Intro: Portal was a ground breaking game when Valve released it back in 2007, tucked away in the tail-end of The Orange Box compilation. It practically invented the modern first person puzzle game, notably by making something other than killing the focus of the first person gameplay. Since then, many pretenders...
Intro: Back in the days when analogue controllers were first becoming widely available for consoles, primarily with the advent of the Dual Shock pad for the PS1, I remember thinking precise controls for top down games would work really well. Surprisingly, over the years, not...
Intro Decay is a game which first launched a number of years ago on the Xbox 360, under the XBLIG marketplace - the equivalent of the Creators Collection on Xbox One. It was released in four parts for $3 each, with the first being $1, and was something of a diamond in the rough at the time, due to its...
Intro Welcome to a world where death is a way of life. A world where mega corporations, run by the greedy self-serving Glukkons, strip the land of it’s resources in the name of profit. A world where huge factories dominate the skyline, pumping black smoke into the air as the enslaved ’employees’ –...
Intro …Wow; what an experience. The last few hours of Lifeless Planet left me breathless – frightened, intrepid and isolated in a truly foreign environment, manipulating alien machinery with no idea of what the outcome would be. Pushing on and on and on towards an unknown goal, the...
Intro Milestone were just starting to hit their stride in the World Rally Championship series, when Big Ben Interactive took on the (at the time) significantly less talented developer Kylotonn and handed the reins to them. Not one to rest on their laurels, Milestone set to town working on Sebastian Loeb Rally...
Intro For some people, choosing to play a game about farming would be akin to the rest of us playing a game about sitting bored witless in an office cubicle for eight hours a day. For those of us who aren’t blessed with the kind of job satisfaction you can only get by breaking your back 24/7 and giving most of your profits to Tesco, we have digital...
Intro Super Mutant Alien Assault sounds like a 65 pence XBLIG which nobody notices. A title like that brings to mind the kind of game which would pass so low under the radar, Lockheed Martin would be snaffling away the technology for a new generation of stealth aircraft. It sounds crap. But it isn't. Review After selecting a...
Oh wow. What a horrible experience! First, the good stuff: Props for getting a Unity 3D game to run smoothly at all times. Also, chapter 1 - with it's 1000gs - is free. No ads - free. Now, the rest: A torturous "adventure" game which sees you playing a young would-be pirate child, running around a beach covered in Unity stock asset...
Intro Oh my good lord. Review This is the third game in a 'trilogy' of pinball tables created by Shine Research. Somehow, against all odds, the developer has managed to take it's buggy, barely working, bland, amateur and excruciatingly painful template and make it even worse than their previous 1/10 efforts. Let's forget for a moment that these pinball tables are...
Intro On a Roll 3D is the latest re-release of a simple yet entertaining platformer, which first appeared back on the Xbox Live Indie Games service on the Xbox 360. Finding a genuinely good game was like searching for a needle in a haystack back on XBLIG, and for every Total Miner or Gateways, there was a dozen 'massage' apps or avatar...
Intro Waking in a storm in the middle of an ocean with no memory of how he got there, is The Man. Frantically he scours the horizon, bewildered he searches his mind; both are a sea of confusion. Then he sees the light. It pierces the blackness from an opening in the base of a colossal tower, right there where he's stranded, beckoning him inside....
Intro I deftly slip down the side of the garage and make my way towards the back door, evading the two cameras sweeping the front lawn. My mark tonight is a large, detached house on the outskirts of Twin Lakes, the overt security presence behaving as anything but a deterrent. Confident of a good haul, it will make...
Today I'm reviewing Tetsumo Party. Let's get a big end-of-review spoiler out of the way, before I go in depth with a professional, fair and unbiased analysis of this recent Xbox One release: I fucking hated every second I spent playing this hollow ugly shell of a game, which I am ashamed to have paid money for. With that out of the way, I'll explain my time...
Intro The black roller blind soaks up most of the sun's rays as I tug it down from it's furled position above the cab. Opening my drivers side window, the sounds of everyday rural life drown out the chatting passengers, a welcome break from their shared shock over revelations in the latest soap opera cliffhanger. I indicate left, check my mirror and wait for...
For less than a fiver you get a 2d platformer and both expansion dungeons, disguised as a forgotten retro game. It is retro in style, but contrary to the comedic 'history' displayed on the title menu, the earliest release was on the Switch last year. As the titular Ms Temple, make your way through flick screen rooms collecting coins and gems in order...
Well of course this isn't the ultimate in 2D racing. If it was, it wouldn't need to claim as such in the title, which is the kind of name you come up with when you've just completed your first video game and you think you're the next Cliffy B. As a top down racer which lets you drive everything from forklifts to Formula 1 - sorry, A - cars, It's...
Note: This game has one unobtainable achievement! Valhalla Hills describes itself as a 'classic build up game', in the style of The Settlers. The premise is simple enough: You have an ever expanding Viking civilisation, made of individually named vikings trying to earn enough honour to enter Valhalla, the hall of slain warriors, and live there under the...
For those of you of a certain age, I know what you're thinking: Virtua Racer for a new generation! Just like the Mega CD promised all those years ago, it's the arcade in your bedroom! Virtua Racer was good, but it was always overshadowed by Daytona USA in my book. It looked better, played better, and was...
For the first few hours of open world, top-down RPG 9th Dawn III, I was bouncing along, clubbing rats, opening chests, pulling levers and proving my bravery to the citizens of the few towns above ground. I was having fun, albeit in a simplistic way, and the game felt a little more like previous hack n slash release Throne...
Call of the Sea is a first person adventure puzzle hybrid, in the style of Myst, Obduction, Schizm etc. It's played at a slow pace as you explore a diverse and beautiful island 74 miles off the coast of Tahiti in Polynesia. You explore this island as Norah Everhart, a 1930s American who has come here searching for...
Pros: It's a fiver you didn't spend at McDonald's. You're not dead. Cons: It's a fiver you could have spent on moist toilet tissue. It's only "chapter 1". Plot Dad disappears one night following dinner, after telling family "I discovered something amazing that's going to change the world, a few years back". He was a rocket scientist /...
Introduction "Innocence is alive" the intro sings to me, in Japanese, whilst filling the screen with busty Waifus. I'm sure it is, but certainly not here - the introduction sequence can't even mention the land is suffering from an epic plague you have to investigate without showing a girl too-tightly wrapped in not enough bandages. I don't think...
Eastasiasoft have been knocking it out of the park recently with their publication choices. Trigger Witch was an unexpected surprise, and now this. Let me get this out the way upfront: Blitz Breaker is the best high-speed die-and-try-again platformer you can buy at this price point. A platformer at heart, Blitz Breaker is a little different from...
Intro Your helmet drowns out the sounds of the crowd and the engines of the other riders as the lights begin their countdown. You squeeze the clutch and rotate the throttle just enough to keep the revs in the sweet spot - the razor's edge between a slow start and a cloud of wheel spin. It's go time! Tearing up the tarmac, you lean forward into the bike, pushing the...