Making allies to confront the supernatural What if you combined a John Hughes movie with a Wes Craven film? This is the essence of Oxenfree. The complex relationships of ragtag teens mixed with supernatural elements reminds me of scary movies from the ‘80s, but Oxenfree also tries to be a narrative game that reacts to … Read more
A decade is an eternity in technology. When Doom 3 released in 2004, Twitter didn’t exist, there were no YouTube celebrities, and Apple had yet to invent the iPhone. In the 11 years since, Activision has released 19 Call of Duty games, the motion-gaming fad has come and gone, and console dominance has shifted from … Read more
The smartphone revolution was huge for gamers. No longer are we chained to a TV or PC monitor to get our gaming fix. And today’s mobile devices are powerful enough to handle PC and console games from just a few years ago. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a major gaming franchise that … Read more
How stripping Hitman to its core opens up more options than ever for Agent 47 Agent 47, with his shaved dome, funerary suit and pitiless eyes, has never been what you’d call a reassuring presence, but in this incarnation his steely demeanour is magnified into something alarming. Perhaps Io Interactive’s in-house cloth physics are responsible … Read more
How a late twist changed the fate of this gripping teen horror game Most of us are familiar with the ingredients by now. It all begins calmly enough, a happy group laughing and joking before the screw steadily, inexorably begins to tighten. There’s an agonisingly slow build, a gradual sense of creeping dread, and that … Read more
Minecraft has now sold over 70 million copies and is the biggest-selling oneman game of all time. Where next for the Swedish behemoth? No one expected that the dominant game of the early 21st century would be a retro exploration game from a shy, obscure Swedish developer. But then, Minecraft surprises everyone who plays it. … Read more
Handheld gaming has never looked so goodSince we’ve been looking at the Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds in our weekly Remembering page, we thought it was only fair to mention this wonderful resource of online Game & Watch goodness. PicaPic’s Retro Collection of Handheld Games is developed by Hipopotam, a small development studio from Warsaw, … Read more
Half game, half TV show, ambitious Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break forges new paths through both Telling a story about time travel, a good one, is the scriptwriter’s Everest. A subgenre predisposed to paradox and plot holes, narrative threads getting knottier with every rewrite, it’s a stern enough challenge in any form of media. In … Read more
Dive many leagues into an alien world and try to survive as long as possible Open world survival games have fast become the norm on the PC. We’ve been tasked with trying to outlast a zombie apocalypse, survive being stranded on a deserted island and found ourselves washed ashore on some unknown land. Either way, … Read more
The city-building game better than SimCityCity-building games are great fun and have been around for decades, but the genre is difficult to get right. The latest SimCity, for example, may have beautiful graphics, but gameplay is over-simplified and unbalanced, and playing it requires a constant internet connection. However, Cities: Skylines gets it right. The game … Read more
Bloodborne is a game that’s been almost impossible to ignore since it was first announced. Developed by the same team that brought us the brutally challenging Dark Souls series (preceded by Demon’s Souls), we were pretty much sold from the start on this hack-and-slash romp through a beautifully bleak gothic landscape. However, Bloodborne is designed … Read more
It’s old-school RPG action all the way with Obsidian’s crowdfunded fantasy adventure. DETAILS • Manufacturer: Obsidian Entertainment • Website: eternity. obsidian.net • Required spec: Windows Vista 64-bit or later, Intel Core i3-2100T 2.50GHz or equivalent 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4850 or NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT, 14GB disk space For many PC gamers, the golden … Read more