• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (Sony, PS4)

    Not many development houses can boast the same consistent track record as the one trail-blazed by Naughty Dog. The Santa Monica company may not have many intellectual properties to their name but when those franchises include Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted and The Last Of Us, they can afford to be choosy. Each of these releases is markedly a team production, the result of many hours of designers, writers, voice artists, illustrators and coders collaborating to make the best game that they could possibly make. Also, unlike so many rivals who exploit their respective fanbases through drip-feeding perfunctory add-ons or usurious micro-transactions, Naughty Dog expansions appear…

  • Until Dawn (Sony, PS4)

    This time last year, Alien: Isolation took an innovative approach to the survival horror genre with mechanics that were at once challenging and, crucially, very, very scary. Its creation of a steadily building sense of dread was, until the release of Until Dawn, unparalleled. The brainchild of British developers Supermassive Games sets out to do something equally bold, and the results are hugely satisfying. Drawing upon the same creaky genre tropes that inform the none more meta movie Cabin In The Woods, this strange and beguiling release starts in a familiar locale (an isolated resort inconveniently placed atop a mountain,…

  • God Of War III Remastered (Sony, PS4)

    If BuzzFeed ever compiles a list of the 27 angriest characters in videogames, the top spot would undoubtedly go to Kratos, the Ghost of Sparta and titular God of War. He’s angrier than Andross (Star Fox), Vaas (Far Cry 3), and Zangief (Street Fighter). He’s angrier than the birds in Angry Birds. He’s even angrier than Wreck-It Ralph. Kratos exists in a permanent state of rage, a mardy sourbake fixed to his big grey face as he fights his way up Mount Olympus, onwards, downwards and upwards to topple Zeus, the father who betrayed him, and all of his demigods…

  • Beyond: Two Souls (Sony, PS3)

    It’s fair to say that Heavy Rain, the last outing from development team Quantic Dream, changed the way people think about videogames – and the way they play them. Deeply cinematic in nature, it attempted to weave together multiple storylines into one coherent and engaging whole. A noir murder mystery at heart, it starred the classic archetypes of spent detectives, deadbeats and sinister loners but imbued them with the kind of humanity which rarely appears in this medium. Further, it was at times deeply unsettling: a sequence in which a father searches in vain for his missing son in a crowded…