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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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.
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!
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…
Project Cars 2 is an interesting experience. While it’s first outing presented players with stiff controls, a lack of car variety and overall depth, Project Cars 2 attempts to rectify these issues, while bringing back the racing simulator into the mainstream. But can it top the likes of Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport? While the…
Rayman Legends: Definitive Edition for Nintendo Switch, now the eighth system the game has been ported to, may still be a great game and one of the best platformers since the original Rayman titles and those other Nintendo titles with the ex-plumber, but it’s far from the Definitive version.
Do you remember the last time you played an entry in the NBA Live series? Me either. More or less off the radar for about a decade at this point, the series is back in the public eye this year with NBA Live 18, a basketball sim with a clear desire to leave the series’ average reputation behind.
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider takes former-apprentice assassin Billie Lurk, a character the series has heretofore considered little more than a side-kick, and catapults her into the spotlight as a lead. The final game in the current Dishonored series hands Billie an unenviable task — find and kill the Outsider.
XCOM 2 is, at its heart, a game about loss. It’s why save-scumming, the act of loading an earlier save in an effort to avoid catastrophe, is so frowned upon in the game’s community. Losing valuable soldiers isn’t just a part of the game, it fills out the unscripted narrative of your personal XCOM 2 experience….
Given that I skipped the Wii U generation of Nintendo consoles (a decision I absolutely do not regret), I managed to miss Pokkén Tournament when it originally released. For those who made a similar decision, it’s time to go back on it – Pokkén Tournament DX is one of the most enjoyable and incredibly addictive…
Destiny was the first game I reviewed for this site, back when the games section was still called VideAU Games, an offshoot of The Iris‘ parent site, The AU Review. On launch, it was an ambitious but deeply flawed experiment in the MMO space, hyped beyond almost any other game in recent memory. It weathered two major…
Who the hell was asking for a remake of Metroid II? Nobody, that’s who, and Nintendo made it anyway. Metroid: Samus Returns takes the general thrust of series’ largely-forgotten 1992 Game Boy adventure and updates it with fresh, modern mechanics and the kind of visuals I wasn’t aware the 3DS could pull off. It takes a game consigned to…
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. I know I’m not the only one. I loved (and continue to love) The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park, I read every book on them I could find, I inhaled the Dinotopia novels, I spent more time on DinoPark Tycoon in the primary school’s computer room than I…
Yakuza Kiwami is the sum of every other game in the series. I don’t know that it would exist without every other game that has preceeded it (though I guess, if you want to be pedantic, most come after it in the greater series timeline). What Yakuza Kiwami can’t quite do is bring itself to be better than…
It’s been a long time since I’ve been genuinely surprised by a video game but Monster Hunter Stories achieved just that, and then more. From the distinct, beautifully designed world to the fun combat and exploratory gameplay, the Monster Hunter spin-off left me genuinely floored. For those new to the franchise, Stories marks a perfect…
Telltale’s Guardians of The Galaxy is finally back. Episodes of this season have been released quite far apart — it will be another month or so before Episode 4 drops and then the Episode 5 finale will release towards the end of the year. Episodes 2 and 3 are now available, however, and we’ve happily dug…
As of this filing, I will have now reviewed fully three instalments of the Madden NFL series for this website. Reviewing sports titles, as I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, is one of the easier aspects of the gig as a games critic — the games don’t change much year-to-year and they are, by and large, quite…
Guess what, Life Is Strange is back and guess what? I played it, you want to know what else? All my fears of it being a shoe-horn tie in for some quick payout were put to rest, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm only grows on the originals strengths and weaknesses and we are left…
Written by author Ken Follett in his 1989 novel, The Pillars of the Earth is a wildly popular story about the building of a cathedral in a small town in 12th century England. It is a long and sweeping story, and one of the most popular literary works of the last two decades. It also makes…
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a game that pulls from all sorts of different places for inspiration. It pulls from literature, it pulls from movies and (most often) it pulls from other games. While its inspirations are worn quite proudly on its sleeve, it’s what Yonder does with them that makes it memorable.
That headline isn’t bullcrap, I actually believe it. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, Ubisoft’s big, bridge-repairing gamble with Nintendo, is one of the studio’s best offerings in years. It’s smart, addictive, tough as nails in the later levels and leverages a genre that doesn’t get much play on console in a way that is perfect for…
If Naughty Dog is to be believed, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy will be the final entry in their now-legendary series of adventure games. If their intention, then, was to send the franchise out on a high note, mission accomplished.
Agents of Mayhem is Volition Studios return to the Saints Row universe, with a little twist. Gone are the days of criminal mayhem and gang warfare, in order to make way for a classic tale of heroes and villains. Agents of Mayhem offers a variety of new and engaging ideas, but falls just short of greatness…
Sonic Mania is a gift. For Sega kids everywhere, it is a portal to your childhood. For long-suffering Sonic fans, it is a well overdue homecoming. It is proof that the Sonic the Hedgehog formula, abandoned in the Saturn era, is as fun, interesting and engaging as it was in the early 90’s. After nearly 25 years of…
