Review Plunging from a treacherous rampart, slowly succumbing to the poisonous bite or bludgeoned by a monstrous ice giant – Dark Souls wants you dead. And it doesn’t care how.
Shanking of the colossus
That should come as no surprise, of course. Anyone who dared play last year’s Demon’s Souls knows all too well that death will be their constant companion throughout the follow-up to From Software’s infamous RPG. While Dark Souls is as tough, if not tougher than the original, it’s also every bit as insanely addictive and rewarding. Read the rest of this entry »
iGamer If there was any doubt about the suitability of the iPhone or iPad as a platform for racing games, the sheer variety, number and quality of those now available on the App Store has surely killed it stone dead.
So many, in fact, that picking a decent one can seem daunting. Here’s a helping hand: what I think are the five best ones. It’s hugely subjective, and if I’ve missed out your favourite racing game, let us all know about it in the comments. Or flame me.
The list below contains racing games that cover the gamut of the genre, from the brilliantly realistic Real Racing HD, to the karting fun of Sonic All-Stars Racing, and the topdown coin racer LilRacerz Pro. Rev your engines… Read the rest of this entry »
Review Is it an RPG? Is it a first-person shooter? This is a question which reverberates around my mind while I wander through Rage’s wastes. Why the confusion? Because id’s latest shooter hovers somewhere in the middle of these genres, a chimera with, oddly enough, lashings of Motorstorm-esque racing thrown in for good measure.
Wide eyes, zombie-like grin… typical clubber
Of course, these things come as no surprise. I’ve followed Rage’s long gestation – this is an id shooter after all – with excited apprehension as press releases after press release unveiled the game’s many intricacies. No Quake-style multiplayer, for example; a robust driving section included; huge installation sizes, notably for consoles; a co-op mode which supports the single-player campaign; the list goes on. Read the rest of this entry »
Antique Code Show I remember 1991 starting on a sombre note, with my sister and I sitting in a bar doing shots under an Apocalypse Now poster waiting for the start of World War III, as we watched US bombers strafe Iraq. The end of civilisation? Well, not quite.
Civil engineering?
Looking back on events of the time, the emerging Civilization completely kickstarted the turn-based strategy (TBS) game genre and opened it up to the general public, thus spawning a franchise that continues to sell after three decades and that is still going strong. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Forget the lacklustre sequel Invisible War, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the true, worthy successor to Deus Ex, a breathtaking paragon of the genre the original helped define.
Bringing more to the table
Yes, there’s little novelty in its genre conceits. Hacking and circumvention, augmentations, turrets and robots, moral choices and social interactions – they’re all well-explored conventions. But this isn’t about doing things differently to System Shock 2 or Bioshock, or even Deus Ex, it’s simply about doing them better. Read the rest of this entry »
