RPS Feature It's changed, man
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
No Man’s Sky has changed a great deal since the initial release, switching from a pure, lonely exploration experience to a game with base building, harder survival-based modes, rudimentary multiplayer and a lot more. I still prefer that original lonely exploration, though. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature "Gotta move quickly!"
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
The famous blue forest animal is back with a new game. But true Sonick fans will never forget his first adventure, in which he raced across freshly cut lawns and battled the evil Dr Robot Nick. That villain has since changed and developed over time into the largely sympathetic character of Mr Eggman. Not only has he been given motivation and depth, he has become a complicated father figure to Sonec, not to mention loyal confidante to Knuckle, the red hedge hog.
But these modern interpretations have lost some of what made our azure anti-hero so compelling. For me, you can only find that pure feeling of speed, terror and heartache in the original. The one, the only: Sonnic The HedgeHogg. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Stealth playground
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Sam Fisher, Sam Fisher, where are you, Sam Fisher. Now that Hideo Kojima has left Konami and Konami appear uninterested in returning to the series outside multiplayer spin-offs and pachinko machines, Ubisoft’s absent neck-snapper seems the last best hope of getting a new open world stealth game like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site]. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature A very particular place
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I’ve a love/not-hate-but-something-gentler-in-the-general-ballpark-of-disappointment relationship with Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, The Chinese Room’s follow-up to Dear Esther. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Slapstick sadboys
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Inside [official site] is a masterpiece. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Road tip
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
The Crew [official site] isn’t a great racing game. The car handling of this open world “MMO racer” isn’t great, there’s UI vomited at you from every corner of the screen, and it launched with so many problems that we never actually gave it a full review. It annoyed John a lot. But Ubisoft have this thing they do. Step 1: Release a mediocre game. Step 2: Make one hundred sequels of it. Thus, The Crew 2. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature N.b. in-game they're called 'Tinies'
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
No sniggering at the back, please. This is/was a mid-90s puzzle-platformer starring a group of big-footed fuzzballs with special powers that differed depending on the colour of their fur. It was irritating and it was ingenious in equal parts, and I can almost imagine the colour-shifting-based puzzling and grappling hooks and wall-chomping working well now. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature The real deal
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Men Of War should be the king of Steam even today. A sort of sandbox World War II strategy game with a vast range of possibilities, from repairing and then hijacking broken tanks to stealing hats from downed enemies for added armour and any number of stealth and/or combat options, it is in many ways The Dream. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Trot along
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
A long time ago, deep in the cyberyear 2000, came a turn-based multiplayer war game called Hogs of War [Steam page]. It was essentially Worms in 3D, with pigs. But whereas Worms spawned an undying horde of sequels, to the extent that the franchise is now a bonafide industry joke that nobody knows how to address, Hogs of War never saw a sequel. Perhaps it’s just as well, fond as it was of puerile humour and cheap national stereotypes. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature I wish it was 6 hours long
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I was put off from playing Mafia 3 [official site] by John’s thorough review, which told tales of bugs, bad AI, repetitive mission design and more design flaws. But then a few people I respect kept praising it, for its supposedly exciting combat and its more-ish missions. I finally gave it a try a few weeks ago. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature The Dark Souls of its day?
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Quite possibly the videogame I’ve put the most hours into without seeing more than a couple of levels. The Bitmap Brothers’ Greek mythology-themed (but only in the loosest possible sense) action-platformer was exacting and unforgiving, dirty and brutal in a way that colourful peers like Mario and Sonic were not. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Robot/human buddy comedy
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Titanfall 2 [official site] changes little of the parkour-and-mechs formula from the first game, but it employs that formula within a singleplayer mode for the first time. It’s a brilliant level design showcase. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Mechs + parkour
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Titanfall [official site] found ways to marry the hitscan weapons and low time-to-kill combat of military shooters with the kinetic, frenetic fighting of Quake and Unreal Tournament. Those ways were called “parkour” and “mechs”. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Passport, passepartout
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
80 Days [official site] is a great travel game. I don’t mean it’s a good game about a journey (although it is that). I mean it’s excellent to play while on a journey of your own. On a plane, ferry, train, rickety bus. Observant folks might point out the absurdity of absorbing yourself in a tiny screen and its navy facsimile of wanderlust while the real world and its sights pass you by. Well played, observant people. But sometimes you look out the porthole and it’s just 100% precipitation. What then? Read a book? Nah, go to Siberia on a steampunk blimp. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Tanks for listening
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
In my earliest days of video game reporting, I witnessed the absurdity of a tank selling soap. Adult robot male and one-time editor of this website, Jim Rossingnol, thought it would be interesting to our readership if he sent an underprepared junior writer to a tank festival in Dorset, England, where Belarussian developer Wargaming had set up a dark shack full of computers running their free-to-play warfare game World of Tanks [official site]. Two months later, I was in a giant hangar in Kubinka, Russia, wondering what I had done to either merit or deserve the honour or dishonour of being surrounded by decommissioned Soviet war machines. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Wolf Whistle
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
It was all about the lizard kicking that head across the screen. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Get a grip, pal.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Space Quest IV is really, really funny. No, I’m not wrong about this! Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Laura Who?
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Because I haven’t. And I have absolutely no idea how or why that is. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Adam's Kitchen Nightmares
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Overcooked [official site] is a silly, funny, joyous game about cooperative cooking. Each player handles their own area of the kitchen, or works at specific tasks, and instructions or calls for help are passed back and forth as the orders pile up. And then the dirty dishes pile up, and somebody burns the soup, and then the counters slide across the room because the boat has hit rough waters, and why are we on a boat, and will you please stop burning the soup you are the worst chef ever and I hate you.
RPS Feature Free hugs
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I have played Dropsy but sometimes I feel like I didn’t play it at all. It’s a peculiar game and it put me into a peculiar state of mind.
