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Feature: I'm glad you're happy
A grimly cheerful dystopia is one of the most popular game settings there is, beaten only by densely populated desert wastelands. (This is why grimly cheerful dystopias in densely populated desert wastelands are a sub-genre all on their own.) It's not hard to see the appeal for developers: it’s loads of fun to write, it allows for levity in an otherwise thoroughly grimdark scenario, and…
Feature: Dandy Glumgeons
Not liking a cute puzzler like Dandy Dungeon: Legend Of Brave Yamada is a bit like staring at a puppy with cold indifference. Puppies are great, conceptually. There is no other way to buy unconditional love. But puppies are flawed. Liking them means looking past their annoyances, finding their embarrassments endearing, and putting in a lot of hard work. I find DD's dungeons more dreary…
Feature: I'm a maniacal mech
I was not sold at first. The opening two hours of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries are, well, they're fine. Standard tutorials, taking you through the controls and basic concepts, plus some entirely standard "oh no the baddies killed the man, grr" plot business. I was wary, fearing it would be a forgettable linear fairground ride about Corporal Jack Magnum (I honestly can't remember my character's name)…
Feature: The Cowboy(s from hell) Game
Howdy pardner! Git yerself a mighty glug of moonshine and meet me down at Dysentery Dan’s place, ‘cause we’ve got ourselves a roundup to… oh. Wait. Wrong game. It’s the horses that threw me off, you see. I always associate them with cowboys, now. But this is not the Cowboy Game. This is Darksiders Genesis. Nevertheless, while this prequel spin-off to the hack-and-slash series is…
Feature: Needs a stool
I'm bad at liking old shooters, because I struggle to see through the ways they've been surpassed. Modern games look better. They feel better. They have bumslides. They are generally obliged to develop their protagonists into something more than a number and a helmet. These are all problems for the nine-year-old Halo: Reach, but I've ultimately enjoyed myself despite them. There is wisdom in the…
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…
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