Reviews

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…

Dragon Quest Builders returns for the Nintendo Switch and if you missed it like I did the first few times around, it’s worth a dip in this craft-em-up meets RPG hybrid. Originally released on PS3, PS Vita and then PS4, it has definitely done the rounds, but has developer Division 5 used that time to…

EA Sports UFC 3 marks EA’s the third tilt at creating an authentic, complex mixed martial arts experience. While it’s not a total knockout punch, it’s safe to say UFC 3 provides hardcore and casual fans alike with a reasonably accessible fighting sim.

The premise of Final Fantasy‘s Dissidia spin-offs is one we’ve all seen before – the heroes and villains of World A get transported to World B for some wild, yet justifiable reason, and are then thrust into a battle for their lives and the fate of the world. It’s no different here, with Dissidia NT…

I’m ashamed to say that I’m a latecomer to the Monster Hunter franchise, with my first taste of monster hunting goodness coming late last year in the delightful Monster Hunter Stories. Given that I enjoyed the title so much, I was looking forward to World, but didn’t realise how much it would blow me away….

Thirteen years after its release on the PlayStation 2, Shadow of the Colossus remains one of the greatest and most successful experiments in the history of game design.

Good news for fans of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth — if you liked the original, then you’ll love Hacker’s Memories. Bad news of fans of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth — you’ve seen this all before.

Let’s get one thing straight: I love tennis. The Australian Open is no exception, grabbing me from the first round all the way to the final match. So it’s safe to say I was excited for AO Tennis, hoping it would bring tennis games back into the mainstream, a nod to the good old days of…

The Dragon Ball series has always been a no-brainer as far as content for fighting games goes. Nevertheless, Dragon Ball games have tended to fall short of what most players assumed should be a slam dunk — they were wonky fighters, focused more on channelling the look and feel of the legendary anime than they were on…

The modern era of video games has brought with it a boom of classic JRPG-style games. With the popularity of Persona, Fire Emblem and Pokémon ensuring the genre’s continuing success, it’s no surprise, then, that games like Legrand Legacy exist — games designed to celebrate the history and personality of JRPGs from the past.

I guess I’ll start by saying that I don’t really play many racing games. Gear.Club Unlimited hasn’t managed to change my opinion of them either, but neither was it a totally unenjoyable experience.

Some games are like a fine wine, they age so well. Especially when the original game is already a great one! The longer they’ve been out, the more widespread the fan base grows, the greater the overall feeling of nostalgia envelopes you when you finally return to it after so many long years (look at…

LocoRoco 2 Remastered doesn’t belong in 2017. Or more accurately, 2017 doesn’t deserve its presence. LocoRoco 2 represents all that is wholesome and pure in the world of gaming, and harkens back to simpler, more innocent times. It’s not the hero that we deserve, but we’re very glad to have it.

Dynamic Pixels Stealth Survival Horror is a pretty hefty banner to place on their title of Hello Neighbor, especially after recently trying to drift through games such as Outlast 2 and even the beautifully well made Little Nightmares. Hello Neighbor comes about as close to horror as your nanna’s dirty unwashed knickers: it’s creepy, cringe…

Rumu is the second major release from Sydney-based indie developer Robot House. It’s a game about a little robot vacuum cleaner that lives in a smart home run by an AI named Sabrina — a little guy trying to make sense of a big and complicated place. Rumu, as a game, is much the same —…

It’s been five years since disaster befell Dutch developer Two Tribes B.V. and a large percentage of their staff were retrenched, spelling the end for the studio. They were not, however, prepared to go down without a fight and the remaining staff battled on to complete what would become Two Tribes’ last game, a twin-stick…

There’s almost no reason for you to play Destiny 2‘s first expansion, Curse of Osiris. I’ve tried to find a nicer way to frame the expansion’s futile attempts at justifying its own existence but there’s no getting around it. In a game as massive as Destiny 2, especially one that is designed to keep players coming back,…

Fans of the long-running Pokemon RPG series should already know what to expect when the franchise rolls into out a new generation. It all starts with an initial pair of handheld titles – in this case Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon – which is then followed up a year-or-so later with what is essentially a…

Rather than run two entirely separate reviews for L.A. Noire‘s brand new, remastered edition, we thought we’d combine them into a single piece and discuss the merits of each version in turn. The two we’ve chosen to review are the Nintendo Switch version of the game, and the Xbox One X Enhanced version.

Before I begin my review, I’d like to discuss a bit of my history with the .hack franchise. When I first discovered manga, the first volume that I ever read was .hack//G.U.+, an adaptation of the original .hack//G.U. video game trilogy. As a young and impressionable child, the series blew my mind, and when I…

God, DOOM is good. It’s so good. It was good when we reviewed it on PS4 last year and it remains good now, almost 18 months later, as it debuts on the Nintendo Switch. One of the biggest questions gamers had for the Switch at launch was whether it could support portable versions of major AAA releases….

I know, I know, it’s a review of a cricket game. Those of you that don’t care about cricket have already regarded the headline of this piece with a disgusted look. Those of you that do like cricket are already wary. Video game representations of sports Australians like aren’t reliably … good. At all. But…

Reliving the opening moments of Skyrim always feels a lot like going home. The music, atmosphere and landscapes always bring me right back to my first moments with the game, when I first discovered how monumental and incredible the game truly was. It feels strange, then, to be reviewing it in 2017, six years after…

Star Wars Battlefront II, a game mired in launch window controversy. Is it as terrible as the screaming denizens of the internet would have you believe or is it all being blown out of proportion? For our Battlefront II review, we thought we’d split it into two discrete components — the single player campaign, reviewed by…

Hello there, fellow Sonic fan. Remember that period of unalloyed joy during the launch of Sonic Mania this year? The feeling of burgeoning hope that, after 20 years of Sega openly ignoring what made their mascot great, the ol’ blue blur might finally be back on track? Well, forget all that because Sonic Forces is here to make…

If I can communicate anything to you about Need for Speed Payback, it’s this: when the game first asks you to pick a car, choose wisely. Choose wisely, because you’re going to have that car for a really, really long time.

What is this sensation I’m feeling? Is it … enjoyment? Am I actually having fun with a Call of Duty game again? I think I am! My god, it’s been a while.

Boy, Don Mattrick really fucked Xbox, didn’t he? It’s been five years since Microsoft’s now-infamous E3 2013 presentation, the unveiling of an All-in-One corporate fantasy wildly out of step with what its audience actually wanted and expected. Microsoft have been trying to course correct ever since. So dominated have they been by the runaway success…

If you, or someone you know, could be considered a fan of rugby then there might come a point in your life where playing Rugby 18 seems like a good idea. I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that that won’t be true. That way lies disappointment and regret because in Rugby 18,…