Reviews

Instead of pushing back against the inevitable Pokemon comparisons that have been buzzing about ever since the first entry, Yo-kai Watch 2 seems to be welcoming the parallels, particularly by splitting up the sequel into two “same but slightly different” games: Fleshy Souls and Bony Spirits. Like the constant Pokemon RPGs, developers Level-5 Watch maintain…

I really loved Titanfall when it released back in 2014. It had so many great ideas and such a fun multiplayer component that I was truly saddened to see the player base erode as quickly as it did. It seems developer Respawn were paying attention because they’ve worked hard to address many of the original game’s…

I hate Battlefield 1. I hate it in spite of its being lovingly made, gorgeous to look at and deeply respectful in the way it handles its subject matter. I hate it despite its decision to steep itself in a period of conflict so barbaric that video games have shied away from it almost altogether until…

Civilization 6 is the latest in Sid Meier’s 25-year-old franchise of global growth and domination and, while it doesn’t rest on its laurels, neither does it strive to do anything especially different to its predecessors. In any other game, this would be considered the height of laziness. In Civilization‘s case, its surprising to find that minimal…

Masterpiece isn’t a word you should throw around willy nilly, particularly when you’re looking to describe a video game, but Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim certainly fits the bill. It won over critics and fans alike with its craggy, unforgiving landscape, its vast array of skills and abilities, and its willingness to embrace the mod community….

Let’s get it out of the way early: Tomb Raider has a lot to thank Uncharted for. Well, the current rebooted Tomb Raider anyway. This isn’t your childhood Lara Croft. She may have come first but when Crystal Dynamics launched their new, hardened Lara in 2013, it was pretty obvious they were channeling Naughty Dog. But…

Nintendo’s flagship character has always enjoyed a tighter focus when it comes to his many, many spin-offs. You can always be sure that a Mario game (or any related title) will be held to a particularly high standard by the business, Nintendo and its developers being very careful to control the quality for their primary…

Dragon Quest is one of the most venerable franchises in the history of video game role players. In its homeland of Japan, the series has spent its lifetime frequently and handily beating the sales all other comers, even genre titans like Final Fantasy, but in recent years has seen a bit of a drop off as…

GOOOAAAAL. With the usual patronising phrasework out of the way, let’s talk about football.

Alright, look. I’m going to level with you right away: I don’t know anything about Formula 1 racing. Why then, you might ask, am I the one reviewing the year’s premiere F1 title? The short answer is because I like throwing myself into games I don’t have a frame of reference for and seeing if they surprise…

After spending the last six months as a PC exclusive, XCOM 2 has finally arrived on consoles. With everything going on in the world of gaming and VR, it has taken some time to finally dig into the game and enjoy it while sharing a few little comparisons to its PC counterpart which was released…

I wasn’t really expecting to like Gears of War 4 as much as I did. The Gears series is frequently everything that bores me in modern action games — template-like, gravel-voiced roid bros charging headfirst into military fist-bumps excessive chainsaw-related gore. The series also found its formula from the jump and didn’t deviate far from it over…

It took a few years for gamers outside of Japan to finally see the modern remake of Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, a reverent update of one of the longest, most in-depth, and sadly underrated JRPGs of the 21st century. It was originally released for PlayStation in the year 2000, a huge…

12 years. 12 years is a long time to carry an MMO, or any game at all. I should know, I’ve been playing the thing since launch. Having learnt from some of the mistakes made in Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard have ensured that expansion 6 of World of Warcraft takes the game in a very…

Basketball is one of the few American sports I follow zealously. A long-time Celtics fan (you heard me, wannafightaboudit), I find myself with a love-dread relationship with basketball video games. NBA 2K17 comes loaded for bear with an involved My Career mode that gets right to heart of my idiosyncratic relationship to these games. 

GOD, I love the Forza Horizon series. It’s everything I want in a racing game — a balance of work hard/play hard — race now, then go where you like, in whatever car you want and just enjoy the act of doing that. It’s a total breath of fresh air, especially after the endless procession of staid, serious…

Just Sing is the latest entry in the storied genre of video games that involves singing at your television and have it grade your abilities with cold, unfeeling science. Singstar dominated the genre (and sales charts) back in the PS2 era, but no karaoke game since has managed to crack the code the way Singstar did. Just Sing gives it…

It gets me giddy with excitement when developers like Q-Games steps outside the norm to try something original. The Tomorrow Children is so far from their usual fan-fare of PixelJunk titles you would think they have a pretty damn good reason to try and bring something original to their line-up. On the concept itself, they…

There was a period between 2002 and 2007, lets call it the post-Ocarina of Time era, where action adventure games found a formula that worked and then stuck to it like glue. A plucky protagonist visits many, varied locations, delves into dungeons, collect treasure and items, upgrades their skills and eventually finds themselves in a showdown with…

Monster Hunter, Capcom’s hunter-gatherer action RPG series, has stuck around for quite a few years, first appearing on PlayStation systems with inventive, straight-forward gameplay and a winning formula: prep for quests, head out on quests, and complete those quests, usually by bagging and tagging magnificent Jurassic-inspired beasts. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

I honestly don’t know what Deus Ex fans would have done without Eidos Montreal. After a debut outing that became a modern classic, a poorly-received sequel in Deus Ex: Invisible War and whatever the hell Project: Snowblind was supposed to be, the series languished until Eidos Montreal came along to rescue it in 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Now, with that…

Developer Playdead arrived on the scene in a big way with their moody puzzle-platformer LIMBO only a few years ago. They’re back now with INSIDE, a game that embraces the lessons learned from LIMBO and takes them a step further. INSIDE is so good that I don’t want to spoil it one bit for anyone who hasn’t had…

I like to think that if we were inundated with Journey-clones, the gaming industry might be even more of a richer and enticing medium. Bound makes me rethink that idea. It isn’t a terrible game. It’s just kind of boring and for a game that only clocks in at two hours, it begs the question, whats…

Remember in the late-2000’s when Madden was terrible for a while there? Those dark days are well and truly over. For the third year running, Madden NFL 17 proves itself to be one of the industry’s best examples of a developer not only taking feedback on board, but doing something with it.

Usually, the kind of backlash that Hello Games’ ambitious space explorer has received would be reserved for something from Ubisoft (Watch Dogs, The Division), but it would appear that we’re in a golden age of broken promises, embellishments and flat out lies, with No Man’s Sky leading the charge.

Quite often we get stuck with inferior video game adaptations of TV shows and movies. It’s a rarity for any of them to accurately reflect the source material without ruining it in some form or another. Attack on Titan: Wings of Freedom, is a true testament of what can be done with a team that is passionate about…

Those genius folk over at Telltale Games are back. While we all anxiously await the new chapter in their popular Walking Dead series, we can add another great monthly treat to our games library. Batman: The Telltale Series.

Insomniac Games alongside their new partnership with GameTrust (GameStop’s all new publishing brand), have lovingly crafted a deep sea exploration title, with Irish flavour, in Song of the Deep. Song of the Deep is a Metroidvania-style action-adventure game following a young girl’s quest into the deep blue sea to find her missing father. Combining discovery, skill, and suspense with an…

Don’t let Prison Architect‘s cartoony exterior fool you for a moment — it hides a brutal, complex simulation reminiscent of Bullfrog’s Theme Park and Theme Hospital heyday. It will frazzle you with its many systems and disgust you with the deeds of your inmates. But you will not be able to stop playing.

Star Ocean: The Second Story is fondly remembered by veterans of the PSX-era as being an excellent JRPG in a time, and on a platform, filled with some of the genre’s very best. After Second Story however, I was never able to muster the quite same level of interest in the Star Ocean series again. While Star Ocean:…