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The Need for Speed franchise is much as a staple of the racing genre as any other. From the high octane thrills of Hot Pursuit, to the halcyon days of Underground, and the epic, white-knuckle police chases of the highly regarded Most Wanted. A few rocky and undercooked entries have plagued the series in recent…

I don’t really know how to review a game like Death Stranding. Try as I might to collect my thoughts for review, it seems designed to defy critical appraisal at every turn. This may make it a work of high and complex art, a kind of long-form interactive Rorschach test, but I don’t know that…

Like the galaxy, the library of Star Wars video games is incredibly vast. As a huge Star Wars fan, every new experience becomes an automatic purchase, the hope that each new title will be better than the last. A true digital representation of the Star Wars universe in the palm of my hands. While some…

Warcraft III has loomed large in my mind ever since its launch in 2002. A natural evolution of the real-time strategy games that birthed the franchise, Warcraft III turned the genre on its ear. The introduction of hero units, named characters more powerful than a typical soldier, made it unique within the genre. To see Blizzard…

I like Dell’s range of XPS ultrabooks. They’re workhorse machines designed for portability and power in equal measure. The XPS 13 7390 iterates subtly on previous designs, projecting confidence in its look and feel. Spec sheet As work machines go, this one has a spec sheet with the works: a 10th Gen Intel Core i5…

For some time now, there’s been a growing sense that Bethesda has lost the thread of what made The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series’ so great. If you’ve been feeling the same way, it’s likely that The Outer Worlds will be game you’ve been hoping they would make. Bethesda didn’t make it, but it sure feels…

Blizzard Entertainment have announced Overwatch 2 during their annual BlizzCon convention in Anaheim, California. The sequel to the team-based shooter that rocketed to global popularity in 2016, Overwatch 2 promises more heroes, more maps, more modes and a fully-flegded PvE mode. The newest PvP game mode is called Push. It features a large robot that…

Blizzard have announced Diablo 4 at BlizzCon 2019. Marking a return to the series grimdark, gothic horror roots, the publisher debuted both a cinematic trailer and a quick look at gameplay. The game’s look has clearly been inspired by Diablo 2, taking a sincere and “reverent approach” to design. There’s no changes to POV or…

The next expansion in the long-running World of Warcraft series is World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. Sylvanas has taken the crown of the Lich King, crowning herself the Lich Queen and doubling down on her seemingly endless downward spiral into madness and destruction. With the doorway to afterlife torn wide open, the expansion will allow players…

Ghostbusters: The Video Game launched in 2009 to great commercial and critical success, a rarity for a licensed game. It boasted an in-canon story following the events of Ghostbusters 2 and the entire original cast — Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson and the late, great Harold Ramis — reprised their iconic roles. In today’s…

Biomutant was extremely weird, and the PAX build was rather janky but that didn’t change one important factor: I think I love it. Biomutant is a game about survival as a tiny mammalian mutant that looks a bit like a koala. Surviving on what seems to be a version of Earth that suffered some massive…

While I don’t necessarily understand Codemasters decision to reboot GRID, their pedigree as a developer of skifully designed, fun as hell racing games means I’m willing to take their word for it. From the stellar Formula 1 series to the gritty tracks of Dirt Rally, I had to bite down on the creeping notion that…

Right out the gate, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint frustrated me. For every step the franchise took forward it in this iteration, it seemed to be taking two steps back. There are things to love in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, such as the vast open world, cinematic story and tight gunplay, but thanks to a largely similar…

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is the first major expansion for the popular MMO shooter since developer Bungie’s split from Activision Blizzard in January. Though Bungie has maintained a parade of events and updates for the game throughout 2019, they set themselves a rather high bar to jump over with the new expansion. Here was what Bungie’s…

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair gets a lot of things right, and chief among them: it proves that the character platformer genre, the long-dead moneymaker of the 16-bit era, can still engage and excite in 2019. The original Yooka-Laylee was considered by most to be a good if unremarkable 3D platformer. Created by many of the…

I’ve heard it suggested that the Dark Souls series is a modern take on the Metroidvania genre, and I generally think that’s correct. There are many parallels, from exploration and frequent backtracking, specific save locations, the memorisation of enemy patterns, slow power creep and subtle environmental storytelling. Developers The Game Kitchen have taken this comparison…

With co-op shooter Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint right around the corner, we sat down with the game’s writer and military consultant Emil Daubon for a quick chat about narrative, authenticity, and the great Jon Bernthal.   Emil, so nice to be talking to you today! I am so excited for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, but before…

There’s no better herald of the end-of-year video game rush than the arrival of a new FIFA game, and arrive it does with FIFA 20. There is a specific audience for these games — bring up FIFA around a group of gamers and third of them will immediately lose interest, another third remain neutral, and the remaining third…

In today’s gaming landscape, you might be forgiven for never having heard of Dark Souls, but you would definitely be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t played a game either directly inspired or affected by it. Enter The Surge 2, a tactical hack- and-slash experience that follows hot off the heels of its predecessor,…

Dino Verano has a long career in games, working as a producer on numerous Activision titles. He’s also someone who understands the value of community in helping to polish and balance a game ahead of launch thanks to his prior career in quality assurance. Now a producer and team lead on Infinity Ward’s Call of…

The NBA 2K series has become for many, including myself, the definitive basketball gaming experience. While each iteration tries to evolve in interesting ways, NBA 2K20 remains an evolutionary experience rather than a revolutionary one. In many ways, NBA 2K20 is superior to any of its predecessors, presenting stellar basketball gameplay paired with authentic presentation…

My relationship with Borderlands might be different from that of other people, I don’t know. What I do know is that, contrary to a lot of other games I tend to like, I don’t come to Borderlands for the story or the characters or the world. I show up because Gearbox Software makes an idiot…

When most people think of Gears of War, they’re probably not thinking about high fashion. For games about blood and guns with chainsaws attached, jewelry seems like an odd merchandising vertical to explore — but finding an unexpected point of connection and running with it has become Xbox Australia’s signature approach to promoting new games….

The common thread that runs through the Xbox’s two biggest exclusive franchises is that they are no longer being made by the developers that created them. The Halo series has been under the stewardship of 343 Industries since Halo 4, and the Gears franchise has been with The Coalition since Epic wrapped on Gears of…

Ideally, a good expansion pack extends the life of a game with something new. That something new could be an addition to the story, a new area to visit, or new moves and mechanics. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne goes all in, throwing a truly staggering amount of fresh content at returning players. Here’s the thing…

Untitled Goose Game, the goose-based civilian torment simulator by Melbourne developer House House, will finally launch on September 20. In development for nearly three years, the game caught the internet’s attention for its exceedingly irreverent pitch — you are a goose and you mess with the life of a put-upon farmer just trying to go…

When I first started building my own gaming PC’s in 2002, the monitor was always an afterthought. It was the part of the build where you could reliably save a buck because as long as the refresh rate was high, you were in the clear. That’s not true any longer. Now, the monitor is as…

I really love the spirit of what Supermassive Games is trying to do with Man of Medan. The first episode in The Dark Pictures Anthology, a compendium of short-form video game horror stories, Man of Medan is cut from the same cloth as Supermassive’s 2015 effort Until Dawn but shrinks its scope and scale to better…

It’s time to get primal. Unleash your inner Hominoidea and become one with your senses. In Minecraft, you begin by punching trees. In DayZ, if you make it off the beach, you start rummaging for weapons. In Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey you begin as a scared, lonely ape in a dense forest with nothing but…

Rad marks another genre turn for developer Double Fine, the studio behind classics like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango and Broken Age. Inkeeping with Double Fine studio lead Tim Schafer‘s abstract sense of humour, Rad is an imaginitive, colourful and wonderfully wacky rogue-like dungeon crawler. Bursting with colour and character, Rad might not be the best game…