Must be a British Summer
By John Walker on May 20th, 2013.
Grim Dawn may still be a good few months away (currently perhaps at the end of August), but I’ve had my hands on some early alpha code to get an impression of this furrow-browed, grimly serious action RPG from the former Titan Quest developers. You can see my thoughts below.
Shinobis into a Hokage
By John Walker on May 9th, 2013.
It’s foolish to try to predict a hit.
I cannot imagine a world in which Rogue Legacy is not a hit.
There’s no question that Rogue Legacy owes a massive amount to Spelunky. But crucially, it’s an evolution of the type of game, not a mimic, a festival of completely original ideas on top of a familiar roguelike platformer mechanic. In each new game a castle (and later tower, forest and dungeon) is procedurally generated in gorgeous 2D pixel art, into which your brave hero must venture, gathering gold, blueprints and bonus items, seeing how far he or she can reach before inevitable death. But rather than starting again from scratch, here every death is met with progress.
Stronger than Mensa?
By Adam Smith on May 1st, 2013.
A happy coincidence. I had recently installed Grid, having never played it before and feeling a craving for velocity. I’d gently eased myself into the world of cars wot drift when Codemasters appeared in my inbox, offering a preview code for the sequel. Before playing Grid, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time with any racing game for a couple of years, but the series seems to be pitched at those, like me, who want something more complex than a kart game but less intricate than a sim. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre – and we’re off.
!oooommmalbaK
By Craig Pearson on April 22nd, 2013.
Sometimes this is what happens when you ask a Craig to play a preview version of Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger.
*spit*
WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah Wah Wahhhhhh WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah Wah Wahhhhhh WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah WhuWhuWahhhhh WaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaa Wah Waaaaaaaaah.
*clang*
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CLICK CLICK BOOM
By Craig Pearson on April 16th, 2013.
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot follows mediocre Rock band Saliva’s game design document: “Click Click Boom”. Every dungeon crawler does that, though. You click, things go boom, and Saliva make a tiny amount of royalty money to buy penny mixtures with. But then Epic Loot starts playing Starship’s “We Built This City” over the loudspeaker, and the entire game inverts, handing you trowels and hammers.
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The Farcrythreening
By Craig Pearson on April 11th, 2013.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is stupid. It has a terrible story, one-dimensional characters, and there’s no emotional value in playing it whatsoever. I can’t even criticise it for all those things, because that’s everything Ubisoft wants the game to be. They think they’ve found a loophole in any criticism by deliberately aiming low. Hah! The joke’s on them! Blood Dragon is pretty good.
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Divinitiest: Divine Divsinity
By Adam Smith on March 28th, 2013.
“Can I steal from these market stalls?”
“Of course, but there are guards…”
“Can I lead monsters into the market and if I do will the guards attack them?”
“Of course, but…”
“Can I kill that chicken? Will the guards mind if I kill that chicken?”
I’m playing Original Sin with one of the people who is responsible for making Original Sin and I am trying to cause trouble.
The Scales of Justice
By Adam Smith on March 4th, 2013.
Divinity: Dragon Commander contains two distinct components and in just over an hour of playing, I found much to like in both. I’m not entirely sure that the parts combine in a particularly meaningful way, but the total package managed to surprise me more times in that hour than many games do in a week of playing. You may well expect one side of the game, if a fast-paced RTS revolving around dragons wearing jetpacks is ever truly expected, but it’s the remainder that inspires the strongest response.
“Are you into BDSM?” I ask
By Cara Ellison on February 14th, 2013.
We sent Cara Ellison to EA to play some Crysis 3. We would like to formally apologise to Crytek and EA for having sent Cara Ellison to play some Crysis 3. Here is why:
Winter Isn't Coming
By John Walker on February 11th, 2013.
Cryptic’s Neverwinter had its first beta weekend these last couple of days. I jumped in, rolled a young half-elf, and had a look around for a couple of days. With the game still without a fixed release date, there’s clearly still a lot of time for change. But as it stands, here are my hands-on impressions of the game so far.
Putting Falkirk on the map
By Cara Ellison on February 7th, 2013.
As SimCity nears release (March 8th in the UK), we sent natural born mayor Cara Ellison to sit down with the game for a day. She recreated inner-Scotland.
I dreamed of marching into EA HQ in a black pencil dress and high heels and Malcolm Tuckering all my consonants: “ALL RIGHT EA. RUIN MY CHILDHOOD. COME ON. RUIN IT.”
As it is, I stumbled into EA covered in doughnut crumbs wearing a bedraggled jumper dress and giant wooly socks and then squeaked “Hi I’m Cara hi can I see Simcity please.”
