To some, the name Indiana Jones conjures up images first and foremost of a professor, a genius of deciphering history and unlocking the mysteries of the ancient world. Others, bluntly, think of action: of whip cracking, and shooting swordsmen rather than engaging in one-on-one duels - or in battering a nazi’s head in atop a speeding tank. Both are right. Indy is both of those things. Which makes video games a problem.
]]>There's not been a game that nails the feeling of loneliness like Stalker 2. A vast and challenging open world sci-fi RPG from GSC Game World, it stands alone in its ambitious exploration of a perilous, ruined landscape plagued by greed and unflinching peril. A theme park to some and a fresh hell for others, Stalker 2 excellently portrays the grim reality of trying to carve a life out of struggle, wrestling with the weird and the paranormal.
]]>Something I've always appreciated about Life is Strange as a franchise is its quiet versatility. The elevator pitch would describe it as a choose-your-own-adventure series about superheroes in modern America, sure, but there's room within that brief outline to tell all sorts of different stories. Every Life is Strange game typically contains some greater or lesser degree of mystery, thriller, sci-fi, and romance; but every new entry adjusts the balance to create something subtly unlike what's come before.
]]>Call of Duty is stuck in this weird spot of being both an industry-shaking success year after year that fails to completely please its core player base time and again. This year, it feels like Treyarch and Raven have gotten as close as possible to recapturing the 'lost magic' of the PS3/360 era while also improving on the unyielding formula across Black Ops 6's three modes in meaningful ways.
]]>Dragon Age: The Veilguard features one of the most intricate, interesting, and exciting skill systems I’ve seen deployed in an action-driven RPG in years. Its character progression threads the needle better than most of its rivals, offering up a depth of progression with game-breaking potential that’s meant to evoke the feeling of the enormous options found in the crunchy numbers-led ‘CRPGs’ of old.
]]>Spooky season is well under way following the successful launch of the Silent Hill 2 remake, but fans of survival horror have more to look forward to this month with the release of Cozy Game Pals’ Fear the Spotlight. The first of multiple projects that Blumhouse Games has plans to publish, Fear the Spotlight is a suitably creepy, teen-slasher style romp that — while not all that scary for the most part — is a strong start for the publisher’s upcoming slate of games.
]]>Sonic X Shadow Generations requires a bit of explaining. Sure, if you’re a series fan that’s been following the marketing beats, you may already know - but something I’ve realized over the last few weeks is that a lot of people are blissfully unaware as to what this actual package is. Is it a new game? A remaster? Well, the answer is something in between.
]]>I feel like I need to begin this review by clarifying what exactly 2024's Until Dawn is and what you should — and shouldn't — expect from it. We all know it's a re-release of the now-classic 2015 branching-narrative horror-adventure game developed by Supermassive as an exclusive for the PS4, sure. But is it a remake or a remaster? PlayStation Publishing has been surprisingly resistant to labelling it as either, and it's a confusion that surely hasn't helped to manage any expectations, especially among fans of the original.
]]>I don't think there's an IP out there as experienced in celebrating itself as Dragon Ball. We've seen game after game look back fondly at the Frieza Saga, the Cell Saga... We've seen recreation after recreation, retelling after retelling. I will admit that it got tiring after a while, and I was worried at first that Sparking! Zero would amount to the same. I was, it seems, quite wrong. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is less of a narrow nostalgia trap, and more of a festival dedicated to the series' earliest moments and recent climaxes.
]]>Have you ever seen ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch? It’s a messed up little curio of a piece, painted across three panels and representing the breadth of humanity’s foibles, from the Garden of Eden to a frigid hellscape of our own making. Created in the early 1500s, the work was controversial; it depicted potentially blasphemous ideas about humanity, and projected a bleak sense of doom - not the pious optimism of other religious works of the era.
]]>When I first sat down and really dug into Starfield after it came out last year, I was between jobs.
]]>When Claude Makelele moved from Real Madrid to Chelsea at the height of Galacticos era, Zinedine Zidane famously said: “Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you’re losing the entire engine?”
]]>“In my restless dreams, I see that town… Silent Hill. You promised you’d take me there again someday,” and Bloober Team has finally done just that, with exceptional quality and faithfulness to the source material. Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 will never replace the original game and the survival horror zeitgeist it was a part of back in 2001, but the developer has ensured that nobody — be it veterans or newcomers — will forget about the eponymous series with its beautiful and ambitious remake of Silent Hill 2 and it’s story anytime soon.
]]>After all these years of waiting, the game you've all been eagerly anticipating is here: Final Fantasy Versus 13. It's been stuck in development hell for so long now, everyone thought it was never going to be released, but it's very real, and...wait, hang on, I think I'm getting a bit mixed up here.
]]>I can taste the champagne. Then, suddenly, I can’t.
]]>Hey, listen! It’s dangerous to go alone.
]]>When Dead Rising was released back in 2006, Americans consumed 28.1 billion pounds of meat. By the end of 2022, this figure rose slightly to 28.2 billion pounds. 18 years later, the core message of Capcom's beloved zombie action game - and scathing critique of unchecked consumerism - remains just as important. The Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is an excellent re-release of a classic. One I'd argue is important for everyone to experience.
]]>Forget all about the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, for now at least. Hollowbody is the latest survival horror game on the scene, and when VG247 previously described it as one of our most anticipated horror games, we had good reason to do so. Hollowbody is an exceptional experience that pays homage to many cult classics, while forging a unique legacy of its very own.
]]>If anyone’s asked me over the past few years which of the big annual sports franchises generally offered the most bang-for-your-buck on a yearly basis, I’ve probably said NBA 2K.
]]>Astro Bot should feel cynical, a by-the-numbers 3D platformer designed to tap into the nostalgia people have for the now 30-year-old PlayStation - the Deadpool & Wolverine of the video game world. A cash-in, lifting the ideas of other games and throwing some iconic decoration on top, like a bog standard Victoria Sponge with yellow Minion icing fondant slapped over it. Enjoy this cake an extra amount because you bloody love Minions, don't you, Timmy! Gorge yourself on the things you love and then spoil it all on social media!
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 might be the most faithful Warhammer video game adaptation of all time. You're paying money for a really good product, you just don't get a huge amount in the box. Ask any Custodian or Grey Knights player, though: that's the quintessential Warhammer experience.
]]>The Casting of Frank Stone is the ultimate narrative-based adventure for fans of the Dead by Daylight franchise, or those who can’t get enough of Supermassive Games’ horrific endeavours. It wears its influences on its sleeve and isn’t afraid to have fun, as Supermassive’s past projects — Until Dawn, The Quarry, The Dark Pictures Anthology — have shown us already.
]]>It’s been hard to stay positive about Concord’s chances of success after a disastrous debut earlier this year, a beta that – while fun – struggled to capture enough players’ attention, and early access numbers that were worrying to say the least.
]]>Sabacc cards on the table first, right: Star Wars Outlaws won’t win many Game of the Year awards. There are a lot of reasons for this, not least because there have been other major releases this year which have been bolder, better marketed, or which have advanced the medium in some exciting way. Other major releases where the enemy AI isn't comically thick. Add to that the general drag factor of the Ubisoft Open World Malaise we all have to varying degrees, and its gong prospects seem about as convincing as Anakin and Padme’s chemistry. But you absolutely shouldn’t care about that, because it slaps.
]]>This past year, the handegg team I follow – the Seattle Seahawks – missed the playoffs. They weren’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, there were some genuinely fun moments peppered throughout their stumble to a 9-8 record. Here’s to you, Jake Bobo, and to you, Geno Smith, for being a nice guy to Drew Lock.
]]>Dredge, as both me and at least two of my coworkers have written before, is good fun. Its latest bit of DLC, The Iron Rig, is buy and large more of that same kind of fun, but I can’t help but feel that, at least from a narrative perspective, it had the potential to offer a bit more than it does.
]]>My skeleton has become detached from my body. It looks quite painful. Whenever I crouch, I find myself staring directly into a patch of my own crimson innards. I think it’s my ribcage, and it’s stopping me from being able to see the prison guards I’m trying to stealth kill from the first-person view. It’s not the end of the world. I switch to the third-person view, keep calm, and carry on what’s largely been a wonderful adventure through post-apocalyptic London.
]]>It's pretty rare that I walk out of a movie theatre thinking "I truly just wasted 90+ minutes of my life watching that." Normally, I get something out of whatever it was I watched, be it joy or elation at best, perhaps anger or frustration at worst. Those negative feelings at least mean I'm feeling anything at all, they're feelings I can work with and talk about. But when I walked out of the Borderlands movie, I think all I felt was… apathy? A general sense of "what was the point"? Which is probably the most damning thing I could say about any piece of art, but calling the Borderlands movie 'art' is too generous.
]]>My first rendezvous with Closer the Distance was back during June’s Steam Next Fest, where I spent an hour exploring the quiet town of Yesterby and getting to know an array of distinct, authentic characters as they all deal with a heart-wrenching tragedy; one of their dear inhabitants — a friend and relative — passing away.
]]>I’m looking for something. I don’t know what it is, but I need to find it, and my map swears blind it’s here. I’ve done more laps of a purposefully bare room than I can count, desperately scouring every nook and cranny, just in case it’s hidden down the side of the fireplace, or inside an antique globe. It’s not. Suddenly, I become acutely aware of just how long I’ve spent not watching my back, and snap my eyes back towards the door I came in through.
]]>Ever since I've been playing video games, I've been playing them on a pad. The lovable Xbox 360 pad. The brilliant PS4 pad. These days, the bulky and boisterous PS5 pad. I have never owned an arcade stick. This was not for lack of want - an arcade stick even today is a sign of gaming prestige as a Ferrari is for driving. Imagine my shock when earlier this year this all changed with the Vitrix Pro FS. In my late 20's, without kids nor mortgage, an ever-expanding waistline and ever-receding hairline, I am in theory the ideal market for such a product. It felt natural on my lap.
]]>Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a strange beast. A game that blends tower defense with squad-based strategy and third-person combat. When I first sat down with it, I was strapping in for the long haul. But any reservations I had were quickly cast aside – Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess captures your interest with a graceful pirouette and a flourish.
]]>Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree managed to get me excited about a tiny golden circle in the corner of a screen. Not an epic boss, beautiful vista or stunning revelation, but the non-combat area icon, suggesting I might get to learn just a little bit more about this dark, vast and scary world.
]]>First of all, Still Wakes the Deep is an incredible artistic achievement. It may be The Chinese Room’s best ever game, blending the tense creeping horror of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs with the evocative, beautifully researched world-building of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
]]>You’re going to die. Just accept it. Save often, grind where you can, and stick your nose into everyone's business to get all that lovely experience. Batten down the hatches, gird your loins, watch out. Boss battles might absolutely batter you the first time around, but then you get to go back in with your wits about you. Even some random encounters have the chance to one-shot you if you’re not careful. This game doesn’t take any prisoners.
]]>Remaking a classic is always tricky. Video game development is like alchemy; that anyone happens upon the exact right combination of elements to make a true classic title is practically a miracle. Even saying that is a slight disservice, though - as the process is undoubtedly less scientific than that. All this is to say: it’s very easy to upset the cart ever so slightly with a remake or even remaster, and bam - just like that, it’s a classic no more.
]]>Intrusive thoughts are impossible to live with. Cloying, claustrophobic, incessant, inescapable. Radio chatter from a distant room you can’t turn off at best, some hot, odorous wet breath in your ear at worst. They might have your voice, but they’re not your words, not really. They’re unfiltered, almost primal, a communion with bits of yourself you might never know – or have wanted to know – existed. This is where Hellblade 2 gets it right, because the intrusive thoughts are agonizing.
]]>Making a fighting game is hard - making any video game is hard! If it was easy, everyone would do it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try of course. If you've got a killer idea in your head or a love letter to games of the past at your fingertips, you should absolutely give it a crack. Die by the Blade feels like one such game, calling back to living room epics like Bushido Blade or the Deadliest Warrior games. Sadly, it doesn't quite hit the heights of such titles.
That's not for lack of trying! Die by the Blade has a nifty blend between a classic samurai aesthetic and a futuristic cyberpunk look and it works well as the foundation to the game's vibe. This is best protrayed by its stages - many of which I love! I dig the ultra-clean offices and dojo arenas, but do have a soft spot for dingy streets and dilapidated shrines you can fight to the death in.
]]>Indika is a game that definitely isn’t for everyone, as I very quickly learned while stepping into the titular protagonist’s shoes. The story first starts in a Russian Orthodox monastery, where Indika - a nun who is hearing a devilish voice - is clearly scorned by her peers. As the others tire of her, she is expelled from the monastery and ends up on a philosophical journey of self-discovery and self-loathing, questioning everything that she has known up until now.
]]>As every Dragon Ball fan will know by this point in time, Akira Toriyama sadly passed away in March of this year. I won't spend too much time eulogising him, many others closer to him have put it much better than I ever could, but it was obviously a monumental loss for the world of anime and manga. And games, too.
]]>Hey pal, grab a chair. Sit down a while. I've spoken to your parents, and they're worried about you, mate. They've been telling me that you're thinking about buying Stellar Blade on the PS5 - don't get up! It's okay, this is a no judgement zone, bud. Don't look embarrassed, it's just me and you having a conversation here. Now, let me tell you something...
]]>Sucker for Love: Date to Die For is the midpoint of a planned trilogy that grew out of solo dev Akabaka's submission to Dread X Collection 2 back in 2020. The theme of the second lockdown game jam overseen by indie horror publisher DreadXP was "Lovecrafting", which Akabaka ran with to create a dating sim where you romance anime-esque waifus who are also eldritch goddesses inspired by deities described in the Cthulhu Mythos. The aim was to create a horror dating sim where the romanceable monsters were sexy and terrifying in equal measure, pulling no punches when it came to demonstrating the dreadful and often disgusting things a human would have to do to catch the romantic attentions of an incomprehensible cosmic being.
]]>The description of Children of the Sun tells you everything that you need to know without telling you much at all. You are THE GIRL, an ex-member of THE CULT who once promised you a simpler life. Instead, they made your life hell. Now, you’re hunting down members of THE CULT, exterminating each and every one of them using your mind-bending abilities, as you attempt to reach THE LEADER.
]]>Rise of the Ronin is a frustrating game. If you’re familiar with the work of Japanese studio Team Ninja, that sentence may not be surprising to read. This is a team that has long prided itself on creating challenging, and sometimes unforgiving, action games laser-focused on delivering a specific experience. You’re either onboard with that or you aren’t.
]]>Princess Peach has made her long-awaited comeback in Princess Peach: Showtime, her second mainline game since Super Princess Peach arrived on the Nintendo DS, way back in 2005. Almost two decades later, Mario's number one princess has returned to show us what she’s really all about – no longer being at the whim of her emotions, but instead taking to the center of the stage as she reclaims the Sparkle Theater from the Sour Bunch.
]]>Dragon’s Dogma 2 is uncompromising.
]]>I’ve decided the axe-wielding muscle man and tiny swamp witch are besties. How could you not?
]]>If, right now, you ask a long-time F1 fan what keeps them tuning in to watch cars go round and round while a paddock full of very smart engineers and some of the most dodgy rich people the world has to offer look on, they’ll all probably give different answers.
]]>Back when The Outlast Trials first went live in Early Access, I previewed the game and described it as capable of being one of the best multiplayer horror games out there. As The Outlast Trials prepares for its 1.0 launch, I feel it’s safe to say that my high expectations of the game haven’t quite been met – but that doesn’t mean that The Outlast Trials is unenjoyable by any stretch.
]]>It’s the dumbest plan anyone’s ever come up with, but it’s the only one I’ve got.
]]>In the original Final Fantasy 7, a beloved character dies in the most brutal of ways. Half an hour later, you’re snowboarding.
]]>Several hours of chaotic playtime later, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League still largely elicits the same feelings from this looter-shooter veteran and casual DC fan. Its highs are really high and separate Rocksteady's effort from the chaff, but in the long run, we're stuck with a game of two halves.
]]>How do you review a game that is essentially one giant ad for another game entirely? That's kind of what Granblue Fantasy: Relink feels like to me, the first fully-fledged, 3D, RPG take on Cygames' long-running mobile gacha game. It's a difficult question to answer, especially when – spoiler alert – Relink is actually pretty good! And it's even harder to answer when the ad kind-of works.
]]>When you read that a movie is being ‘remade’, you know what it means. But in games, the concept of a remake is far less concrete. Gaming remakes can run the gamut in terms of scope, ambition, and even intention. Honestly, thinking about the differences in approach between the remakes of Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy 7, GoldenEye and Mario RPG practically gives me a headache.
]]>The elephant in the room when discussing the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is the argument that it's not really a trilogy. The three games which have just been remastered and rereleased under the title — 2007's Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, 2013's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, and 2016's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice — are indeed respectively the fourth, fifth, and sixth mainline games in the Ace Attorney series of courtroom dramedy visual novels. But nevertheless, many long-time fans were surprised at last year's announcement that the remasters were being marketed in this way, since there'd never really been a sense that the originals were intended to be read as a single continuous narrative.
]]>“Yeah, but imagine what it says about your crab status,” declares Ichiban Kasuga as he strides along the sand of Aloha Beach under the Hawaiian sun, with his three mates in tow.
]]>I do my best to create a 1-to-1 recreation of Margaret Thatcher in the Tekken 8 avatar creator for 20 minutes, before giving up and heading into an online lobby at 11PM. There, I lounge at the beach and practice some combos before an American reviewer hops online and sits down at a cab. He buries me alive. I download each replay and pick them apart. I mess around with some other characters, and chuckle one of them transforms a salmon into a giant missile. Tekken is truly back.
]]>Since Palworld was first shown off, plenty of folk described the game as ‘Pokemon with guns’, and that’s not exactly a stretch. One look at the Tokyo Game Show trailer for the game and you’ll quite clearly see Pal designs (those are the creatures you’ll be collecting) that are akin to fan-favourite Pokemon, albeit wielding AK’s and other weaponry.
]]>The key tenet of a Metroidvania game is that you backtrack – you journey back to once-explored areas and use your newly-acquired powers to forge new paths, reach new ledges, backflip into obscured passageways that contain treasure. It’s part of the game; intuitive and self-aware, and smart developers leave breadcrumbs for you to nibble on as you head back through to the beginning of the game, your avatar’s body humming with new-found power. En route, you may discover more things – secrets, more hidden paths, respawned enemies with a grudge – and you get distracted and pulled from your circular orbit.
]]>Second chances are rare these days. In an age of yearly roadmaps, seasonal releases, and endless downloadable updates it can be hard to figure out when to jump into an ongoing game. Worse yet, it's impossible to avoid the feeling that you're already late. If you didn't jump in on the ground floor, then you're doomed to be stomped on by online warriors forever. With Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, the world has a second chance to get invested in one of the most interesting fighting games we've seen in some time.
]]>Modern triple-A open-world games rarely make your jaw drop by using only vibes and putting aside all the fireworks. But Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora manages to do exactly that, every few minutes. It’s a familiar journey that lacks sharp edges, sure, but it’s also a game that knows what it wants to be and trusts the source material.
]]>As the old adage goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Such is the case for Super Mario RPG, the latest volley in what has been a banner year for the aging Nintendo Switch. WIth this remake, Nintendo takes a beloved but also oft-forgotten nineties classic and largely preserves it with all of the charm, character, and imagination that made it great in the first place.
]]>I was fortunate enough to spend most of my weekend playing Spirittea; not by choice, but mainly because I couldn’t put this whimsical rural-life sim down. Simply put, Cheesemaster Games has developed something beautiful that most Stardew Valley fans will be enamoured by.
]]>Rally cars, despite being very complex, are very simple beasts.
]]>Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name may be a side story in RGG Studio’s long-running Yakuza franchise, but it’s also one of the biggest steps forward in quality and thoughtful design that the series has seen in years. Throwing some of the usual Yakuza fixtures out the window (the sprawling maps, overly familiar combat, and slice-of-life approach) gave RGG the freedom to explore the often-neglected core of their formula: the characters. Kiryu takes center stage in a new way, not as a plot device, but as a proper person at last, and the entire package benefits from it.
]]>While it has a solid identity as the hyper-creative face of family-friendly gaming, it’s fair to say that Nintendo actually has a few different identities. On Switch, we’ve been treated to a most of them at once. We have accessible-but-hardcore offerings in Zelda, old-school joy in Mario Wonder, and here, in WarioWare’s second Switch title, we have a love letter to the Wii.
]]>Here’s the deal in a nutshell – Robocop: Rogue City is, much like the film that inspires it, a work made by a brilliant creative team whose ambition frequently collides with the resources available to them. The result is an overall experience that’s infinitely better than it has any right to be: janky, and a little rough around the edges, but nonetheless smart, compelling, and cool as hell.
]]>My Time at Sandrock is a spiritual successor to 2018’s My Time at Portia – and it's a successor in just about every way, too. This time around, you’ll be the brand-new builder in the desert town of Sandrock, alongside friendly competition, Mi-an. You’ll be striving to not only have the best workshop, but to breathe life into this dwindling community on the brink of financial ruin. Which may cut a bit close to home.
]]>Video game climbing is a deceptive affair. Rarely is it the centrepiece gameplay mechanic: often it’s barely more than a one-button means for Nathan Drake to get to the next shooty bit. A traversal mode for getting across Florence or Damascus in a hurry, akin to a car in the sense that you just press the button to turn it on and point it when you want to go. The System takes care of the rest. Yes, I’m being reductive, and dismissive of the fact that Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and any other Climby Games you’d want to mention usually have a few tricky puzzles where being good at prodding The System is crucial, but games rarely get your palms sweaty searching for the next handhold.
]]>Alan Wake 2 plays out like a completely different game when compared to its 2010 predecessor. For all the right reasons. Believe me when I say that Remedy Entertainment has created something so unnerving, and wholly bizarre, that it will give Silent Hill’s reboot a run for its money.
]]>Ghostrunner 2 is not a perfect game. I don't believe it'll be taking home many game of the year awards. It won't shake the industry to the ground. There are better games out there right now, 2023 being the monstrous year that it is. So why am I – at 3am Saturday morning – glued to the cyberpunk sequel? The answer is simple: Ghostrunner 2 knows exactly what its audience wants. There's a good chance it has what you want, too.
]]>The first thing I do when I gain access to the medical menu in MGS3 as part of the new Metal Gear Solid Master Collection (Vol 1) is shake the right stick to whip Naked Snake around like a ragdoll.
]]>My time with Lords of the Fallen started out very positive, but it was disheartening to see my opinion on it turn the more of it I played. It’s a game with some genuinely brilliant ideas, and a high-level vision of how to set itself apart from other Souls-likes. But that vision did not seem to have been shared by everyone on the team.
]]>After years of expansions and DLCs, Colossal Order and Paradox are finally pressing reset on Cities Skylines. For this sort of simulation game, this is a huge moment. These titles aren’t so much games as they are platforms for years of content and expansion – and so starting fresh is a very big deal indeed.
]]>Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the best 2D Mario game since the franchise’s 16-bit heyday. But, honestly, writing that doesn’t even feel like the biggest, splashiest thing I can lead this review with. So, let’s try something else. Let’s get spicier.
]]>Spider-Man is about balance. Right back to the earliest days of the Ditko and Lee comics, this has always been the case. Your friendly neighbourhood arachnid has always struggled to find the balance between his personal life, his duty as Spider-Man, the weight of his community, his power, and – as you might remember – his responsibility.
]]>The pitch from Sega is pretty simple: Sonic Superstars is a direct sequel to the Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic games. While, yes, Sonic 4 exists (though we all wish it didn’t), and Sonic Mania is arguably the best Sonic game of all time period, you can feel one fact emanating from every fiber of Sonic Superstars’ existence: this is the fourth installment in the 2D Sonic series.
]]>Assassin’s Creed is a helix, and it always has been. The developers at Ubisoft have deftly woven the dual strands of history and science fiction together for the better part of 15 years now, and the results of this experiment have been as varied as they are diverse. Mirage – heralded as a spiritual reset for the franchise – had an impossible task from the moment it was announced: reform the brand, but keep everything that people loved about the behemoth RPGs Creed of recent years.
]]>Update: We've updated our EAFC 24 review with a full and new text about Ultimate Team.
]]>When the credits rolled at the end of Mortal Kombat 11 and the future of a rebooted timeline was clear as crystal, I'll admit I was equal parts excited and worried. The Mortal Kombat universe is this gigantic, gruesome box packed to bursting with lore-drenched realms and dozens of playable characters, all stuffed down with years of skin, spine, and spindly bits. Surely, there are only so many times you can tell the story of the Earthrealm gang wandering into the blender that is the Mortal Kombat tournament before even the most devoted of MK fans dream of pastures new.
]]>Lies of P is a game of two halves, both of which are underwhelming. The story is a retelling of the Adventures of Pinocchio, set in a world that owes some of its looks to Bloodborne’s Yharnam, and Steelrising’s 18th Century Paris. Outside of being aware of the idea that its nose grows every time P tells a lie, I’m not familiar with the story of Pinocchio, so I didn’t have any expectations about the narrative one way or another.
]]>Starfield is about humanity peeling back the mysteries of the universe to understand its place in the cosmos. Except when it’s about exploration. Or pirates. It has an anti-war message, sometimes, when it isn’t promoting the military. Sometimes there’s smuggling, but you can be a space cop, or a space cop who smuggles contraband and beats up debt defaulters. No one in Starfield really cares what you do most of the time, though some of your companions get a bit unhappy if you murder people.
]]>Sci-fi, giant robots, and dystopian futures that shine a light on the worst excesses of human nature as a cautionary tale light up my brain like few other things can. If you throw in the prospect of hours spent fine-tuning one of those giant sci-fi mechs until it’s a misshapen wreck capable of bringing down entire planets, I basically turn into a living version of a mind blown gif. In theory, Armored Core 6 should’ve had the same effect on me. It ticks all those boxes, and has the framework of a deep, rewarding action-RPG – but the mech inside that frame isn’t quite up to the task.
]]>Not in years have I seen a game thrown out to die as hard as Immortals of Aveum. Developed by Ascendant Studios, it's a game that hopes to combine some good ol' fashioned FPS action with some slick spell-slinging. An interesting pitch for sure, but sadly not one that manifests itself in an especially exhilarating fashion. Immortals of Aveum is a middling adventure, which just so happens to be releasing at a time when several industry-shaking games are releasing. It is a game doomed for the bargain bin.
]]>When you think about tentpole sequels to major Nintendo franchises, the mind doesn’t naturally jump to the iterative. More often than not, Nintendo wants to do something wild and new with each new main entry in any of its core franchises - and this is exactly the sort of thing that has historically stood in the way of things like Star Fox and F-Zero getting regular sequels. But Pikmin 4 is a shining example of what the company’s talented developers can do by taking a step back, simply analyzing and improving what already exists.
]]>Every now and again, you come across a game that's a genuine surprise. I'm willing to bet that I, alongside many others out there who caught an early trailer for Exoprimal around a year ago shrugged it off as Capcom's attempt to cash in on some of that juicy live service wonga. I do still believe Exoprimal is an attempt to do so, but as far as cynical follow-ups to Overwatch go, it's certainly one of my favourites.
]]>Exoprimal is out today! While we've not had a chance to play enough of it yet to warrant a full review, considering that it's a live service shooter that requires a decent time investment before an educated critique of it can be written up, we have given it enough time for a cheeky preview. Our early verdict? This is a wonderful game for Game Pass.
]]>Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was a great game back when it first released on the Nintendo DS in 2010, and it remains one, with its charm not lost to the passage of time. You could pick up the NDS title today and still have a blast with its polished sprites, eccentric characters, and strange goings-on, but this remaster brings the classic NDS game up to speed in 2023.
]]>Final Fantasy 16 is basically two games in one. First of all, you have an excellent, best-in-class 20-hour action game with a truly brilliant story. Bolted to it, however, you have a deeply flawed role-playing game – which makes up the other 25 hours of the experience.
]]>Layers of Fear (2023) brings together the stories of Layers of Fear (2016) and Layers of Fear 2 (2019), remastering the two horror titles in Unreal Engine 5 to deliver a seamless, puzzling trip into the psyche of creatives-gone-mad. Sadly, this remake represents the best and worst of Bloober Team.
]]>Blood! Loot! Numbers! Cows! Diabo is a series with a storied legacy, built on strong pillars that have held up the ARPG classic for years now. It's a name that still holds some well-deserved clout, even if Diablo Immortal (and, to a lesser degree, Diablo 3) soured that reputation in the minds of fans. With Diablo 4 almost here, Activision Blizzard has a chance to get your mind off stolen breastmilk, cancelled PvE modes, union busting and struggling acquisitions with a good ol' fashioned bloody brawl.
]]>In gaming, as in any art, you sometimes have to learn to take the rough with the smooth. No artist, director, studio, production house, or franchise is infallible. But the failures aren’t always just missteps. Sometimes, they’re stepping stones on the route to triumph.
]]>It’s difficult to imagine a more daunting proposition for a remake than the original System Shock. It’s arguably the game that truly launched the greatest boom of immersive sims in history – a genre whose fans are notoriously demanding, despite never having really been able to come up with a universally agreed definition of what an 'immersive sim' even is.
]]>Cards on the table, right? I love Star Trek. More than that: I love loving it. I drive my wife mad with incessant musing about whether Ben Sisko’s birth constitutes a predestination paradox, or the sociological impact on the Federation of the Battle of Wolf 359. I have an absurd number of Hero Collector ship miniatures dotted around the place. There are more enterprises in my home than you can rent a car from.
]]>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lets you ride a heavy metal skeleton horse, eat cooked rocks, and stuff fairies in your pockets. And these aren’t even core aspects of the game.
]]>The sun is gone. Blotted out by a pantheon of vampiric gods who, in lieu of gleaming palaces and gothic castles, have laid claim to an unassuming island town off the coast of mainland Massachusetts. Low light is provided by the UV lamps and muzzle flare of private military contractors and cultists; a little warmth by the body heat of locals huddled together in resistance. If the internet worked, your weather app would tell you to expect lukewarm temperatures at best. Perhaps that explains why Redfall is slightly underbaked.
]]>Cal Kestis is sad. Being a terrorist is hard work, and no amount of lightsaber amputations is making him any happier. In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, you follow his excellent adventure in reaching out to old friends, desperately trying to find new ones when the OG cast inevitably remember he’s a melt, and cramming as many seeds and rocks into his pockets as the force allows.
]]>Dead Island 2 starts in the sun-soaked and blood-drenched City of Angels, but there are no angels here. Brain-dead, ravenous zombies govern this city, now casually called HELL-A. You awaken aboard an aeroplane that has succumbed to the plague of zombies, and with merely the clothes on your back and an immunity to the undead’s slavering bites, you need to escape from HELL-A. Even if you have to become every other survivor’s middle man in the process.
]]>Sometimes the top-line pitch for a game is better than the actual finished product. Such is the case for Minecraft Legends, the latest spin-off intended to offer a different sort of gaming experience within the framework of the legendary survival franchise.
]]>It’s taken decades, but video game movies have finally come full circle with the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It was 1993’s Super Mario Bros. that kicked off Hollywood’s regular flirtations with video game adaptations - and the same film in many ways came to represent the infamy that video game movies have enjoyed since. Put simply, it was rubbish - though also filled with imagery that would make it a quiet cult classic. Now, Nintendo has partnered with Illumination, the studio behind the Minions, to break the curse.
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