Games

Fez

Posted 7:08pm Sunday 13th May 2012 by Toby Hills

Platform: Xbox 360 Genre: Puzzle It’s a fez. Fezzes are cool. In this case Gomez, the over-sized oblong-headed protagonist, is granted magical powers by a felt hat he finds in his two-dimensional pixel home. It grants him the insight to see his world in a whole new way. Gomez is a Read more...

Dragon’s Dogma

Posted 7:08pm Sunday 13th May 2012 by Toby Hills

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360 Genre: Action RPG Dragon’s Dogma has you forming a ragtag band of roguish adventurers, traversing an awesome untamed landscape and killing large fantastical beasts like griffins and chimeras as an afternoon’s work. “But wait!” you might cry, “isn’t that like every Read more...

Max Payne 3

Posted 12:51am Monday 7th May 2012 by Toby Hills

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC Developer: Rockstar Vancouver Genre: Action 3rd Person Shooter You expect an unobtainable beauty to be the protagonist in a modern videogame: A Nathan Drake type with sculpted muscles, a full head of hair that’s wavy but not-too-wavy, and a perfect coating Read more...

Lord of The Rings: War in the North

Posted 4:56pm Sunday 29th April 2012 by Markus Ho

Developer: Snowblind Studios Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3 As video game adaptations of movies go, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Lord of Rings: The Return of the King are among the best. It may have been a while ago, but nothing beats the feeling as you watch the “perfect kills” Read more...

Avernum: Escape From the Pit

Posted 5:04pm Sunday 22nd April 2012 by Toby Hills

Remember when, in well-supervised playground games, you had to take turns? Avernum taps into all that nostalgia, as well as all the comfort that comes from navigating a series of isometric cubes. This RPG is deliberately generic – so it’s equal parts charming and predictable. After Read more...

Path of Exile

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Toby Hills

There’s a really subtle hint of Aotearoa in Path of Exile. Certain characters, such as the playable hulking marauder, are adorned with koru-inspired patterns. Swamps are packed with bipedal bird-like, but monstrous, Rhoa, and donating to the free-to-play (at least when it gets released; it’ll be in Read more...

SSX

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012 by Tom Pullan

After what feels like an age, SSX is back. 2012’s iteration brings the amazing snowboarding franchise into the real world, but retains all the madness that defines SSX. With 9 deadly descents – from the Whitehorn Mountain in the Rockies to New Zealand’s own runs down Tasman and Wakefield – Read more...

Binary Domain

Posted 7:07pm Sunday 1st April 2012 by Toby Hills

If you asked someone who had never played a videogame to describe a one you would be provided with a fairly accurate breakdown of Binary Domain: A group of burly humans, who form a gleaming ethnic-rainbow, gun down robots that swarm about the player like schools of herring. It ain’t Read more...

The Binding of Isaac

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 25th March 2012 by Toby Hills

I didn’t realise that the Isaac (a nude baby, the eponymous protagonist of The Binding of Isaac) was tossing large spheres of his own lukewarm salty tears at his enemies until I’d attempted the game a handful of times. Forgivable, I think, as Binding is filled with dozens of depraved, silly plot Read more...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Posted 4:27pm Sunday 18th March 2012 by Vimal Patel

I realise that reviewing the single player portion of a Call of Duty game is like reviewing McDonalds’ salads: It’s there on the menu, but no one expects you to pay good money for it. However, I did enjoy the campaigns from the first two Modern Warfare games, and subsequently thought I might kill a Read more...