Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Posted 11:47pm Tuesday 26th April 2011

Platforms: Windows, MAC, Linux, (4.5/5). What's the quickest route to disrupt the tension in any horror videogame, or for that matter any scary media? Top marks if you said combat, because any direct encounter with the relentlessly stalking depraved shadows immediately undermines any fear Read more...

Gobtron

Posted 11:45pm Tuesday 26th April 2011

Platforms: iPod touch, iPhone, (2.5/5). Gobtron opens by flashing up a faux-ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rating of “I for Immature”. I ask you, what could possibly be more mature than a majestic, mountain sized, hot-pink, fluffy, rectangular pig monster, enduring Read more...

Dino Run

Posted 6:31am Thursday 14th April 2011

Platforms: MAC, PC, LINUX (3/5). Subtitled “Escape Extinction”, here is a short list of the paleontological inaccuracies in Dino Run: #1 Contrary to the lush pasture Pixeljam has created, there was no grass in the late Cretaceous period. #2 tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops were not Read more...

Cult Classic - Planescape: Torment

Posted 6:29am Thursday 14th April 2011

Platform: LINUX (5/5). The Nameless One's golden armour is not inexplicably polished to a mirrored-sheen. He does not ride into battle on a small but plucky caramel-coloured mare, trading blows with troll-bandits to heroically save the spice-merchant. He certainly does not go on rodent-killing Read more...

Dinner Date

Posted 2:34am Thursday 7th April 2011

Platform: PC (2/5). In Dinner Date’s unnecessary tutorial, Stout Games tries to make it clear that your interactivity in the game is somewhat limited. Big text banners crowning the screen read “In Dinner Date you do not play as yourself”, “Nor do you play as the main Read more...

Atom Zombie Smasher

Posted 1:28am Tuesday 29th March 2011

Platforms: PC, OSX, LINUX. (4/5). You can't help it; the gut reaction to guts being forcibly removed by a stumbling horde of on-screen undead will always be “what would I do in this situation?” Atom Zombie Smasher lets you answer that question, not as an individual deciding between Read more...

Inside a Star-Filled Sky

Posted 4:12am Monday 21st March 2011

Platforms: PC, OSX (4/5) Very few games are “by” one guy. Novels are by an author, songs and paintings by an artist, films are scaffolded by a single-minded vision, i.e; “directed by”. But videogames, feats of virtual engineering, are by necessity often created by Read more...

Bulletstorm

Posted 1:13am Tuesday 15th March 2011

Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC. (5/5). "In the new video game Bulletstorm, players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks).”   My worry is that no matter what I write in this review, no matter how much I ache and strain to Read more...

The Blocks Cometh

Posted 2:56am Tuesday 8th March 2011

It’s a melancholy thing to ruminate on these sub two-dollar iPod touch games, to glimpse a vertical slice of a dystopian world in which we all must eternally run to the right with no respite until we inevitably tumble into the ink. In The Blocks Cometh, you instead jump upwards and because the Read more...

Magika

Posted 4:21am Monday 28th February 2011

In Magicka, Arrowhead Game Studios have constructed a game where magic feels as powerful as it should, where an exploding magma ball behaves exactly as you would expect it to, yet within an incredibly balanced, robust system of game mechanics. Energy beams shift with slow weight, feeling like Read more...