Games

Dues Ex

Posted 4:25am Monday 5th September 2011 by Critic

  Choice. That, fundamentally, is the purpose of interactivity. 2000’s Deus Ex opens with a simple choice made by the player on an understated wharf on Liberty Island. The rickety wood panels are rendered in graphics that were archaic even when the game was released, but Read more...

Blocks That Matter

Posted 4:22am Monday 5th September 2011 by Critic

Platforms: PC, OS X, (2.5/5 Computers, even laptops, are bulky and cumbersome. You need to wrestle with the lid, then patiently wait as the internal programming of ‘the hive from 2005’ trips over itself, straining to open its own operating system. That’s the problem with Read more...

Cult Classic: Just Cause 2

Posted 11:36pm Monday 22nd August 2011 by Toby Hills

You resent the presence of a story from the opening picosecond of Just Cause 2. It's the bland characters and the plot about some dictator who's all bad and such that are responsible initially for this reaction. But a few seconds later, the screen will literally go completely pitch black to load Read more...

Trauma

Posted 11:34pm Monday 22nd August 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: OSX, PC, LINUX There's a looming sense of effort in Trauma. Not the good kind. The strained kind: “Come on guys. We've got to be evocative. We've just got to. Otherwise what will happen? I don't know. Jeez guys. Jeez.” It's not appealing when a game shamelessly begs for Read more...

Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Posted 4:01am Monday 15th August 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, (1.5/5). Call of Juarez 1 and 2 were interesting for roughly, if not exactly, two reasons. #1: The Wild West, at the time, was a cool and totally underutilized setting for an FPS and #2: you played as two protagonists with polar opposite goals, one grizzled Read more...

From Dust

Posted 4:31am Thursday 11th August 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: Xbox 360. PS3, PC. 3/5. Superficially, From Dust would appear to be a “God” game. After all, you can literally carve great swaths of the earth as you see fit. Not limited to parting oceans, you might construct a vast wall out of cooling lava. Or even turn a tsunami into Read more...

F.E.A.R. 3

Posted 4:29am Thursday 11th August 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC. 3/5. What have we learned, class? Yes. That's right. It can be tough to frighten a supernatural super-soldier wielding a trans-dimensional plasma cannon. Everything about F.E.A.R. 3 (and, to a some-what lesser extent, its predecessors), from its buddy-buddy Read more...

Dungeons of Dredmor

Posted 5:02am Thursday 4th August 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: PC, OSX, (4.5/5). “Congratulations! You have died.” What a positive spin Dungeons of Dredmor places on every conceivable game consequence. It's never “game over” in Gaslamp Games' dungeon crawler; every hero who is mauled to death by bats, or dissolves their Read more...

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters

Posted 4:58am Thursday 4th August 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, (2.5/5). Thank goodness Hal Jordan's ring is “the most powerful weapon in the universe”. If it were, say, the mere “best piece of murder-jewelry in the Virgo supercluster” then Rise of the Manhunters would be a bad game. Thankfully, the Read more...

LA Noire

Posted 3:19am Thursday 28th July 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, (4.5/5). My mum got into LA Noire. She isn't one of those “closet casuals” either. Never has she grasped a controller in concord so it is telling that the relaxed, assured style of Team Bondi’s 1940s detective game compelled even her to try Read more...