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Feature: Dummy horror
There’s something about mannequins that makes them such prime fodder for horror games. The dead-eyed stare sans pupils, the unnaturally rigid poses and angular elbows, and the perverse mimicry of human behaviour hurls them right into the trough of the uncanny valley. Like many horror staples, these are strategically placed to unnerve players and elicit a quick scare, with a plethora of games placing them…
Feature: Museum musings
With the possible exception of a well-chosen book, I reckon nothing complements a good vehicle simulator or digital wargame better than an apt museum. Prior commitments meant I couldn't spend International Museum Day surrounded by game-illuminating exhibits, but a few days later I made the short trip to a local museum knowing I'd return enthused and educated. Recently reopened after a 2.6 million pound revamp,…
Feature: Plagued with difficulty
Pathologic 2 is cursed. And me too, because I’m saddled with reviewing the follow-up to a cult favourite. Pathologic was a first-person plague doctor simulator that was badly broken and refreshingly unusual. Depending on your sensibilities, you’ll be glad to learn that this reboot is also a godforsaken mess littered with interesting ideas, none of which will be appreciated because it is hobbled by a…
Feature: Worth a look
I can't think of another game that has so quickly made me care so much. I'm staring at Emma Fisher, adrift in zero gravity after (another) unknown calamity has buckled our space station and briefly disabled my camera feed. I'm looking at what might be a floating corpse, aghast at the idea that I'm responsible for it. She isn't moving. She isn't telling me what…
Feature: The reviewening
God does not play dice with the universe, I once read on a Mini Milk stick, but Thea 2’s pantheon of Slavic-inspired deities seem well up for a game of cards. You don’t play as a mortal in this hybrid strategy role-playing game, but an all-powerful entity guiding the life of a hapless schmo in their quest from wanderer to chosen hero of a blossoming…
Feature: Quaid, start the reactor
I’m trapped on Mars, and it’s getting cold. Despite the reflective sheeting I’ve hung up to insulate my workspace, night has long since fallen, and the heat is leaching from the glass walls. I’m eating boiled potatoes yet again, and I miss my family like crazy. But there’s no way I can see them again, until I’ve solved a lot of problems So I put…
Feature: Where Total War meets Crusader Kings
My eldest son died horribly at the Battle of Yangzhou in 198 CE. Cao Ang led a small retinue in General Xiahou Yuan’s army. Xiahou’s army was the best I had: disciplined troops, carefully selected and commanded by heroes. At Yangzhou they were mauled by a massive army of peasant rebels led by the Yellow Turban He Yi. My defeated army escaped, but He Yi…
Feature: "Tarty Manymango"
Watson Whoopinkoff and Flitwick Mcdimbledick are in an altercation. They're wearing the same (mostly lack of) clothes, and have both taken affront to this. We're in a particularly scummy part of a particularly scummy town, where nobody around pays them much mind. Except me. I stop and watch as insults escalate, until Mcdimble suggests Whoopy stick the robot hand he's holding somewhere untoward. Whoopy knocks…
Feature: Forsooth, it's good
Dramatic irony: the videogame. That’s basically what you’ve got in Astrologaster. It’s a choose-your-own-tragicomedy set in Elizabethan England, where you play an astrologist and “doctor of physik” called Simon Forman, who gives his patients counsel as well as tinctures. Both his advice and potions are of questionable quality. It’s a story reminiscent of Blackadder, dripping with sarcasm, theatrical and funny. At times it doubles up…
Feature: O' both your houses!
I am famously not a fan of children in video games, because I think they mostly dead-eyed haunted dolls that are used as cheap, empty receptacles for player empathy. I don’t even like Clementine in The Walking Dead. Yes, I am a monster, etc. I tell you this so you understand how cute Hugo in A Plague Tale: Innocence must be for me to love…
Feature: Kiryu-chaaaaaaan!
The first thing you do in Yakuza Kiwami 2 is walk through a graveyard. As caring dad hero, Kiryu, you’re visiting the resting place of those who died at the end of the previous game. It’s a sombre moment, a cemetery visit with your adoptive daughter to pay respects to loved ones killed in terrible circumstances. You bow your head and inspect the graves. Then…
Feature: Cat eggs and brute grease
I’ve spent a while trying to think my way round this, but there’s no way I can talk about Rise Of Industry without discussing its intro cinematic. Or more specifically, the voice that narrates it. “For an enterprising tycoon,” it smarms, as dawn breaks over a sleepy town swaddled in polygonal pine forest, “each new day brings new opportunities in your quest for success.” It’s…
Feature: Love cuts deep
I'm in love with Mordhau. If I described it as “Chivalry, but there's a button to hold your sword wrong”, I would be both accurate and unjustly reductive. I'd also be giving it a huge compliment, because before last Monday Chivalry was the best multiplayer sword ‘em up in existence. Now Mordhau isn't just that. It's one of the best games in existence, full stop.
Feature: WW1 deserves better than 11-11 Memories Retold
Let's call them “poppies”, the eye-catching, ephemeral moments in 11-11 Memories Retold when you glimpse the brave, powerful game it isn't but could have been. One of the tallest poppies grows from shell-scarified sod about halfway through this big budget, big name 2018 adventure game. In the skin of Kurt, one of the two protagonists, you find yourself in a sprawling German war cemetery, searching…
Feature: Factor 50 thick
Here is a story. Daedalus was a brilliant inventor, and designed the maze that kept the bloodthirsty Minotaur captive, but he and his son Icarus were themselves both kept as prisoners of King Minos on Crete, so that nobody would learn the secret of the Minotaur's labyrinth. Eventually, Daedalus built wings from feathers and wax, so that he and Icarus could fly to freedom, but…
Feature: When it comes to the krunch
It’s got blood and you punch people. There, review over. I sometimes wish this job was as straightforward as that. Mortal Kombat 11 is a biff ‘em up of brutal strength and quick reflexes. It has a bin lorry’s worth of microtransaction trash heaped on top of it, the PC version is lagging behind the console version as regards patches, and it was made at…
Feature: Queen of the second screen
This is a public service announcement: if you find yourself on the western edge of the Llŷn Peninsula in Wales anytime soon on the hunt for blackberries, don’t bother - I’ve picked them all. Turns out there’s a twofold satisfaction to foraging that makes it difficult to stop. First there’s the search: looking high and low for collectibles, pushing your body further into the thicket,…
Feature: Jonesing for better
[To the tune of Indiana Jones.] Dun da da da / Dun da-da / There’s some nazis / In a jeep, oh no / And a boulder / Run away / Give my heart back / It’s my favourite organ. Ah, a classic theme for a classic series. And yet, the last Indiana Jones game I remember playing was a highly irritating Super Star Wars…
Feature: With a little help from Ghoastus the Roman ghost
For me, one of the perennial pleasures in PC gaming is clicking ‘new game’ on a fresh Paradox grand strategy game, and having that big ol’ map unrolled before me, freighted with promise and overwhelming complexity. If you’ve not played one of these before - and for all its glories, Imperator: Rome is very much an iteration of the formula established by Europa Universalis in…
Feature: Into The Blue Again
You know what? Sometimes I'm just in the mood for a straightforward point-and-click adventure game. And while I'll admit I thought the opening of Whispers Of A Machine suggested this was going to be a big twist on the format, and was pretty thrilled by where it suggested it might be going, I'm actually all good with how clear-cut it eventually felt to play. Because…
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