I’ve never played an Animal Crossing game before. This might make me a terrible Nintendo fan. My curiosity was piqued by Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the lead-up to its launch. It seemed to offer something calming and unchallenging in a global moment of hardship and complexity. Fans have now had over two weeks to…
A remake of Resident Evil 3 was only a matter of time. After Resident Evil 2′s critical and commercial success, it made sense for Capcom to continue their hot streak. And so, only a year later, it’s here. Resident Evil 3 proves the franchise is alive and thriving, creatively reimagining and modernising older titles in its…
Two games I never finished have been repackaged, remastered and released as a solid double package. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of my brief time with both Bayonetta (2009) and Vanquish (2010) but it was at a point in my life when video games ebbed out of my radar for a…
Let me preface this review with an admission: despite my love for Pokémon, I’ve never played any of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games before. Rescue Team DX is a remake that combines the DS titles Rescue Team Red and Rescue Team Blue into a single package. Since I’ve not played them, it allowed me to go into…
The Division 2 launched to critical acclaim, and for good reason. Everything had been altered, lifted and improved, and as a result, held me in its grasp for longer than I’d like to admit. But a few months later, I had left The Division 2 behind. Small incremental updates failed to shake up the formula…
MLB The Show has stood for many years as Sony’s simulated answer to America’s pass time. It is with MLB The Show 20 that developer SIE San Diego Studio has lived up to this statement once again, producing one of the most accurate, thorough and varied iterations of the franchise to date. While baseball isn’t necessarily…
If 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare brought things back to basics with boots on the ground combat, Call of Duty: Warzone brings things back into the mainstream, following the trend of recent battle royale experiences. Merging the fast and fluid gunplay of Modern Warfare with the more tactical drawn out nature of a battle…
Doom Eternal is a lot of fun. It’s a game that looks directly to the wildly popular Doom 2016 for its cues on just about everything. It introduces a suite of new mechanics that give combat greater depth. It asks you to face your enemies head-on and to never shy away from the challenge. Rip….
I remember the first time I saw the trailer for One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows. How is this ever going to work as a video game? I thought. Surely a game that features a hero able to defeat any enemy with a single punch would make for a pretty boring game. For the most…
For a hundred dollar gaming headset, the Turtle Beach Ear Force Recon 200 represents pretty solid value for money. I’ve had an up-and-down experience with Turtle Beach’s headsets over the years but with the Recon 200, it looks like it may have turned over a new leaf. Strong hold The moment you put the Recon…
My first experience with Hunt: Showdown sent shivers up my spine. Navigating a Louisiana bayou in search of a giant spider, the trail led me to an abandoned factory. Upon entering, it was clear; I had found my target. Cobwebs covered the walls and walkways, crunching underfoot as I scoured every inch of the place….
It’s safe to say Media Molecule took its time while it worked on its latest creative extravaganza, Dreams. After a reveal that seems like forever ago now, Dreams was long in incubation. Following a lengthy beta period, Dreams is finally available. Boy was it worth the wait. So much of the conversation around Dreams centered…
The Yakuza Remastered Collection is a watershed moment for Japan’s favourite video game crime drama. 15 years ago, you might never have heard of the Yakuza series. Today, it is beloved. The series has enjoyed a recent resurgence — a prequel in Yakuza Zero, remakes in Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2, a new game…
Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl is another RPG developed by Level-5 (developers of the Layton series). Originally released in Japan in April of last year, Snack World is now available for the rest of the world to enjoy. Why “Gold”? Well, because this worldwide release features all the DLCs available from the Japanese version. You…
In Journey to the Savage Planet, you are an explorer employed by Kindred Aerospace, the galaxy’s the 4th best interstellar exploration company. Your task is to explore the unknown planet ARY-26 in the hope that it can sustain human life. Theoretically, the job is a milk run. In practice, not that simple. A Sudden Stop…
You may have seen a lot of online chatter about Warcraft 3 Reforged lately. If you’re one of the nearly 27,000 people who downvoted the game on Metacritic, you will almost certainly not agree with the content of this review. Because here’s the thing: Warcraft 3 Reforged simply isn’t all that bad. Are there some…
Surviving a zombie apocalypse requires wit, intelligence, speed and strength. I know these things because I have survived many an undead doomsday scenario. Left 4 Dead, Dead Island, The House of the Dead, Deadrising, Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Telltale’s The Walking Dead, and – still my favourite – Dying Light (which gets extra…
If you’ve tried to play Kingdom Hearts III in the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed a pretty sizeable update to the game in the form of 1.09. It’s filled with some of the biggest updates the game has seen since its release in 2019. And it also paves the way for the…
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath first released back in 2005 on the original Xbox. Released in what was then the late-January dead zone, Stranger’s Wrath was critically adored but sank commercially when Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords launched around a fortnight later. I was one of the few that bought Stranger’s…
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is yet another Wii U game making its way to the Nintendo Switch. When the original Tokyo Mirage Sessions made its debut on the Wii U, it didn’t exactly make much of a splash. Like so many titles to launch on the Wii U, it languished in relative obscurity. Now,…
Nintendo has leaned heavily on nostalgia to make the Switch one of their most successful systems to date. There’s nothing wrong with that, and for the most part it has worked remarkably well. Ports and remakes have been leading the pack, tiding us over while new IP is few and far between. Yes, it can…
Eberron is one of Dungeons & Dragons greatest settings. A world still sifting through the wreckage of a recent global war, a place where sorcery and ambition have created technological marvels. The second major campaign setting for D&D 5th Edition is a palate cleanser, a very different flavour to the game’s traditional home in the…
Understandably, some fans were upset when it was announced that Pokémon Sword and Shield would severely limit which Pokémon could be caught across all eight generations. It was dubbed “dexit” (perhaps to keep with the UK theme), decried online (ad nauseam), and even led to a few grown adults crossing their arms, stomping their precious…
The WD Black P10 Game Drive is a pretty tight little piece of kit. It understands that game file sizes are larger than ever and growing as a new hardware generation looms. You can see this in real terms — models start at 2TB before hitting a monstrous 4TB and 5TB. The drive is USB…
The Need for Speed franchise is much as a staple of the racing genre as any other. From the high octane thrills of Hot Pursuit, to the halcyon days of Underground, and the epic, white-knuckle police chases of the highly regarded Most Wanted. A few rocky and undercooked entries have plagued the series in recent…
The Layton series played a big part in my schooling years. Little ol’ me and my Nintendo DS, absolutely stoked to have this series in hand. If there was any gaming franchise that kept my mind alight, these were it, thanks to all its puzzles. There are now seven games in the Layton series. This…
I don’t really know how to review a game like Death Stranding. Try as I might to collect my thoughts for review, it seems designed to defy critical appraisal at every turn. This may make it a work of high and complex art, a kind of long-form interactive Rorschach test, but I don’t know that…
Like the galaxy, the library of Star Wars video games is incredibly vast. As a huge Star Wars fan, every new experience becomes an automatic purchase, the hope that each new title will be better than the last. A true digital representation of the Star Wars universe in the palm of my hands. While some…
For some time now, there’s been a growing sense that Bethesda has lost the thread of what made The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series’ so great. If you’ve been feeling the same way, it’s likely that The Outer Worlds will be game you’ve been hoping they would make. Bethesda didn’t make it, but it sure feels…
How on earth has been four years since the last Olympic Games? Mario and Sonic can’t believe it either apparently, reigniting their generations-long blood fued in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. Previous titles in this series have been enjoyable, if forgettable, party games, a series of mini-games based on numerous Olympic…
