Reviews

The surrealistic horrors imagined by New England author H. P. Lovecraft have always bled into the open plans of fantasy, which is why the eccentric writer has long been such a heavy influence on the video game world. With survival-horror picking up massively in popularity, especially since The Last of Us, his indelible prints have…

I’m a huge fan of the fighting game genre. Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur. You name it, I love it. But Samurai Shodown, a venerable SNK franchise I had heard of but never played, had eluded me. Part reboot, part sequel, the latest entry in the long-running series (which reduces the title back…

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Crash Team Racing released on the original PlayStation, a game determined to set itself apart from genre titan Mario Kart. Thankfully, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled recaptures the experience of playing CTR again for the first time, bursting with flavour, variety and fun, and packed with…

You don’t appreciate how many different kinds of Mario levels there are until you try to make one of your own. Super Mario Maker 2 had only been running on my Switch for about fifteen minutes, unfettered latitude to design the greatest Super Mario Bros title ever made at my fingertips, and I could already…

After almost 15 years of games buried deep in the criminal psyche, the Yakuza series makes an abrupt pivot to the other side of the law in Judgment, a spin-off title about a worn-down private detective working the mean streets of Kamurocho. A Japanese crime thriller with a few action and RPG aspects thrown in…

Void Bastards is an independent space shooter produced by Blue Manchu, a studio based right here in Aus. While it borrows liberally from numerous science fiction games, it shares a great deal of conceptual space with roguelikes in the vein of FTL. Indeed, if one were so inclined, it would be easy to view Void…

Listen, if you haven’t played Crypt of the NecroDancer then I think you should remedy this right away. One of the most enjoyable and inventive roguelike titles released in the last five years, NecroDancer married rhythm games with dungeon delving in a way that hooks the player and won’t let them go. It borrowed the…

Persona Q2: The Cinema Labyrinth is a quirky little game, mixing the classic gameplay formula of Etrian Odyssey with Persona‘s ‘so hot right now’ shoot ’em up style. The blend works well for the most part, making Persona Q2 a fun and always interesting experience. You play as Joker, the ever popular protagonist of Persona…

I’m in a funk with The Elder Scrolls Online — and I’m not sure how to feel. Its latest expansion, Elsweyr, brings skeletons, zombies and dragons to the fore, it’s spooky, creepy and kooky. There’s a talking, alcoholic cat, a frighteningly tall Khajit and a homeless gentleman known for wearing a pot on his head….

Sonic the Hedgehog’s been through a lot in the last twenty-five years. Repeated, flavourless sequels that cast a wide genre net have dogged the old blue blur, from 3D platformers to endless runners and puzzle games, and the less said about his upcoming movie the better. Team Sonic Racing is the third in Sega’s series…

I was only a few hours into my journey in The Outer Wilds, and I’d already run a gamut of emotions. I’d felt it all — anticipation, elation, awe, loneliness, dread and abject horror. None of it was planned, all of it occurred as a result of my own decisions and, often, my own hubris….

Brief Battles is a solid four-player party brawler from two-person Adelaide developer Juicy Cupcake that lands somewhere between Smash Bros, Worms and Bomberman. Its goal is to be a simple, fast, pick-up-and-play multiplayer experience and in this, it certainly succeeds. Each battle consists of moving your character — chosen from an array of sentient underwear…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Yoshi’s Crafted World has been made with all the love and care in the world – and it shows. From the subtle, crafty touches to the gorgeous soundtrack, cutesy worlds and stellar gameplay, everything about it screams wholesomeness. The game is so wholesome that it makes me want to be a better person. Story If…

The more of them I play, the more I’ve come to understand that From Software’s catalogue of games are not for me. My Souls-loving friends assure me there will be a moment of clarity, a a beautiful instant suspended in time where the final piece of the Souls puzzle snaps into place. In that moment, they say…