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Feature: Creature creep
Please stay in your seats if, at times during this review, you notice a presence in the shadows. Don’t be alarmed, in fact, should you notice a silhouette wearing a suit and tie - he’s just here to make his influence known. And if he seems familiar, there's a good reason: the council of XCOM looms over Phoenix Point, and they won’t let you forget…
Feature: Wax on, drift off
Nothing better captures the magic of Shenmue III than its save files. On one line, the current date and time; above it, the date and time this particular save will whisk you back to. Because that’s what Shenmue is: time travel. The opportunity to visit a very specific moment in history. In the case of Shenmue III, China in the spring of 1987. Of course,…
Feature: Atelier is french for "adventure"
When I told a friend of mine that I was reviewing the latest entry in Gust’s long-running Atelier series, she remarked, “wait, which one of those fanservice-y JRPG games is that?” While I did assuage her fears that it was not, in fact, “the boob game” (that would be Senran Kagura), I can’t exactly fault her for her confusion. Atelier first came to Europe and…
Feature: Toilet horror
Bum-bo has to deal with a lot of crap. Sometimes that crap is very literal, sentient, and coming straight for him. Sometimes, the crap is still literal, but it's his tool and his shield. It fuels his nightmares, and his special abilities. It's his deuce in the hole. Crap jokes feel inevitable here, because The Legend Of Bum-Bo is a prequel to The Binding Of…
Feature: Shadows Jedi twice
Many of us don't want much thought from our warring among the stars. We merely want to spend a few days, brainlessly force-pushing stormtroopers into a bottomless pit. We want to be infantilsed and reassured by a cosy multi-million-dollar franchise. We want a kindly alien dockworker called Prouf to rock us to sleep in his big strong arms, and gurgle amusing words as shiny space…
Feature: "I hate Mondays"
I cannot say, in truth, that I played Garfield Kart Furious Racing. In the plainest terms, I would say I participated in it: I offered my own myopic contribution, alongside millions of others, to form the baroque gestalt of the work as a whole. Because GKFR, you see, is a collaborative effort - directed, certainly, by its developers at Artefacts Studio, but only comprehensible as…
Feature: I'll be whack
We erased Terminator: Resistance from history and reviewed what got made instead
The nicest thing I can say about Terminator: Resistance is that if a Terminator were sent back in time to wipe out its code, the timeline of gaming in general would almost certainly proceed unchanged. Confused by the apparent failure, Skynet would keep on sending Arnies back to delete it, unaware that the job was already done, and that its agents were just piling up…
Feature: I hope the furries are happy
For reasons unclear to me, detective work seems to be a popular choice for enterprising animals keen to enter the gig economy. Indeed, creatures of all kinds have been sleuthing it up recently - just this year we had the pleasure of meeting a Goat Detective, a Frog Detective and a Raccoon Detective, and we heard about the arrival of the Chicken Police. And now…
Feature: Call a somnambulance
It must be daunting, making a first person puzzle game about messing with physics. Do I even need to name the shadow looming over this whole genre? Superliminal is a short, linear showcase of puzzles built around the creative use of perspective. You're a volunteer, testing an experimental sleep therapy based on inducing dreams you can muck about in. Gentle, soothing jazz plinkles away in…
Feature: Embrace the octopus
The awesome destructive might and continent-shrinking mobility of a WW2 army came with strings. While an antique army could fragment at will and locust everything it needed from the countryside it passed through, its 1939-45 equivalent was an essentially indivisible organism, a tangle of dangerous tentacles emanating from a cumbersome organ-clump of vital support staff, equipment, and stores. The unmissable Unity of Command 2 recognises…
Feature: Bigger than before
Age Of Empires 2 is, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest real-time strategy game of all time. And with the release of Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, it’s… well, it’s still that. But now, there’s a lot more of it. It’s brilliant. Still, virtually every design decision its quality rests on was made twenty years ago, and what few changes have been to…
Feature: Make the hive look alive
I flew into a cobweb to see what would happen. There was a game in a magazine I had as a kid, you see, where you played as a spider. And if you caught a bee, you had to cut it loose in a panic before it could hurt you or damage your web. Here though, albeit seen from the other point of view, it's…
Feature:
I've played the first bundle of hours of the latest release from the Need For Speed sausage factory, Need For Speed: Heat. Enough to tell you what's new. The answer is: oh dear. Here are my thoughts.
Feature: How the west was fun
Reviewing Red Dead Redemption 2 a year after its console release is like happening upon a frontier homestead after it's been attacked by bandits. It’s a game that has been subjected to every take under the sun, and stripped to the bone by internet vultures; every last secret dug up, every mechanic scalped and scrutinised, until no magic remains. I, adopting the role of world-weary…
Feature: Not much to sea
I cruised through dozens of fights before disaster struck. A scuffle with a cultist saw my ship scuttled, thanks to me forgetting to man the water pumps. A foolish oversight, but I’d at least had the foresight to buy a lifeboat, which saved me and my crew from a quick and merciful death. The days dragged in that tiny boat, as we drifted in diminishing…
Feature: Head banger
I’m almost tempted to celebrate the appallingly named MO: Astray for not being a Metroidvania. I loves me some Metroiding, but it’s proved a real pleasure to play an action-platformer that focuses on continuous progression without a trace of backtracking. It’s especially a pleasure when it happens in a game as precisely designed as this.
Feature: Turn again
Manifold Garden has been described as a 3D puzzle game, but everyone who says that is wrong, because it is actually a horror game. Oh, it might be in disguise as a puzzle game. It has special doors and pressure pads, and you manoeuvre the right coloured blocks onto the right coloured things by walking up walls and changing the gravity and what have you.…
Feature: Beast mode
Planet Zoo is a game where you can build your own zoo. It’s buggy, intermittently opaque, frequently saccharine, and - barring an eleventh hour miracle - it’s my undisputed game of the year. Because here’s the thing: it’s a game where you can build your own zoo. And by thunder, it delivers on that promise. Usually, by the time I review a game - especially…
Feature: War is hell, if you haven't heard
Of course Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare has nothing interesting to say about war. Of course its guns feel good, and its explosions are many and impressive. Of course the multiplayer is essentially the same game we've been playing for over a decade, only prettier and in more flavours. Of course a part of me likes it, and of course part of me is jaded…
Feature: Other people, etc.
If you've played Oxenfree you probably already know a little of what to expect from Afterparty: a smart, walking--and--talking adventure game where optional speech bubbles appear above the characters' heads; naturalistic dialogue between characters whose relationships grow in complexity as the game goes on; some weird supernatural stuff. Afterparty does all these things, but Night School Studio's second outing also feels stronger and punchier --…
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