolls around, gamers are presented with yet another WWE game with a fresh lick of paint, a new set of moves and a couple of newer wrestlers here and there. Given the trend, you’d expect 2K would pull out all…

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Big Ant’s Ashes Cricket to include women’s teams, releases first screens

Melbourne developer Big Ant are no strangers to including women’s teams in their cricket titles.  Last year’s Don Bradman Cricket 17 also featured women’s cricket in prominent modes and the developer’s newest title, Ashes Cricket, is doing the same. Ashes Cricket will also go the extra step of authentically modelling popular, real world female players in the same level of…

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“Come and fu*kin’ get me, you fascist Nazi pigs.” The Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus launch trailer is here

The marketing for Bethesda’s Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has been among the year’s absolute best. After finding itself in the peculiar position of having to defend its core tenet of “Fuck Nazis” in a world where white nationalists rally in the open, the game has steered aggressively into any and all online resistance. It’s final trailer ahead…

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The Humble Down Under Bundle gets you a ton of Aussie indies for dirt cheap

Humble Bundle has struck again. The charity fundraising site’s latest video game bundle highlights some of Australia’s best independently made video games. The asking price? Next to nothing.

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EA shutters Visceral Games, in-development Star Wars title delayed indefinitely

Electronic Arts have closed the doors on in-house developer Visceral Games. The publisher announced the closure in a blog post from executive vice president Patrick Söderlund, along with the news that they would be making rather sweeping changes to Visceral’s still unnamed Star Wars adventure game. 

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Games Review: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Xbox One, 2017) is a good idea pulled in too many different directions

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a game suffering an identity crisis. It knows what it wants to be and makes genuinely big strides in that direction, but it’s hampered by what seems to be publisher interference. Even at the surface level, it feels like a case study for the growing divide in AAA between developer…

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Games Review: South Park: The Fractured But Whole (PS4, 2017) is a hilariously addictive RPG adventure

When you first jump into South Park: The Fractured But Whole, you pick up from where the last game, The Stick of Truth, and the last episode of the TV series (Season 21, Episode 4 “Franchise Prequel”), leave off. The boys have stopped playing a Lord of the Rings style quest and are now building their own…

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EB Expo’s return to the Gold Coast is a successful one

This weekend saw the EB Expo return to its roots, overtaking the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre for the first time in five years. It was, by all accounts, a successful homecoming.

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The PAX Aus 2017 timetable is now live, plan your weekend accordingly

It’s the most magical time of the year, and I’m not talking about Halloween. PAX Aus 2017 approaches and the full panel and event schedule has gone live this morning. Time to start planning your PAX weekend.

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Hands On: Assassin’s Creed Origins (Xbox One X, 2017) feels like a game ready to try new things

As I write this, Assassin’s Creed Origins releases in exactly one month from today. It is, quite rightly, the subject of a bit of scrutiny from fans and detractors of the series alike. The first title to break with the series’ long running annual release pattern in quite a while, Origins has a lot of questions to answer….

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Watch this trailer for a game in which you play as an arsehole goose immediately

Australian indie developer House House (Push Me, Pull You) dropped a trailer on Monday for their next title, an untitled honk-em-up in which you play a goose that terrorises a village garden.

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Games Review: Forza Motorsport 7 (Xbox One, 2017) changes the formula, but still finishes first

Given that it was built from the ground up to be a showcase for the Xbox One X console launching in November, it feels a bit weird to be reviewing Forza Motorsport 7 on my Day One launch edition Xbox One. Racing games have been enlisted as gorgeous tech demo for fresh hardware, don’t go in thinking the…

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Turtle Beach’s new Stealth series headsets actually pretty easy to find in the wild

Gaming peripheral manufacturer Turtle Beach launched a new series of wireless headsets this week. The Stealth 600 and Stealth 700 are bit of a funny combo, aiming to please those who value style and cord cutting ease of use and the high-end customer looking for excellent positional sound.

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Look at these killer tees that came out of that Nintendo & Uniqlo collab

Popular Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo is bringing their range of Nintendo-themed tees to Australian shores this week. The designs are pulled from the UTGP2017  global t-shirt design competition, were handpicked by Nintendo and video game royalty Shigeru Miyamoto and now you can get them if you want them.

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The Xbox Onesie is back and we will do whatever it takes to get one

Love it or hate it, the single most important Australian contribution to the Xbox family this side of Forza Horizon 3, the Xbox Onesie, is coming back. The new garment, with an updated design, is set to drop just days after the release of Forza Motorsport 7.

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Games Hands On: Gran Turismo Sport is actually way more enjoyable than I expected

Hot off the heels of a hands on with Forza Motorsport 7, the most visible racing series in recent memory, I went into my preview session with Gran Turismo Sport wondering if the elder statesman of racing games could make an impression given its effusive competition. It did, and what’s more, I realised I’d missed GT a little.

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Our weekend with the SNES Classic Mini

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Mini released around the world over the weekend to rapturous applause from longtime SNES devotees, packing a ton of nostalgia into an extremely small package. I missed out on a first round pre-order on the device, and we were not able to obtain a unit for review from Nintendo…

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Games Review: Cuphead (Xbox One, 2017) isn’t as hard as you think. It’s still pretty hard though.

By now you’ve almost certainly heard about Cuphead and its pronounced level of difficulty so let’s begin this review with a declaration: Cuphead is hard. But it’s also way less hard than you might think it is. Having just spent the weekend with the SNES Mini and being reminded of what true old school game design was like,…

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Games Review: Total War: Warhammer 2 (PC, 2017) is as close to perfect as the series has ever been

The next time you have a creative project that you feel isn’t coming together quickly enough, I want you to remember that it took Creative Assembly 20 years of rigourous experimentation, honing the things that worked and pruning back the things that didn’t, to get their Total War series to the point where it’s damned near…

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Games Review: NHL 18 (PS4, 2017) is a solid sim that is content to rest on its laurels

NHL 18 wants to be a mirror to this year’s Stanley Cup — no bells, no whistles, no brawls or bullshit, just great skillful hockey. That’s what it wants, and it’s a noble goal, but sadly the puck never quite finds the back of the net.

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Games Review: Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (Switch, 2017) is one of the Switch’s better ports

Another day, another port for Nintendo Switch, but that’s ok, we were all worried we wouldn’t be getting what Nintendo promised us, a more mainstream console with third-party support. We got it, and here’s another solid example of their new ethos — Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2!

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Games Review: NBA 2K18 retains its crown as the king of basketball simulation

The NBA 2k series has dominated the basketball simulator landscape for about a decade now and, with NBA 2K18 finally on our shelves, it’s safe to say that this series still holds the crown. Quite simply, this is the best NBA game you can play right now. Coming up against the NBA Live series for the first…

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PlayStation Australia is giving away four IRL Platinum Trophies, but you’ll have to work for them

Sony Interactive Entertainment Australia is kicking off a new competition called PlayStation Plus Platinum Hunters. The goal is for players to unlock every trophy within four specific games.

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