The surprise release of Prey: Mooncrash flew under radar at E3, buried among hype for the next Elder Scrolls, the bombastic Rage 2, and Starfield among other brilliant announcements. The original title has often been similarly ignored, and considering it was a strong early contender for game of the year in 2017, it’s high time…
Unravel 2 is the sort of game that strengthens interpersonal bonds. It’s a wonderful team building exercise, a game cut from the same warm emotional mould as its predecessor but with a rather different point to make.
With the world of LEGO dominating the video game market with numerous adaptations of beloved properties, a venture based on The Incredibles films seems like a natural fit. With The Incredibles 2 out in cinemas, you may think that LEGO’s “cash grab” tactics may be at play here. Well, you would be terribly mistaken. LEGO…
Jurassic World Evolution is far, far harder than it needs to be. It’s really surprising how difficult the game is at times. Your guests’ wants are often bizarre, the learning curve is a cliff face and the dinosaurs are predictably unsympathetic to your desire to make a buck. I’ll spend hours getting everything in my…
Onrush immediately throws itself onto you as a weird, quirky and sometimes downright crazy experience. However, it’s an experience which I haven’t come across in a while, and to my surprise, it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a racing title in recent memory. Developers Evolution Studios of Driveclub and Motorstorm fame have…
The Banner Saga has had a long journey to appearing on the Switch, having first arrived as an indie PC and mobile title in 2014, and being ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2016. It’s surprising that the title didn’t appear sooner on the Switch, because for all intents and purposes, it’s the…
Vampyr feels like a game that I’ve been waiting nearly 15 years for. Somehow, despite the wild 2008 boom of vampire fiction that followed Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight franchise, video game vampires have often been given the short end of the stick. While there are certain shining examples, from the grim western Darkwatch: Curse of the…
The Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is a wonderful little package, collecting twelve of the best Street Fighter titles in sleekly presented single game format. Twelve Street Fighter titles, you might say? But didn’t they just release Street Fighter V? Well, hold onto your hats folks because the 30th Anniversary Collection doesn’t just collect the…
I have a long history of dissatisfaction with desk chairs. I break them very easily, and its never because I mistreated them. I use them as a day-to-day work prop this is apparently too much to ask because within six-to-nine months, they’re sagging and bent in ways that suggest my 95kg frame is much heavier…
I have bloviated at length on this website about my upbringing as a Sega kid. While the SNES dominated the market, those of us who chose the Sega life knew we had a machine with true gems among its library. The arcade-centric counterpart to the SNES’ far broader appeal, the Mega Drive did its own…
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition is, surprisingly, the third release of the game, having first appeared on the Wii U in 2014, and later on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016. This time, Hyrule Warriors comes in a complete, shiny package, featuring all DLC from the original game as well as brand new Breath of the Wild…
The classic game that started it all has returned, this time to the next generation of consoles. It’s hard to define just what makes the Dark Souls series so damn good, but upon playing the original 7 years after it’s 2011 release, I couldn’t think of a better way to return to one of the…
Detroit: Become Human is finally upon us. Quantic Dream have had players waiting for over four years for their follow-up to the Beyond: Two Souls. Detroit is, in many ways, the end point of Quantic’s “Kara” tech demo from 2012. It’s disarming, strange, interesting and delves deep into the uncanny valley.
There are certain games that fall into a category I like to call “My Dad Would Love This.” Games in this category typically revolve around war or military history, maintain some degree of simulation and are full to bursting with digital recreations of real world military hardware. Now, after eight years of ongoing development, World…
Shadow of War‘s latest expansion, The Desolation of Mordor cuts right to the chase. “Baranor is mortal and carries no Ring of Power. If he does, his story is over. Be careful.” Tackling Shadow of War without Talion’s impressive array of Celebrimbor-backed super powers is an interesting spin on the game’s existing format, pivoting into…
Destiny 2‘s first expansion, Curse of Osiris, wasn’t a complete disaster but it sure as hell wasn’t a good move either. Already losing players to battle royale juggernauts of PUBG and Fortnite, Osiris cost the game a lot of momentum after a strong launch. A good chunk of content and activities were placed behind Osiris’ paywall and…
There is an easy way to tell if State of Decay 2 is going to be your thing or not. How do you react when you realise a game feels like bloody hard work? Do you dig in or do you check out? If you tend to dig in, then chances are you’ll find loads…
Let me tell you a story of a man destined for greatness. A barbarian, brutally carving his way through a desolate and dangerous land, where only the strongest will survive. These were the days of high adventure! However, I’m not sure where Conan Exiles fits into this mould. Bringing many elements to the table, it’s…
Ever since the amazing game Accounting Plus VR from Squanchtendo and Crows Crows Crows, there was no doubt we needed a Rick and Morty VR game. Now a sweet, sweet collaboration between Owlchemy Games, the dev behind Job Simulator, and Adult Swim Games has become a Rick-ality! See what I did there?
Dragon’s Crown Pro is kind of a lot. A remaster of Dragon’s Crown, a breathless love letter to the side-scrolling fantasy beat-em-ups of the Golden Axe era, the original both succeeded in its mission and managed to piss a lot of people off with its simplistic gameplay married to some of the most absurd character…
A non-trivial amount of my time as a teenager was spent playing Black Isle Studios RPGs. The entry point for many into the Forgotten Realms campaign setting that is the focus of Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons, games like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale remain important industry touchstones. The foundations they laid for creating complex…
Don’t let the new title fool you. Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia is still a fully-fledged entry in Creative Assembly’s long-running series of historical strategy games. But where older Total War titles have selected a particular real world empire or historical era to focus on, Total War Saga narrows its scope. It focuses not…
Growing up, I was completely obsessed by the Naruto anime, to the point where I once went to a birthday party dressed as series antagonist, Sasuke. It was an embarrassing time. In 2018, Naruto and its sequel anime Naruto Shippuden have long since ended, with the once rambunctious and wild-spirited Naruto all grown up. Having…
I can’t imagine that Retro Studios took on the job of making a new Donkey Kong Country game lightly. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it kept a lot of them up at night. Donkey Kong Country is quite rightly regarded as a masterpiece, a feat of technical wizardry and genius game design even…
I imagine almost everyone who’s ever ridden a motorcycle has heard the same worried refrain from their mum about how motorcycles claim thousands of lives on the road every year. For those who decide to put mum’s mind at rest and stick to a car, TT: Isle of Man is a great consolation prize, an…
After over five years in development, Sony’s Santa Monica Studio’s God of War is back and I think you know by now, it’s a triumphant return for one of PlayStations greatest anti-hero’s and god defying badasses, Kratos.
Extinction offers up an interesting premise that I was personally drawn to. Being a fan of The Shadow of the Colossus, which this game seems to borrow elements from, it seemed like a no-brainer. What we get however, is an underdeveloped pot of mediocrity that pulls off a few neat tricks, while ultimately crumbling under…
“Fuck the Oscars! This is the real shit, right here.” At least that is what creator and director Josef Fares said loud and clear regarding his new title A Way Out at the 2017 Game Awards. Given his enthusiasm, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that this experience would not be an extremely good one,…
I used to wonder what would happen to the video game systems of my youth. Whether they would be left to rot once they were no longer being produced and their hardware stopped working. The C64 Mini is the latest in a run of miniaturised retro video game hardware that answers that question and, like…
Far Cry 5 has been something of a curiosity since it was announced. While an unquestionably brave move to set this new installment of the 14 year old franchise in the United States, many were curious about the game’s motives — given the political and social turmoil in which the US currently finds itself, would…
