199 public reviews
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If we take a look in the Oxford Dictionary for the meaning of video game, we see that it’s defined as “ a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a monitor or other display. ” That definition exhibits one of the most wonderful and powerful aspects about the video game medium – its openness allows for a huge range of video game genres and mechanics that easily surpass…
Final Fantasy XIV Online was a complete and utter mess of a release that felt like an insult to Final Fantasy fans. It released in an unfinished state that was so bad that Square Enix decided to remove the subscription fee from the game for over a year. The company also completely reshaped the development team to hopefully salvage the game from all the damage it had received from fans and the press. The failure of…
Read the full review Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn
It’s probably a safe bet to assume that most hardcore gamers now know the From Software name, all thanks to the developer having a massive success with the Souls series. What you might now know is that From Software has been making games for years on various platforms. One of their largest properties is the Armored Core franchise, a series that started way back in 1997 on the PlayStation and is about to have its…
It’s crazy to think that 10 years ago we were introduced to Laharl and the gang, and the world of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness . It was Nippon Ichi Software’s first game in Europe, and to this day the Disgaea series is probably the company’s most well-known brand. It has had numerous sequels and even the first three titles have had various ports to PSP , Vita and DS , with the fourth game coming next year to Vita .…
It’s crazy to think that it’s been over ten years when the internet went ablaze with comments slating the new art style for the, back then, upcoming The Legend of Zelda game, The Wind Waker for GameCube . As time moved on, more people began to convert and grow to love its beautiful presentation and cel-shaded graphics. The Wind Waker is without a doubt the one Zelda game that causes a partition between fans. Some…
Last year’s F1 2012 from Codemasters began to suffer from the plague that infests yearly franchises. I didn’t knock the game in my review for this, as I felt that it did just enough to be a worthwhile investment, but I stated that the series needed to begin tapping into the history of F1 because releases were becoming too similar – especially so this time, with the sport not changing locations or machines. F1 2013…
“ A boy awakes to see a girl’s silhouette in the rain. He finds himself lost in a mysterious world. ” Those were the first words shown in the début trailer for Rain at last year’s Gamescom event. The trailer continued to give us glimpse of what this game could be. It’s dark and dreary, as rain pours down on a moody, grey musky, city street, then the trailer continues with “ until he becomes invisible, the boy’s…
I think I am in love with this resurgence for reboots of old-school first-person shooters. It wasn’t long ago that Rise of the Triad released, and while not perfected, the game was a rediscovery for the past – its challenging gameplay and complex level design were taken from the 90s first-person shooter library. Shadow Warrior falls along the same lines. It’s not copying from anyone else; it hasn’t got crappy,…
If there is one thing I have no shame in supporting it’s the idea of old Japanese games getting remade for current systems, especially ones that offer the chance to bring exclusive Japanese titles to the West. The idea that I am missing an entry in a series that I adore is a painful thing to think about. Just ask any Suikoden fan and you’ll hear them grumble about titles that never made it out of the Land of the…
Read the full review Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers
In some twisted, sadistic joke, Sony’s Vita , which was heavily advertised for its dual sticks that were designed with the idea to help the system overcome its problems with controlling first-person shooters, has yet to receive a decent FPS game. The two big-named titles released for the system, Call of Duty: Black Ops – Declassified and Resistance: Burning Skies – which funny enough were developed by the same…
Atlus’ Etrian Odyssey franchise hasn’t exactly had presence in the UK. The British Isles were lucky enough to get the first entry back in 2008, thanks to Nintendo helping with publishing the title on the DS, but the series has since been forgotten until now. Thanks to Nippon Ichi Software USA and their extremely promising Atlus partnership, we in the UK can now experience the fourth – and first for the 3DS platform…
Read the full review Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan
It’s safe to say that while the people at Nintendo sit in their chairs and twiddle their thumbs as they churn out “new” 2D Mario games that lack enthusiasm, innovative ideas and fresh gameplay twists that fans love the company for, the rest of the gaming development world are still coming up with fantastic designs and presentations for a genre that first started its life in the early 1980s. We’ve already had the…
Let’s be honest here, an entry in the Grand Theft Auto series needs no introduction. In fact, Rockstar could very well get away with simply announcing a new title and leaving the marketing down to its fans passing word of mouth. It’s a series that has worked hard to staple itself into the history of video games to become so gigantic that each new entry activates a switch within millions of fans, turning them into…
Diablo III for PC was a huge launch for the platform. I remember being stuck waiting for an hour and 30 minutes just to be able to login to Blizzard.net and create my character. The launch was a mess, but even so, once the kinks were ironed out, Diablo III went onto sell over 12 million copies and become one of the most successful games on PC. It only makes sense for Blizzard to capitalise on the Diablo brand and…
Boo! Feel scared? If not, that’s because real horror is more than just cheap thrills and quick scares. Real horror has to build up atmosphere, raise the tension, and make the player feel uncomfortable and helpless. That’s what indie hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent did when it arrived in September 2010. Amnesia was more than just a fantastic horror game that, for me, overtakes Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly as the…
It has been virtually a year since the first incarnation of Dead or Alive 5 arrived for Xbox 360 and PS3 . This was the first time the sexy fighting game series had been created without the father, Tomonobu Itagaki, at the realm to overlook development. To give it a fresh start, Team Ninja decided to update the look of the game and change the appearance of its well known cast to be less anime and more realistic,…
The Lost Planet series and I have had our shares of ups and downs. I adored the first game, but loathed the second. When the original game released on the Xbox 360 there was a sense of “ next-gen ” about it – the gorgeous looking ice world, the grappling hook mechanic, huge, exhilarating monster battles, and of course, you could pilot a mecha-like robot. Lost Planet was a cool (pardon the pun) and exciting…
Tecmo Koei’s Dynasty Warriors series is a formula that could be applied to so many franchises. We’ve already seen the company move from various eras, such as the Sengoku era of Japan’s history or the Hundred Years War that happened between England and France in the 14 th century. What really made me personally excited was the move to anime licences, such as Gundam and Fist of the North Star . Last year, gamers were…
Sometimes I wish I could just leave a phrase and be done with a review, not to be lazy, but to leave an impactful statement that would get everyone talking. You see, something hit me when I was playing Rayman Legends and it led me to a conclusion that Rayman Legends is the Super Mario Galaxy 2 of Rayman’s gaming career. What I mean by that is Rayman Legends feels like an extension of the already superb Rayman…
If you’re a fan of Grasshopper Manufacture, then you know what you’re getting into when it comes to every Goichi Suda (Suda 51) directed or influenced game that comes out from that studio. Grasshopper Manufacture releases titles that are aimed directly at a niche audience. Compared to the typical mainstream games studio, Grasshopper Manufacture is the rebel child that doesn’t want to create things that are the norm,…
I was pleasantly surprised when Castlevania: Lords of Shadow released in 2010 – mainly for the fact that it was a great 3D Castlevania game that I thought would never happen during this generation’s home consoles. It was a departure from the norm, since Castlevania , for the most part, has offered quality 2D action-adventure titles on handhelds, holding up its part of the Metroidvania sub-genre that fans love to…
Looking back to the start of the 90s and progressing forward towards the end of the 16-bit era, it’s actually surprising how well some of the licensed Disney video games turned out to be. I have fonder memories of such games as The Lion King, Aladdin and Mickey Mania on Super Nintendo, along with Sega’s own take on Mickey Mouse with the fantastic Castle of Illusion on Mega Drive, than I ever did for some of the…
Crazy, insane, nutty, wacky, bizarre, ridiculous and comical are all words that probably came out of your mouth while playing the 2011 extraordinarily absurd Saints Row: The Third . Volition has done wonders to change their approach to Saints Row , which started as a GTA-like gangster game back in 2006. As each sequel released, the series began to gain confidence and grow out of its shell to become its own Identity.…
The original release of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (that’s a mouth full) was dated way back in 1987. Man, thinking about that year, I was on my way to turning three years old. As you can imagine, back then, I did not play the original Leisure Suit Larry until later in my life – that would be wrong for such a young guy to be playing video games that feature a topic about a dude trying to get…
Read the full review Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of Lounge Lizards RELOADED
Apogee Software may have helped to release one of the most faithful remakes in the history of video games. If you’ve not head of Rise of the Triad , then it’s probably because you didn’t play PC games back in the early 90s. It has been nearly 20 years since the original release of Rise of the Triad , a first-person shooter that was developed in a heavily modified Wolfenstein 3D engine and brought innovative concepts…
The Vita has proven itself to be a powerful handheld with its cross-buy function, allowing fans with both a PS3 and a Vita to play the same game across both platforms without having to buy the game twice. Not only that, but it has also received ports of existing PS3 games and has shown – for the most part – that it has no problem running those titles. As we have seen with the recent release of the Jak and Daxter…
I’m either deaf of blind, because I never heard or read that the Joe Danger series was coming to Steam – it just suddenly arrived. Not that I have a problem with that, as the Joe Danger games are brilliant little gems of enjoyment packed into a digital download, and if you never played them on console or just what to experience the games again with a little added bonus, then the bundle on Steam that goes for a tasty…
The whole reason why I noticed Time and Eternity (or Toki Towa as I knew it before it was announced for a Western release) was because of the vivid and interesting art style. It’s different from the norm, even when RPGs go with the cel-shaded style to give it an anime vibe; it’s never been as anime as Time and Eternity demonstrates, with its gorgeous hand-drawn characters. But what lies beneath this beauty is a game…
I first discovered the Dynasty Warriors franchise through Dynasty Warriors 4 . It was one of my first imported games from America (I had an imported PS2 because I wanted to play Suikoden III at the time), and I was in love with the open-scale battlefield and the amount of soldiers you could hack down. It managed to make the player feel like an over-powered battlelord that could only be touched by other battlelords.…
I am a huge fan of music and rhythm games, especially ones that seem to be far-fetched from the definition of “normal,” which is why some of my favourites include titles like Bust-a-Groove , Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan , and Gitaroo-Man . Knocking around on Steam is an indie title called Rush Bros. , a game that advertises itself as a “ pulse-pounding, music infused Platform Racing Game. ” We have had music fused into…
I jumped into the TrackMania series with TrackMania Sunrise , the second entry in the franchise. Sunrise was a great-looking game for its time, coming with the three environments of Island, Bay and Coast for me to experience. Environments are a key part of TrackMania : each one has its own appearance and vehicle with unique handling. I remember hating the Coast environment’s car, because it was a heavy piece of crap…
There’s no doubt that Telltale’s The Walking Dead was a smash hit last year. It sold in the millions and ended up being the studio’s biggest release ever. It wasn’t just the sales that Telltale had to be happy with, since the game was given waves of critical praise by the media. The Walking Dead won so many Game of the Year awards (also my own personal GOTY) that I remember losing count when trying to tally all the…
Read the full review Fans should not hesitate picking up The Walking Dead: 400 Days
Jack’s back – and no, I don’t mean the CTU agent made famous by Kiefer Sutherland. I mean Jack Keane, the hero from the game with the same name. The original Jack Keane was a 3D point-and-click adventure title with some family-friendly charm, due to its Indiana Jones inspiration crossed with a dose of Monkey Island ( remember the first game’s box art ?) salad dressing, but suffered from unfortunately poor…
I’ll be honest with everyone reading this review: I don’t know much about Van Helsing. The limited knowledge I have is that the character was created in Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel and is known for hunting down vampires and other monsters. Oh yeah… He was also played by Hugh Jackman in that okay Van Helsing film, but I couldn’t help but notice he was missing those hairy sideburns and was sorely lacking adamantium in…
Read the full review The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing
Looking back at the huge catalogue of racing games that came out in the 7 th generation of console gaming, I would say that Codemasters’ original GRID was certainly up there as one of my favourites. GRID was filled with variety and excitement, and it ended up being an addictive track race that looked gorgeous at its time of release. We must not forget that GRID was solely responsible for the fantastic idea of being…
After the reveal of The Last of Us and hearing that the extremely talented people at Naughty Dog were behind this new IP, I was never going to be concerned if this was going to be a decent game. Just look at the studio’s history and you can see that quality is something they have refined, from Crash Bandicoot , Jak and Daxter to their latest Indiana Jones-esque trilogy of the Uncharted franchise. All are great in…
It’s ironic that I am covering a game about memories when I had completely forgotten about the first reveal of Remember Me . It first surfaced back in 2011 at Germany’s GamesCom show, where it was teased as “Adrift” and targeted as a PS3 exclusive until Sony let go of the game, due to the newly-formed French studio, Dontnod, having creative disagreements with the Japanese corporation. It wasn’t till GamesCom 2012…
The foundation of the story is one Jeremiah Hazelnut’s inescapable adventure as a magician’s apprentice into the wonderful world of magic. After summoning a humanoid rabbit named Marquis de Hoto, Jeremiah is whisked away to a place called Mousewood to get his induction as an apprentice. All doesn’t seem right, and trouble begins to brew soon after a pesky illusionist begins creating problems for the habitants of…
This may sound like a stereotypical male, but man, I love explosions. Thankfully, loving explosions won’t get me into trouble in a virtual world. If there was one period that promoted the enjoyment of explosions, it was most likely the 80s. We’ve had a bit of a resurgence with explosive action flicks, with the likes of The Expendables , The A-Team and Predators all tapping into peoples’ enjoyment of such…
Sony’s Vita is still crying for that game to signal a rebirth. The Vita hasn’t hit its stride and Sony bizarrely hasn’t gone into panic mode yet, something Nintendo did when the 3DS was lacking momentum after its release, pumping out quality games to get people interested in the system. This is something Sony needs to do. Sure, some games are good on the Vita , and one of them, Persona 4 Golden , is one of the best…
Metro 2033 was a beautiful looking first-person shooter that imply oozed atmosphere. The mysterious setting of post-apocalyptic Russia won me over, sticking most of the action in gloomy underground tunnels, where seeing the surface in the game was a luxury full of the weird and wonderful. Players didn’t know what to expect from the game, immersing us with its world and unanswered questions of monsters and “the dark…
Last year’s release of the once- 3DS -exclusive Resident Evil: Revelations was one of my favourite games for the system. Looking back, 2012 wasn’t exactly the best year for the franchise in terms of quality or the games upholding the heritage of the series, with such titles as Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City , Resident Evil 6 and the HD release of the Chronicles series all coming out. Some would argue Capcom…
When Ubisoft announced the ManiaPlanet platform at its E3 2010 press conference and at the same time revealed two titles that would join with TrackMania 2 in the Mania family, these being ShootMania and QuestMania , I was full of excitement. I am an avid fan of the TrackMania franchise, not only because the games’ themselves are fantastic, but also because Nadeo created a self-contained environment that allowed…
I have a soft spot for the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre. It started way back on the Super Nintendo and the Sega Mega Drive with my love for – in my eyes, two of the best entries in the genre – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time and Streets of Rage 2 . Modern day gaming hasn’t been kind to the genre, with most attempts to capture the nostalgia ending up being shallow and boring. The occasional quality…
In an industry that likes to shout out about making things bigger, improving mechanics to make games better or coming up with an innovative idea, it’s highly amusing that the sequel to 2011’s rather popular Dead Island seems to throw away the concept of a sequel and return with a game that is amazingly identical to the first. After playing through Dead Island: Riptide , I can see why the game was not given the…
Last year’s Dragon’s Dogma was a huge surprise for me. I had not paid much attention to the title, but due to my inherent love of role-playing games, I simply had to check it out upon its release. Lo and behold, it ended up being one of the best games of 2012 and made it into my personal top ten of the year list. There was much to love about the game, from the feeling of adventure to the quality combat mechanics…
The Monster Hunter franchise is one of the more polarising games when considering the differences in tastes of the Japanese and Western video game market. There are a multitude of reasons about why it is so popular in the East compared to the first-person shooter fuelled market of the West, but one issue that I can speak about is that fans of the series have had a painful wait for this next instalment to arrive in…
If there is one thing that bothers me when it comes to living in the UK, it’s the late releases of RPGs. Before the 3DS arrived, I was happy to import the vast amount of DS RPGs that were released across the shore in America. The DS was region-free, so I had nothing stopping me but my bank balance to ship these titles to my home and play them. Sadly, I cannot do that now, because Nintendo decided to lock the 3DS for…
Read the full review Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked
