Review by Matt S. When it comes to my sports games, I’m a very simple person. I like being able to play tournaments with my favourite teams, and the greater the authenticity of that experience, the better. Related reading: Nick’s review of last year’s FIFA release. For this reason I’ve…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Family trauma is a tough demon to tackle in a video game, but indie outfit Hailstorm Games touched upon it liberally in its 2014 sidescrolling horror game, Claire. With a heavy dose of surrealism and Freudian psychoanalysis thrown into the mix, Claire was a very focused…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. To everyone out there, have you played Dear Esther? I would assume most of you have – the prolific surrealist piece developed by The Chinese Room is still a free download on PC’s and almost necessitates a name drop in every “Games as Art” conversation. Perhaps…
Read MoreReview by Matthew C. The boom in indie development has seen a wonderful surge in puzzle platformers over the last few years. It makes sense, when you think about it: this is a genre that’s low on development needs (relatively speaking), but with an incredibly high ceiling for creativity and…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. One Way Trip is like videogames’ answer to the stoner road trip movie – those classic films like Up in Smoke, Harold and Kumar, and Dude, Where’s My Car?. If you take that to mean that One Way Trip is a bizarre, nonsensical trip that could…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Famed writer of anime and visual novels, Gen Urobuchi, has a penchant for dark, perverse themes. Those familiar with the man’s portfolio may label that a gross understatement as his works range from deconstructions of the innocent magical girl subgenre to relentlessly grotesque Lovecraftian horror. Though…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. One of the recent Australian releases that I can’t quite get enough of is Black Lab Games’ Star Hammer: The Vanguard Prophecy. This tactical space battle game hooked me in on PC, and again when it released on iPad, and did so because it features a…
Read MoreReview by Mikhail M. Hue by Fiddlesticks surprised me in every way, which is good, because on paper it doesn’t sound like too much; it’s a puzzle platformer that relies on colours. That simple concept belies one intensely well-crafted game, however, in which everything from the title screen music to…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Take a time to imagine when the First Person Shooter genre weren’t the titanic please-everybody genre that it is today, and it might be easier to visualise how Verdun fits into the grand scheme of things. A hardcore World War One trench based shooter; Verdun racked…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. There’s a lot of value to be found in games that abandon a typical approach to storytelling in favour of something more abstract and esoteric, and this is something there’s been a welcome surge of in recent times. At the same time, the linear, overt narrative…
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