Posts tagged “retrospective”

Picture Cthulhu and his tentacled cohorts, dark and dreaming beneath the waves. H.P. Lovecraft’s crooked astral vistas - wrought out of cosmic despair, fear of the unknown, and his racism - have saturated games for better and worse. As hypnotic as his nightmare visions are, the same tropes regurgitated at face value have become dry and tired. It’s been done, and it’s steeped in its…

Tagged with feature, retrospective, Anchorhead, Call of Cthulhu, The Sinking City.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection will make its way to PC soon, bringing the whole Halo series to this lovely platform. While I can't wait, let's be honest: the best one has been on PC this whole time. Halo: Combat Evolved hasn't been bettered by follow-up installments, but the reasons for that are tricky to nail down. It popularised many things in first-person shooters, such…

Tagged with Bungie, feature, Gearbox Software, Microsoft Game Studios, retrospective, Halo.

Is Thief: The Dark Project the best game ever? If Thief II isn't, then it definitely is. With its twentieth birthday arriving today, I've been replaying the original sneak 'em up to see if it still holds up (of course it does), and whether my memory of it stands up to reality (it's way better than I remembered).

Tagged with feature, Looking Glass, retrospective, Thief.

Every year, Tumblr publishes its Year in Review, an annual summary of the biggest, hippest fandoms on the site. In 2013, the “most popular games” list included big names like Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Zelda and Mass Effect. But the sixth one was a small indie game called OFF.

Tagged with feature, retrospective, unproductive fun time, OFF.

New Testaments is a monthly column in which Amr Al-Aaser presents an overlooked modern game and explicates its best ideas. After several years trapped in a Tetris licensing hell, Puyo Puyo Tetris finally appeared on PC earlier this year. Developed by Sonic Team, the game is a reflection of the long histories of both franchises. Each game began quietly as a PC title, evolving through…

Tagged with feature, New Testaments, retrospective, Sonic Team, Puyo Puyo Tetris.

New Testaments is a new monthly column in which Amr Al-Aaser presents an overlooked modern game and explicates its best ideas. Nioh is the kind of game that this column exists for. On release it quickly saw itself buried beneath the comparisons to Dark Souls, praised for the ways it imitated the series, and criticised for its failings in repeating From Software's successes. But while…

Tagged with feature, New Testaments, retrospective, Team Ninja, Nioh.

New Testaments is a monthly retrospective in which Amr Al-Aaser presents an overlooked modern game and champions its best ideas. Sonic the Hedgehog might be fast, but he’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of top tier arcade racers. So it might catch you by surprise to find out that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed manages to not only…

Tagged with feature, New Testaments, retrospective, Sega, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Sumo Digital.

I don’t think many will mourn the death of Super Monday Night Combat. Uber Entertainment’s free-to-play follow-up to XBLA smash Monday Night Combat was something of a hidden gem, albeit one with its die-hard fans. It still sits at the top of my Steam most-played list, and I promise this piece isn’t just an excuse for dumping over a thousand hours in a game few…

Tagged with feature, Monday Night Combat, retrospective, Uber Entertainment, Super Monday Night Combat.

Like your first love, or your first hangover, you never really forget your first video game. You know the one. The game you were first obsessed by. The game you gushed about to extremely bored friends cornered in the soft play area. For me, one of my earliest memories is playing Sierra’s 1988 pixelated wonderland, King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

Tagged with feature, retrospective, King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

Videogames aren't much for quiet. They trend towards spectacle, to grandiose statements of scale, and the intense catharsis of violence. And sometimes that means we won’t hear a message unless its shouted at us, unless it roars above the noise ever present in this space. We prefer meaning to be blunt and dramatic. So it’s easy to see how Even The Ocean, the second game…

Tagged with Analgesic Productions, feature, retrospective, review, Even The Ocean.

Games often feel doomed to be defined either by the games they're inspired by, or the games they go on to inspire. After all, this is a space where certain games loom so large that we've named entire genres after them. So it can be tough to sneak out of the "x meets y" framework we use to describe games. Spark the Electric Jester wears…

Tagged with feature, Feperd Games, retrospective, Spark the Electric Jester.

Returning to Darksiders II [official site] nearly five years after I first reviewed it, for a worrying time I wondered what on Earth I'd been on about. I remember absolutely loving the game, and writing a rave review back in 2012, so why was I struggling to even want to carry on in the first hour? It turns out, it just has a really dull…

Tagged with feature, retrospective, THQ Nordic, Darksiders II, Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition.

Every game released before 2015 is being destroyed. We only have time to rescue one game from each year. Not those you’ve played to death, or the classics that the industry has already learned from. We’re going to select the games that still have more to give. These are the Saved Games. There’s a moment just seconds into Interstate ‘76’s intro cinematic that I think…

Tagged with Activision, retrospective, Saved Games, Interstate '76.

Every game released before 2015 is being destroyed. We only have time to rescue one game from each year. Not those you’ve played to death, or the classics that the industry has already learned from. We’re going to select the games that still have more to give. These are the Saved Games. Deadly Premonition, in many respects, is one of the worst games I’ve ever…

Tagged with feature, retrospective, Saved Games, swery, Deadly Premonition.

Two hostages. One building. Five government guards with reinforcements waiting in the wings. In most games, I'd try to sneak in with a silenced rifle, methodically popping enemies in the head one-by-one. But in Red Faction: Guerrilla, I don't even have a gun in my inventory, let alone a silenced one. What I have instead are explosives. Lots of explosives. I rig five charges at…

Tagged with feature, retrospective, THQ, volition, red faction: guerilla.

What does it take to keep a game alive for 27 years? Stunts, released by Distinctive Software in 1990, is a brutally unforgiving racing game. In glorious 640x480 resolution, it boasts 3D graphics in bold primary colours, a physics engine (that will regularly destroy your car), and a track editor. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, it was pretty cutting edge. But what…

Tagged with Distinctive Software, feature, Inc, retrospective, Stunts.

The shadows on the wall tell me they’re coming. Two of them, both with assault rifles swinging idly at their hips. If I’m quick enough, I’m sure I can take them both out in one go. I peek out of cover as they round the corner, and let my stake gun sing, pinning the first enemy to the wall with 10mm steel projectiles. But at…

Tagged with AI, feature, Monolith, retrospective, F.E.A.R..

In 1998, Bullfrog released Populous: The Beginning, a quirky RTS sequel to the legendary Populous series of god games, to middling reviews. It ‘[wa]sn’t really Populous’ (Ron Dulin, GameSpot). It was ‘incredibly entertaining for about two weeks’ (Trent Ward, IGN). EA absorbed Bullfrog in 2001, and shut down the game’s multiplayer server in 2004. And that was that. So how come there’s still an active…

Tagged with Bullfrog, EA, feature, retrospective, Populous: The Beginning.

Raised by screens is an intermittent autobiography, structured around the PC games I played in my youth. Most instalments are currently only available to RPS subscribers, but I shall compile them somewhere once the series reaches its eventual end. Some spoilers for Planescape: Torment's ending follow. Too many games now, too many websites, too much happening each and every day. I mean only 'too much…

Tagged with Black Isle Studios, feature, Raised By Screens, retrospective, Planescape: Torment.

There's no better way to cause trouble than to talk about 'firsts'. Say for instance that King's Quest IV featured the first female adventure character, and you're probably going to be drowned out by some pedant waving a copy of Infocom's Plundered Hearts in your face. That pedant may even be me. Of course, that's nothing compared to the folly of calling, say, Everquest the…

Tagged with feature, ImagiNation Network, LucasArts, MMO, MMORPG, NeoHabitat, retrospective, RPG, Sierra, The Realm Online, The RPG Scrollbars, Habitat.