Jake 
The menu music is all wrong. The in-game soundtrack is punky, as it should be, but I honestly have no idea what’s going on the bleepy electronic menu music. There are more significant things both right and wrong about this freemium incarnation of Crazy Taxi, but that’s what sticks with me. What’s right is that …
Sony’s Big in Japan sale on the PlayStation Store has some cracking bargains – if you have an lot of time on your hands. £3.99 each for Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and Demon’s Souls? Absurd. Their critical acclaim – 85 and 89 respectively on Metacritic – are reason enough for the …
The big picture news of the week was the partnership between motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, and Gran Turismo developer Polyphony Digital. As you can see, FIA President Jean Todt amused Polyphony Digital’s Kazunori Yamauchi no end at the press conference. There it was announced that four tracks in Gran Turismo 6 have been certified …
If Thomas Was Alone was a plate of food on Masterchef, it would be a deconstructed roast chicken dinner. A ballotine of breast, confit wing, fondant potato, a shard of crispy skin, pearls of bread sauce, a consommé for the hell of it, inevitably morels, something clever with a pea. Greg and John would wonder …
Coin pushers: gateway gambling machine, disappointing old-fashioned seaside arcade amusement, or terribly modern entertainment sensation? It’s looking bizarrely like the last of those. There’s daytime ITV1 quiz show Tipping Point, in which Ben Shephard has an only slightly easier job than Noel Edmonds on Deal Or No Deal in convincing the viewer that there’s appreciable …
The obvious thing would be to write about Dsmvwld in the manner of its puzzles, omitting the vowels. On the plus side, that would end up looking a tiny bit like something uttered by Zombie Dave. But it would also be unhelpful to the point of perversion. Your task is simple: put the vowels back …
Console games are bloated dinosaurs! Mobile games are stupid time wasters! Both true. But that’s fine, when taken together. Take Gran Turismo 6, which I quickly tired of before even playing, due to the initial update and install. But I got a lot done in the time GT6 took to do basically nothing. Canabalt is …
I’m sure last week’s BAFTA Games Awards were a fitting celebration of the medium. They’re good, games, aren’t they? But they aren’t going to become the dominant entertainment medium, no matter what Stephen Moffatt or Carol Vorderman might have said. The following column was first published on the site in 2005, and another airing seems …
It’s a giant egg, but there’s no Billy Hatcher in sight. This was a Nintendo of America PR event for Yoshi’s New Island, where they got young celebrities to throw what look like paint bombs at a giant egg. The end result was actually quite effective, don’t you think? A good PR event, then, but …
Where was Sir Clive Sinclair last weekend? He was at The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, making an impromptu visit to their Sinclair Celebration Weekend Event. Albeit an impromptu visit with a few days notice. He was there with his brother Ian. More Sir Clive Sinclair Watch next week. Unless he’s not photographed somewhere …
Have you seen just how many Flappy Bird clones there are on the App Store now? You don’t need to, because Stuart Dredge has been keeping a slightly obsessive eye on it for The Guardian. In short: lots. If Nyamyam had been so inclined, they might have renamed Tengami ‘Flappy Paper’. They might have got …
It was Toy Fair 2014 at London’s Kensington Olympia this week. Video games didn’t exactly feature prominently, but Sonic was there. You can see him above, loitering in the background of a photo of event manager Simon Pilling. Sega weren’t exhibiting, so it’s hard to say exactly what Sonic was up to. Apart from loitering. …
There are many visions of the future of gaming. Your phone seamlessly beaming content to the TV screen, micro consoles, VR headsets, eXistenZ. Or maybe it’ll all be built into the telly box itself – like those horrible TV VCR combis that were popular once. Or, more relevantly, these built in consoles from the olden …
Two big games this week. You may have noticed. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag first, if only because it started bothering the world on Tuesday. It’s been sailing through a sea of 9s, including Eurogamer, GameSpot and CVG. CVG also lobbed a 9 Battlefield 4‘s way, while Eurogamer and GameSpot went with 8s. It’s not …
Fist of Awesome has been one huge charm offensive: from the early animated GIF screenshots, through the doubling-its-target Kickstarter, to designer Nicoll Hunt’s beard. It’s been either: (a) a cleverly orchestrated PR campaign; (b) a demonstration of the benefits as an indie developer of being a bit different; or (c) proof that people really really …