Reviews

Ask any fan of XCOM for their opinion on the franchise and their stories will all be variations on a theme – wonderful games marred by wild RNG and, in the case of 2012’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown at least, some of the most infuriating, game-breaking bugs this side of an Elder Srolls title. Neither of those criticisms have really changed in XCOM 2,…

When I was a teenager in the late Nineties and early 2000’s, I was into anime in a big,  bad way. I devoured every show and movie I could get my hands on and, towards the end of my fascination with it, I discovered Naruto. I ravenously followed the adventures of this boisterous ninja kid for…

Firewatch is a game that had me intrigued from the moment I laid eyes on it. The first time I heard anything about it was a trailer during Sony’s E3 2015 press conference. It made me laugh, it made me wonder what its deal was and I quietly kept an eye on it over the…

I’m torn. Officially torn. And this review is probably going to reinforce that a lot. Reason being is that Lego Marvel’s Avengers instigates a vicious conflict between me as a giant nerd and me as an objective game reviewer. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the very same struggle wasn’t exclusive to me, because while…

There is one very important question that you need to answer before you spend any time at all with Jonathan Blow’s newest and most ambitious game, one that will tell you right away whether you will enjoy the experience or detest it mightily: How much do you like puzzles?

Considered criminally overlooked when it released on the PlayStation Vita back in 2012, Gravity Rush brought fresh ideas to an aging adventure game genre with its gravity-manipulation mechanic and irreverent character work. Thankfully, a vast new audience has a chance to be exposed the game, having found a new home on the PlayStation 4 thanks…

Oxenfree is a 2.5D side-scrolling adventure game that follows five kids stranded on an island. After initially only wanting to party amongst themselves, the island’s dormant history of supernatural terror is stirred and the resourceful teens must find a way to work together and get to safety before morning.

I’ve already seen The Westport Independent described as “Censorship Simulator” online and, honestly, that’s not a bad way to describe it. A totalitarian Loyalist government is instituting policies that will prevent a free media from informing the masses, but the underground Rebels need the help of your newspaper to help sway public opinion and create…

That Dragon, Cancer is one of those games that you want to recommend to people because it’s an capital-i, capital-e “Important Experience.” It is however its subject matter that makes it also difficult to recommend. It is not an enjoyable experience by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing that approaches with the topic of terminal disease…

It’s been a little while since we’ve seen a game in Ubisoft’s series of 2.5D Assassin’s Creed sidescrollers. At one point they were set to release throughout 2015 but after Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China didn’t quite set the world on fire, they dropped off the radar a little. Now, Ubi plans to release the remaining…

AlphaDream’s Mario & Luigi series has consistently been one of the best and brightest franchises on the Nintendo 3DS, pulling on the rich universe that the Mario brand has created for itself for an expansive, and inventive mix of nostalgia and progression. Nostalgia because most of the humour relies on our attachment to these characters…

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from the Fat Princess franchise. The original game, a blend of single- or multiplayer action and strategy, debuted on the PS4 back in 2009. Things went quiet after that until its sequel, Fat Princess Adventures, was announced and quickly released all within December 2015. Departing from its more strategic…

Level-5 have been sitting on a western release for their Yo-Kai Watch franchise for some time. There were a lot of reasons for this, chief among them being just how steeped in Japanese culture the series is – indeed, Yo-Kai Watch has achieved the same kind of towering popularity in its homeland that the now-waning…

The thing about Beyond: Two Souls is that, as a video game, it’s rather bad. That might seem like an especially harsh way open a review, but a game that puts as high a premium on storytelling Beyond does means actual gameplay isn’t given a lot of consideration if it doesn’t advance the plot. This…

When I downloaded The Crew onto my PS4, I was only able to play through a dense prologue before the game informed me that it wasn’t finished installing yet. There was nothing to indicate that an install was still going on aside from this screen with a percentage marker, no slowly-filling bar in or out…

The round begins and we’re instantly scrambling to fortify and take up positions against the incoming enemy team. Enemy drones roll about under foot, trying to get the best possible view of what we’re up to before barrelling away to find a hiding spot from where they can watch us. The dull thud of boots…

There’s a reason downloadable content has an unflattering reputation. It’s been used to flog everything from pointless cosmetics to extra missions to content held back from the final release in order to extort a few extra bucks from the ultra-hardcore fan with a lot of disposable income. DLC doesn’t have to suck though and Bloodborne:…

Just Cause 3 is a game with a clear mandate: roam around a massive open world and blow shit up in whatever manner pleases you most. In this regard, it acquits itself with ease and is a lot of fun. The trouble is, almost all of the game’s other moving parts are handled in a…

Star Wars Battlefront is designed from the ground up to push your brain’s nostalgia button with relentless, laser precision. It’s full of instantly recognisable locales rendered with uncommon beauty and realism, and a scale that many shooters strive for but seldom achieve. When the look, the sound and the music all comes together at the…

Minecraft: Story Mode feels like a bit of a narrative passing of the torch in a lot of respects. Its first two episodes are filled with clever references that kids who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s will pounce on but the bulk of its story is aimed squarely at the next generation of…

When you think of video game genres that have their home on the PC, there’s only a few that spring readily to mind. In the 90’s and early 2000’s, real time strategy ruled the PC platform but in recent years it has all but died out, killed off by the very monster it created, the…

In many ways, Call of Duty: Black Ops III has to deal with the same design problems that Advanced Warfare, and even Ghosts, had to deal with. What can you do to keep a franchise that ruled the roost in one hardware generation fresh and interesting while still providing new ideas and features that move…

For people who were lucky enough to own an N64 back in the day, Screencheat is a true nostalgia bomb. Pulling inspiration from some true classics, it’s everything you forgot you loved about games of that era, with truly original point of difference. It’s also some of the most pure multiplayer fun I’ve had in…

Crystal Dynamics breathed new life into the aging Tomb Raider series with their acclaimed 2013 self-titled reboot. Its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, sees a hardier, more prepared Lara Croft venturing into Siberia to find an artefact said to hold the key to immortality. But does Rise of the Tomb Raider, like it’s heroine,…

Friends and adventurers, the promised time is at hand. Vault 111 is opening and the Commonwealth awaits. War. War never changes.

With many fans of the series still wary after last year’s disastrous Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ubisoft are aware that they need to stick the landing with Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. The good news is that Syndicate, though it has problems of its own, is never weighed down by them and constitutes a welcome return to form.

The Need for Speed franchise has been a lot of things to a lot of different audiences over the years. But with such a large back catalogue comes bloat and mis-steps as the well of new ideas goes dry. With the back-to-basics reboot Need for Speed, the series is given the chance to head in some…

A few years ago when I played Far Cry 3 (co-incidentally, another Ubisoft title), Vaas, the game’s villain posed me a question: “Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting shit to change.” That’s kind of what it feels like to…

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the JRPG Tales series, developers Bandai Namco Studios and tri-Crescendo have returned to their bread and butter for the 15th iteration in the series, Tales From Zestiria. Where 2011 and 2012s Tales of Xillia games attempted a one off trip into a modern setting, Zestiria draws the gap on…

If you’ve played one Just Dance title, you’ve kind of played them all. That’s the vibe I got from Just Dance 2016, despite its many attempts to keep the formula fresh with new modes and a suite of new songs. For the faithful, that may be enough. For everyone else, it may be a different…