Reviews

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…

There’s been a resurgence in games that trade in the nostalgia surrounding the 8-bit NES-era in the last few years. Where many of the games that seek to capitalise in the look and feel of those games, they rarely capture what really made them special. Shovel Knight isn’t one of those games. Shovel Knight doesn’t…

Halo 5: Guardians feels like it has more crosses to bear than is entirely reasonable. 343 Industries still have a lot to prove to fans of the series – Halo 4 was a critical darling but its online player base vanished almost overnight and it can’t be denied that the multiplayer component in last year’s…

After almost 200 hours, I thought I was well and truly done with The Witcher 3. It’s first major expansion, Hearts of Stone, proved that it was Geralt who wasn’t finished with me.

With Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 hitting Australian store shelves within a week of each other, the music and rhythm genre that dominated lounge rooms everywhere only five years ago is officially back from hiatus. With Guitar Hero Live, developer FreeStyle Games is attempting to bring something new to the table. The question…

Dragon Ball Z’s place in pop culture in unquestionably prevalent. Its ability to crossover and interject itself into a range of mediums has been the reason for its longevity. It’s no surprise then then that its transition to video games is not only academic but highly welcome for a demographic that wants just that little…

Transformers Devastation marks the first time Platinum Games, known for the Bayonetta series, the upcoming Star Fox Zero for Nintendo and Scalebound for Microsoft, have tackled the robots-in-disguise franchise, taking over from High Moon Studios. For the 80’s kids and die-hard Generation 1 fans, it is a tactical strike upon the nostalgia gland. For everyone…

From fairly humble beginnings, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series became the must-have trilogy on the PS3, adventure games par excellence that revitalised climbing puzzles while remaining tense and cinematic. The entire series to date has now been given the PS4 remaster treatment courtesy of indie developer Bluepoint.

TT Games’ franchise of Lego video games has become a powerhouse since its experimental beginnings in Lego Star Wars back in 2005, but despite the many sequels across many different properties, not a huge amount has changed mechanically since then. Lego Dimensions feels like TT Games’ vehement answer to that criticism. “Fine, you want different?…

There was a moment not five minutes into Disney Infinity 3.0 that made me wonder if the developers had been reading my dream journal. The moment in question was a wonderful sequence that featured the Millennium Falcon in a Star Fox-esque on-rails shooter through an asteroid belt. That’s a game I didn’t even know I…

EA Sports’ superstar FIFA franchise spent the bulk of the last console generation aggressively locking any and all competitors out of the genre before being caught off guard last year by an unexpectedly strong showing from Pro Evolution Soccer 2015. Can EA Sports turn things around in 2016?

Hideo Kojima is clearly very torn about leaving his Metal Gear series behind after nearly 30 years. The fact that Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain spends a lot of time on the notion of losing a part of yourself, physically and mentally, illustrates this. Kojima leverages the phenomenon of phantom limb pain –…

History has not been kind to many games in EA Sports’ NHL series. Last year’s NHL 15 proved another disappointment, dropping a number fan-favourite modes and unexciting, sometimes buggy gameplay. After such a sound drubbing from critics and fans alike, EA Canada have spent the last twelve months attempting to address the laundry list of…

We’ve seen quite a few games from Sony’s library of last generation title arrive on PS4 with shiny new graphics and frame rates but the curious case of PSVita title Tearaway’s current-gen remaster took many by surprise.

Forza Motorsport 6, more than anything else, feels like a reaction to Forza 5. The watchword here is “more”. There are more cars, more tracks, more weather effects – but can Forza survive on “more” alone?

I’ve been thinking for a few days now about how I was going to approach my Mad Max review. I’ve found it an incredibly difficult game to review, for a number of reasons. It lacks the punch of Mad Max Fury Road and the vision of Shadow of Mordor. But it’s not bad. In fact,…

With American football rapidly gaining popularity in Australia due to the rise of online streaming services (and a longheld belief that we were missing out on something due to all the American media we consume), the Madden series of games is becoming less and less of a curiosity here. With Madden 16, EA is playing…

It’s been nearly ten years since Epic Games unleashed the original Gears of War upon the world. Since then, we’ve seen three more titles set in the same universe, a series of surprisingly good novels by Karen Traviss and a passing of the torch as series development went from Epic to The Coalition. With their…

With the exception of some of Telltale’s back catalogue, the “interactive movie” style of game has never really been my cup of tea. I didn’t like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls barely made a dent. Thus, I went into my review of Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn with no small amount of skepticism. Despite my…

For a child of the NES and Master System era like me, it feels like the Gauntlet franchise has been around forever. With the tough-as-nails co-operative arcade beat-em-up coming back into vogue with the rise of indie gaming it was only a matter of time before Gauntlet returned. And return it has with Gauntlet: Slayer…

Hacknet is a largely text-based game about the perils and quiet victories that come with being a real world hacker. Adelaide developer Team Fractal Alligator (aka Matt Trobianni) has created a game that deals in mental jousts and proves that you can still make a text-based adventure in 2015 that is thrilling and addictive.

There isn’t a whole lot to explain when it comes to Rocket League. When people ask what it is I tell them that it’s soccer with cars. This much is true, because Rocket League’s unrelenting ability to entertain doesn’t require a complex foundation of expansive gameplay elements. Instead it revels in its simplicity and predilection…

Gaming historians got pumped when Rare announced an anthology comprising many of their best games at E3 this year. The Rare Replay Collection has arrived and offers something of an industry time capsule, cataloguing the rise and fall of one of gaming history’s most celebrated developers.

In September 2014, developers The Astronauts released a short but rich game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on Steam. I never got to play it but it received positive reviews and was praised for its visuals and unique storytelling. This year the title received an overhaul courtesy of the Unreal 4 engine and was…

What can I say about Journey that hasn’t been said a million times already? The little game that could, Journey was one of the PlayStation 3’s most pleasant surprises. Thatgamecompany’s unexpected masterpiece has now been ported to the PlayStation 4 with a few choice upgrades to entice new players into its beautiful, undulating world and…