Gaming
Steve O'Rourke
Mafia III starts strong, really strong. You find yourself in the blood-stained boots of Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam veteran, returning to his Deep South homestead after a last tour of duty. It’s 1968, racism is rife and New Bordeaux, a faux New Orleans, isn’t a pleasant place for an African American to reside. Clay lives in the poor part of town; his old crew have got themselves mixed up with mob heavyweight Sal Marcano, who double crosses the gang, leaving the soldier's homecoming drenched in the blood of his fallen friends, a reminder of what he left behind in 'Nam.The narrative isn’t Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Football can be a soap opera at times, filled with pantomime villains, character drama, broken hearts and unfulfilled ambition. And that’s before kick-off. With these theatrics in mind it makes sense that EA introduces the new headline feature for the annual instalment of the very long-running, highly profitable FIFA franchise.No, we’re not talking about managers taking bungs or even corruption at the heart of the titular namesake; but instead The Journey, a single player campaign that takes an 11-year-old Alex Hunter and tracks his progress through the murky maze of a professional football Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Tin Man Games has carved out a successful niche, producing electronic versions of the classic Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks (as well as its own, original, Gamebook Adventures series). Created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the Fighting Fantasy books turned their author’s love of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons into branching narratives in which readers/players decide how to progress through the story, punctuated by battles and tests of luck using dice-rolls.The first few Tin Man adaptations were straight digitised version of the original books, complete with page-turning effects and Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Most casual gamers are familiar with the open world gameplay ethic, where you can, within reason, travel anywhere within the gameworld at any time. From driving through a sprawling city in Grand Theft Auto V to sneaking through a tropical jungle in Far Cry 4, open world adds exploration, a feeling of anything being possible and brings a sense of reality to the gameplay, where invisible walls are a thing of the past.No Man’s Sky takes the open world idea and runs through the horizon with it, presenting a bravely ambitious open universe sci-fi game based around the anchor themes of exploration Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Just when fans were beginning to think it would never appear, Act IV of Cardboard Computer’s arthouse point ‘n’ click adventure, Kentucky Route Zero has appeared like a lonely delivery truck on a misty highway. Have you played Kentucky Route Zero?You can check out our reviews of earlier episodes but here is a quick precis: Conway, an ageing delivery man is trying to make one last delivery for an antique company run by an exilover. He stumbles upon a cast of unusual characters and end up traversing the mysterious lost highway of the title. Surreal encounters and allegorical musing on death, Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
If you've been outside in the past week or so, you will have seen someone playing Pokémon Go even if you didn’t realise it at the time. To the casual eye, a Pokémon Go player might appear to be checking their phone for an incoming text or studying a Google Map. Just normal people doing normal phone stuff.But if you were to peer over their shoulder, you would see that they're actually looking at a simplified street layout of the surrounding area as they walk along, sometimes glancing up to dodge an oncoming lamp post or pedestrian. After a few paces they might stop, hold their phone in one Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has awoken, run around the world, made a ton of box office cash, done it all again on DVD, sold more merchandise than a Rolling Stones tour, and now finally gets the Lego treatment in video game form. Where does Disney bury all the revenue? There must be cavernous vaults under the Magic Kingdom.If you’ve played a Lego game in the past 10 years you’ll be on familiar blocky ground. You smash scenery and items, gather blocks and construct structures that will solve puzzles or get you past obstacles on your quest to button bash your way through legions of blocky Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
The original Heroes of Loot put you in control of a Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard or Elf who wanted nothing more than to stripmine their local dungeon of anything shiny and valuable that the owners had failed to nail down. The sequel, a fast-paced, fun take on the dungeon crawler that jettisons any semblance of planning and strategy in favour of frantic monster slaughter, is more of the same. However, this time you get to perform your frantic felony in a pair – although not, as it turns out, in a multiplayer game.Instead, you choose two heroes from the aforementioned quartet and Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
There are moments of real atmospheric oppression in this politically themed gun game. When you and your ragtag bunch of freedom fighter recruits are crouched behind a burnt-out car, dodging green scanning lasers streaking through the night sky from a monolithic airship as drones whizz past on a search and destroy mission, you can feel what the developers are trying to achieve. You’re the hunted on home ground. The odds are stacked against you, there’s an urgent insurgency and you’re the main militiaman. Heavy stuff.Homefront: The Revolution channels 80s movie Red Dawn with touches of Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
If a good game is measured by the sum of its parts, then Battleborn is a cacophonous cocktail overflowing with noisy, distracting ingredients, fighting for your attention and clouding the overall flavour. Like a big night out, this fast-paced blaster has a tendency to be a bit messy, but good fun at the same time.We’re in the cartoon-like, frenetic first-person shooter world where you get to unlock a 25-character roster, running and gunning your way through colourful sci-fi fantasy levels on a quest to save the last star in the universe. Every character has their own personality and comes Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Pathfinder started life as a tabletop role-playing game. A spin-off from the classic Dungeons & Dragons, it was created during a schism over the direction the main game was taking and quickly established itself as a rival with a fanatical following.The game’s publishers, Pazio, then created a further spin-off in the form of a collectable card game, Pathfinder Adventures, which captured the essence of the full game in quick-to-play adventures using cards and dice rolls to simulate both combat and exploration. The card game is well liked but perhaps a bit complicated, with lots of dice- Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Ratchet & Clank may well be the biggest chart topping videogame double act you’ve never heard of, but all that is set to change. After a dozen games in 14 years, Ratchet, the feline-like character known as a lombax, and diminutive robot Clank, have got a headline-grabbing year ahead of them.Not only are they the stars of the best game they’ve ever graced the cover of, but there’s also a big-budget animated movie set for an imminent release starring the vocal talent of Sylvester Stallone and John Goodman. So essentially you’re playing the game, which is based on the movie, which is based Read more ...