17 public written reviews
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Ahhhhh physics and sweet jumps, patron saints of addictive indie games the world over. If you’ve ever played Trial Bike , Joe Danger or any of their countless brethren (statistically, you must have right?) then you’ve heard all this before. Utilise your mastery of the acceleration button and tilt mechanics in order to fumble your way across a devious 2D assault course in the quickest time possible, preferably…
“Back in my day sonny, vidya games about space ships blastin’ each otha’ were the bee’s knees young whippersnapper“ Is what I'd love to be saying right now. Unfortunately, I'd be lying though my teeth. The heyday of classics like TIE Fighter and Wing Commander was a little bit before my time. Instead, I had the sad privilege of watching the space combat motif die a slow and painful death at the hands of cigar…
Join intrepid hero Zack Zero as he fights back the alien menace Zulrog using his ability to switch between the elemental forms of fire, ice and ground! Wait, doesn't that sound a bit familiar? Ok, lets just ignore for a moment that Zack Zero appears at a glance to be a bootlegged Ben Ten knock-off; to be honest that’s the least of this 2D platfromer’s crimes against humanity. It’s certainly very nice to look at…
Indi games rather unfairly get a pretty bad rap when it comes to graphics. I’m sure you must have heard at least some of the common arguments; pixel art being too hipster, 3D being better than 2D, colours beyond grey and brown being blasphemous and all that junk. Well, if you’re ever in need of something to shut those ill-informed naysayers up real fast, then you better pick up a copy of Trine 2 ! It would be no…
Glorified flash games, purgatory, a novel form of self abuse. Call them what you will, but ultra-punishing 2D platformers are quickly becoming an emergent genre in their own right, with titles such as VVVVV and Super Meat Boy leading the vanguard. But despite what the waves of positive critical reception might lead you to think, they truly are the Marmite of gaming whatever way you look at it. You’re either a…
Read the full review Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole
Ok son, I think you and I need to sit down and have a chat. A chat about what people on the street are calling “collectables”. Your friends have probably told you they’re pretty cool, and that to get em’ you just you gotta do the occasional “side missions” or whatever you kids are calling it these days. But you’ve gotta understand, collecting collectables is a dark dark path that’ll leave you a mere shell of a…
This little titbit of info is going to come as a bit of a shock to some of you out there, so hold on to your hats folks! Okay so; there exists somewhere on this planet, in this reality, in this very time period, video games baring the Gundam franchise name that are NOT kinda awful. Right, you back on your feet yet? Well this next one’s a bit less of a surprise if you’re familiar with Koei’s previous masterpieces.…
If you tried to write a modern who’s who of big name Japanese Shoot’ em Up (SHMUP) developers, then your list of candidates would be pretty thin on the ground. Most of “old masters” who didn’t fade away along with their beloved arcade market have long since moved on to bigger and better things, or for the sake of marketing still exist in name only. Sadly there’s been little sign of any younger teams springing up to…
Anomaly: Warzone Earth puts you in the shoes of the nameless commander of the 14th Platoon, a British military detachment sent into central Baghdad to... wait! Come back! It’s not what you think! Strange “anomalies” have formed around meteorites that struck central Baghdad and Tokyo (neither place can seem to get a break at the moment) which, as you can probably guess as this is a video game, is all part of a very…
I often wonder what a proper sequel should represent, should it be very similar to the original but with slight improvements? Or perhaps be radically different but with familiar themes? Even if I could somehow decide in my head which side of that argument was the “right” one, I'd still have probably booted up Portal 2 without the slightest clue of what to expect, or more importantly what I WANTED it to be. I think…
I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the residents of the Kamurocho district. Every year like clockwork the place gets throw into some sort of absurdly convoluted political crisis that’s always followed by a sudden unexplained surge of street violence and missing bicycles. Hell, it’s even gotten to the point where some of the brainless NPCs are beginning to find this annual spectacle oddly familiar. Funnily…
BlazBlue (pronounced “Blaze Blue”......yeah I know, just roll with it) is a franchise born of tragedy. When legendary fighting game developer Arc System Works lost the development rights of their much loved Guilty Gear series to Sega, they took the best option left to them. They set out to make a new franchise, one that would take all the elements that made Guilty Gear so popular but push it up to the next level.…
Team17. Not exactly a house hold name anymore huh? At best, my generation fondly remembers them for the late 90s portion of the Worms franchise and little else. However if your gaming chronology goes back a little further than that, you may also remember their classic Alien Breed franchise and other subsequent successes on the Amiga. But since then they’ve long fallen out of the gaming limelight, and if this game is…
Read the full review I guess "Splosion man" was already taken.
The original Dead Space is a rather hard act to follow; a lone new IP cast out into a harsh uncaring market where anything that doesn’t have a big number at the end of its name is usually destined for failure, especially if it’s trying to do something unique. But I suppose the secret to Dead Space ’s success was that it didn’t really do anything we hadn’t seen before, it was mostly just lots of tried and tested…
Ever been scared by video game? And I don’t mean the generic Hollywood style “jump scare” kinda thing here; I’m talkin’ REAL terror. The terror of what could lurk around every corner, the terror of knowing your avatar is never safe wherever they hide, terror so deep that you contemplate never playing the game ever again. If yes, then on to question 2: Did you just carry on playing anyway? If so, then you should…
I’m sure at some point or other, most of us have ignored a less than satisfactory story. I mean for stuff like Just Cause or Killzone it’s all about blowin’ dudes away right? In those sorts of games, narrative is just filler that gives the gameplay an excuse for existing. It’s a dynamic most of us just accept without question, it’s just how some games are. But can the reverse also be true? What if the gameplay was…
The whole “3rd person shooter” thing is a bit old-hat at this point; you can barely glance in the window of a game store without seeing a few of them proudly positioned in the sales charts. So it’s no surprise then, that it’s also a genre that now places very highly on Square Enix ’s “Westerners like these” list of game archetypes. Combine that with their recent tendency to fund any project that sounds even vaguely…
