Gaming
FFFFF2PFriday, 18 July 2014
The videogames industry is changing, and not in a good way. There are fewer and fewer people creating single-player stories of depth and ingenuity in games. The sad truth is fewer and fewer people are willing to pay enough (or anything even) for... Read more... |
MouseCraftFriday, 11 July 2014
A minus mark for this puzzle game for cannily, if cheesily, being named to hitch a ride on the wildly-popular MineCraft phenomenon. And another minus mark for its barely-a-concept-at-all of mashing together two massively enjoyable and enduring... Read more... |
Fluid SEFriday, 04 July 2014
Sometimes, if you get really proficient at a game you might be lucky enough to enter the psychological state known as "flow", where you become so focused and at one with the task in hand that time seems to compress, everything starts to feel just... Read more... |
Sniper Elite IIIFriday, 27 June 2014
Sometimes virtual violence can simply be fun, even morally dubious violence. Sniper Elite III is pretty reprehensible and fairly morally indefensible. It gleefully glamorises violence. Yet throughout, it's fun. Really good fun.Sniper Elite's key... Read more... |
KiwanukaFriday, 20 June 2014
Good puzzle game mechanics are hard to find and Kiwanuka has just the one. Luckily, it is a great one that allows for taxing but elegant levels full of the "Aha!" moments that puzzle fans gobble up like smarties. To the casual (if veteran)... Read more... |
Murdered: Soul SuspectFriday, 13 June 2014
A detective ghost story with virtually no violence – Murdered: Soul Suspect is an odd construction. It is part point-and-click adventure game, part interactive fiction and part stealth-adventure – none of which are massively successful elements.... Read more... |
Monument ValleyFriday, 06 June 2014
Much fuss is made about realism in gaming. In the drive to recreate the real world in smaller and more numerous polygons, game developers have had to pass through the “uncanny valley” where things look nearly right but subtly, creepily wrong. The... Read more... |
Watch DogsFriday, 30 May 2014
Heralded as the first true "next-generation" videogame, Watch Dogs has either been hugely overhyped or the imaginative leap required for a true new generation of videogaming is entirely absent from mainstream games. Because this cyberpunk-inflected... Read more... |
TransistorFriday, 23 May 2014
Videogames aesthetics are often misleading. There are many examples of beautiful games that have no artistic merit, emotional heft or ludological interest. There are also many examples of ugly games that grip utterly. Of course, the ideal is both... Read more... |
ChronologyFriday, 16 May 2014
It's time to talk about time travel. The fourth dimension, as time is sometimes called, represents fertile ground for videogames designers. After all, the shift from side-scrolling two-dimensions (move left, right, jump up, fall down) to three was a... Read more... |
Kentucky Route Zero: Act IIIFriday, 09 May 2014
It is almost a year since the release of Act II of Cardboard Computer's strange and opaque episodic game but Act III has finally been released. Has it been worth the wait?We last saw the nominal protagonist Conway succumbing to the effects of a mind... Read more... |
Child Of LightFriday, 02 May 2014
There are many admirable things about Child Of Light. It's the game that the core team behind Far Cry 3 – the mega-action, gnarly dude first-person shooter ‑ went on to work on next. Yet, it's difficult to imagine two games further from each other.... Read more... |
