The Tropico series can easily be compared to EA’s FIFA. Each update adds a handful of new features and has a spot of fine tuning under the hood, but these improvements alone aren’t enough to prevent more than a passing resemblance to its predecessor. Sim City went leaps and bounds from one iteration to the …
If you find yourself buying more games than ever before, there’s a very simple reason for this. With budgets as expensive as they are, games nowadays are designed to appeal to the largest possible audience. An easy way to achieve widespread appeal, especially when it comes to first-person shooters, is to add sci-fi elements. Indeed, …
WayForward’s take on the Turtles franchise surprised us for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it isn’t a wscrolling brawler – the genre that pretty much every TMNT game in the past has favoured. Instead it takes the form of side-scrolling ‘Metroidvania’ adventure that has obviously been designed with speedruns in mind. Secondly, it’s surprisingly good. …
The suffering of sheep continues in this fourth instalment of Activision’s money making franchise. In fact, the first creature you’re shown how to trap – using the new portal and a ‘Traptanium’ crystal – is of the woolly variety. This monumental mammal is far from innocent however. Going by the name of Sheep Creep, they’re …
When Insomniac began pitching Sunset Overdrive to publishers they took along a bag containing various comic books, DVDs, toys, masks and other bits and pieces to help illustrate the kind of vibe they wanted it to have. Noticing some heavy rock ‘n’ roll influences inside their bag of goodies, publishers feared that the studio wanted …
Auto-saving has made gaming considerably easier over the years. No longer do we have to remember to save progress every few minutes; if we die we simply go back to near where we left off, making the consequences of failure minimal at the most. That’s not the case in Alien: Isolation. This deep space survival …
Even with a concept that’s quirkier than most, we’d argue that Chariot’s standout feature is that it brings back good old local co-op gaming. With a friend by your side this physics-based platform puzzler evokes memories of when online gaming was a thing of the future; a time when two gamers could bond on a …
We’re unsure whether Microsoft releasing Project Spark during gaming’s silly season is a sensible idea or not. With so many big name releases out will many gamers have both the time and patience to sit down and experiment with a game creation tool? On the flipside, the evenings are quickly drawing in – winter is …
As a relatively new publisher on the scene – at least when compared to EA, Activision et al – Warner Bros don’t quite get the credit they deserve. The LEGO games have improved massively while under their watchful eye, Mortal Kombat is the best it has ever been (save perhaps for that one time in …
NinjaBee’s Nutjitsu takes the honour of becoming the Xbox One’s first ever ‘snappable’ game. For those of us who aren’t part of Microsoft’s marketing team, this means that it’s a small enough application to run in the background while watching a film or playing another game, allowing you to then flick back and forth. Playing …
When it comes to polarising reviews there’s one game that always sticks in our mind – 2010’s Deadly Premonition. Low budget yet incredibly ambitious, Access Games’ open-world murder mystery received review scores varying from 1/10 to 10/10. Slow paced and cut-scene heavy it certainly wasn’t for everybody, but given time it would shine in a …
In an effort to confuse everyone, Madden 15 is the 27th game in the Madden football series and the sequel to last year’s Madden 25 – the 25th anniversary edition which was actually the 26th game in the series (or more, if you include Madden Football 64 on the N64 which pretty much screwed up …
It’s highly likely that Bungie’s initial pitch for Destiny described it as a mixture of Halo’s sci-fi stylings and World of Warcraft’s rich, DLC friendly, role playing universe. It would appear though that during Destiny’s lengthy development period – 2010’s Halo: Reach was Bungie’s last release, lest you forget – that original pitch altered somewhat. …
As much as we admired Disney for taking on the juggernaut that is Activision’s money making Skylanders franchise, the original Disney Infinity left a lot to be desired. A surprisingly high amount of additional figures could only be used in the Minecraft-inspired Toy Box mode, and despite the ‘Infinity’ in the game’s title characters couldn’t …
As a free download intended to promote the upcoming Michael Bay movie, the question we need to answer here is not in regards to value for money but if it’s worth wasting valuable time on. If you have a hankering for some easy achievements, then the answer is yes. Low budget and bare-boned, this is …