Music makes the world go round, or so we’re told. It certainly seems to be an adage for many ‘casual’ games released on Steam lately, as we’ve seen with titles like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard using your music to create new gameplay experiences. Now Turba gets in on the act by combining music with the old mainstay of the puzzle genre – block matching. But how well do Turba’s blocks rock your beats? In Turba the aim is to get…
Take a popular ‘realistic’ racing game. Add the over the top powerups from kart racing games. Throw in a tiny amount of Modern Warfare 2’s Multiplayer progression system. You’d be coming close to holding a copy of Blur in your hands. Unfortunately, the only ingredient you’d be missing is the bitter disappointment of the game’s technical PC shortcomings hampering what could have been a brilliant twist on the racer genre on the PC. Let’s start with the positive. Bizarre Creations…
It’s a rather overused adage now to compare games to chess. But if any game fit into this comparison so snugly, it’d be Frozen Synapse, the new strategy title from three man indie team Mode 7 Games. Not that you would be able to immediately guess that from first glance. Utilizing a visual style somewhere between Defcon’s minimalist blueprint style and Tron, Frozen Synapse is essentially the modern day homage to turn based combat seen in games like X-COM UFO…
For nearly a decade, Popcap’s flagship game Bejeweled has been the definitive casual game. Simple to understand and yet horrendously addictive, the game has appeared everywhere. From browsers to iPhones and even making an appearance in World of Warcraft, and spawning countless imitators and variants it seems that surely everyone has played it once by now. Yet here we stand with a brand new standalone flavour of the Facebook version of the game. Is it worth the dough, or is…
Striking is the word that comes to mind. Both in visual style and gameplay, striking is a word that pretty much encapsulates Plain Sight. It’s a multiplayer game with a fairly simple, if unusual, concept – playing as ninja robots (which alone is a hybrid that automatically makes the game 15.8% more awesome) you gain points by killing other players. So far, so straightforward. However, to actually convert those kills into a cold hard score, you have to kill yourself…
I’ve got a confession. For my turn in the warm yet comfortable leathery goodness of the swivel chair in the Editor’s Blog this week, I was originally going to write a comedic piece about the upcoming Doctor Who game. Then today, 2K Australia announced they were reviving the much loved X-COM franchise with a brand new FPS entitled XCOM. Of course, other than a singular screenshot, the press release didn’t contain an awful amount of explanation, yet cue the screaming…
As a concept, it shouldn’t work. A sequel to a game which was both a console exclusive and a single player focused iteration of a popular series gets a release on PC and turns out to be a serious competitor for Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer crown? It certainly helps that the pedigree of the larger series is that of course of one of the best loved multiplayer franchises for the PC in Battlefield, and DICE certainly remember their roots this…
So here we are, at the end of Telltale and LucasArts’ daring resurrection of the Monkey Island franchise. Has the gamble of bringing back much loved characters Guybrush, LeChuck, Elaine and many others paid off? Quite simply: yes! The final episode almost manages to be the exclamation point on what has been a wonderful series. Now before I go any further, it should be blindingly obvious but this review – along with the screenshots – contains MASSIVE SPOILERS to the…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is The X Factor of the world of video games. It’s not all that clever, it has a component that divides public opinion masterminded by a savvy businessman who needs to work on his people skills, and is in no way going to move their respective genre forward. Yet it’s very polished, is a great spectacle and is still going to get a massive audience no matter what the critics will say about it….
There’s something rather special about a shotgun that fires rockets. Sure, a normal shotgun is all well and good for dealing with close range foes and packs a mighty punch that can knock lesser enemies off their feet, but it does not match the sheer awesomeness of a shotgun that fires rockets for one very good reason: it doesn’t shoot fucking rockets. Borderlands is a Role Playing Shooter that puts you into the role of one of four mercenaries with…