This tower-defense role-playing hybrid may find an unexpected fan base – ‘80s toy enthusiasts. Like classic action figure playsets of yore, hidden traps are the focal point here, varying from monster filled cages to spring-loaded platforms. These slyly hidden booby traps were the highlight of any playset, be it He-Man’s medieval Castle Greyskull or MASK’s …
When creating something out of passion the result often holds a rare quality – that invaluable personal touch. Homemade cakes always look far more tempting than the mass-made produce found in Greggs, people’s paintings are more eye-catching than cheap canvas prints and handmade Halloween costumes end up being more creative than those found in supermarkets. …
The save icon in this incredibly belated console conversion is a 3.5†floppy disk. Nothing odd about that you may think, but consider this: Industry Giant 2 is a game so old that when it was first released in 2002, PCs still came with floppy drives. That save icon isn’t for nostalgia purposes – it’s …
Due to being set between Black Friday and the holiday season, not to mention being one of the key Xbox One titles for this winter, it’s likely that DR4’s release date was set in stone yonks ago. There was no way Microsoft would let this one slip past Christmas. Even with a (presumably) tight deadline …
Tennis in the Face is about a rebellious player, and there’s only one of those around at the moment – Nick Kyrgios. Like that player, this game doesn’t take itself too seriously. Take the main character’s name for instance – Pete Pagassi, which is clearly a pun on Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. Right off …
Twelve years have passed since Sky Force’s Pocket PC debut, yet the vertical shooter remains delightfully refreshing. Released at a time when almost all shmups were of the ‘bullet hell’ variety, partly thanks to Rising Star bringing such games as Deathsmiles and Under Defeat HD to the west, Sky Force dared to be different. With …
We noticed a significant omission within moments of starting this co-op brawler – all six playable characters are mute throughout, not even making a muffled grunt or groan when taking damage. It’s understandable that publisher GameMill didn’t want to cough up the cash for vocal talent, this being a £19.99 game and all, but why …
This top-down dungeon crawler is reminiscent of ZHEROS, a previous Xbox One ‘Games with Gold’ freebie. ZHEROS – one of the lowest scoring games of 2016, we might add – promised to be a scrolling brawler influenced by Saturday morning cartoons. An appealing premise, but after a reasonably humorous intro the brightly hued presentation emerged …
The original Titanfall was a robust shooter, if a little rough around the edges. Try as they might though, EA and Respawn struggled to keep players engaged. After the excellent Frontier Defence co-op mode failed to bring players back, they eventually resorted to giving away all the DLC map packs for free. It has languished …
Somebody wise once said that if you’re going to rip off a videogame, make sure it’s a good one. It’s equally wise to ensure that it has enough quirks and unique features to have its own merits. In this day and age of mass internet backlashes, accusations of plagiarism can get rather messy. Thankfully developer …
Now here’s a fine example of an open world game that has ambitious intentions, and unlike so many others, manages to make good on its promises – to find fame and fortune in a sandbox medieval realm. This is achieved by any means seen fit, from becoming a notorious ne’er-do-well to man of the people; …
It’s often said that the key to excellent character design is to create characters that can be recognised by their silhouettes alone. Indie hit Thomas Was Alone springs to mind when thinking about games that successfully defy this convention, putting a bunch of mere blocks under our control. It even went on to spawn an …
Those who can recall the early days of the PlayStation 2 may remember Silpheed: The Lost Planet, a slow and unoriginal shooter that didn’t have much going for it aside occasionally flashy visuals. Out of all the arcade-style shoot ‘em ups we’ve played over the years, this deep space shooter from Headup Games reminds us …
Inventory management is one of the most laborious elements to a typical role-playing game. Not enough to ruin an experience outright, but certainly a hindrance – almost everybody rolls their eyes when seeing ‘you are over-encumbered’ on screen. Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky does something quite unbelievable. It takes this often frowned upon feature and …
Skills gained by obsessively playing Tetris in the ‘90s may come in handy when packing groceries into shopping bags, but they’ll only get you so far when playing the tetromino-featuring Tricky Towers. It requires just as much luck as skill, and it’s because of this it’s neither a puzzler nor a party game. The set-up …