• Teenage Fanclub w/ Malojian @ CQAF Marquee, Belfast

    May 3, 2019 - By 

    By anybody’s yardstick, guitar rock pioneers Teenage Fanclub have enjoyed an incredible career: to date, they have notched up thirty years of crafting albums of the loveliest melodic major key songwriting this side of California, not to mention supporting the revered likes of Nirvana, Radiohead and Frank Black along the way. No small feat, and even if you may not hear their name mentioned as often and as freely as it should be, chat to any random music fan and they will no doubt wax rhapsodic about the sonic wonders of Grand Prix or Songs From Northern Britain.  The fact that Death Cab…

  • Far Cry New Dawn (Ubisoft, Multiformat)

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    Seventeen years after the denouement of Far Cry 5, whose narrative culminated with the detonation of an actual nuclear bomb, the fictional location of Hope County, Montana is in a period of what one might politely call “social regeneration”. Pockets of survivors are rebuilding shared communities, assisted in part by your character, a male or female cipher who goes by the moniker “The Captain”. As with all previous Far Cry instalments,  your mute avatar is dropped into a nightmarish scenario, ill-equipped and lacking in the necessary skills to cope with this irradiated new world, and must subsequently complete quests to build up the…

  • Trials Rising (Ubisoft, Multi)

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    Those readers of a certain age will remember Kick Start, a fun for all the family television programme in which amateur motorcyclists rode their steeds over and around an obstacle course comprising hay bales, planks and cabers. Inevitably, the rider would fail to ascend a vertiginous mud bank or tumble into a water trough, much to the hilarity of Dave Lee Travis and those watching at home. Such schadenfreude is at the core of the Trials franchise, in which the gamer rides a motorbike through increasingly ludicrous tracks while trying not to plummet to be bottom of a ravine, into a pit of…

  • Resident Evil 2 (Capcom, Multiformat)

    March 6, 2019 - By 

    Some videogames attain immortality status and their greatness can never be questioned by lowly humans. The likes of Jet Set Willy, Oblivion and Super Metroid are spoken of in the same hushed, reverent tones as “classic” albums such as OK Computer, Revolver and In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and gamers still grow misty-eyed when speaking of when they first booted up the console and inserted the appropriate cartridge. Often included in those hallowed halls of wonder is Resident Evil 2, first released twenty years ago on the original Playstation. Yes, it had wonky polygonal graphics and excruciating loading times – the animation of an opening door was used to…

  • Fallout 76 (Bethesda, Multiformat)

    January 2, 2019 - By 

    To quote The Big Lebowski, “sometimes you eat the bar… and sometimes the bar eats you.” It is both fair and heartbreaking to say that Fallout 76 has repeatedly eaten the bar since its initial release, largely because the core DNA of the game is so far removed from the traditional Fallout experience expected from fans of the franchise. It has received a drubbing not too dissimilar to the amount of toxic bile that was heaped upon The Last Jedi when it appeared in cinemas. Some of this castigation is justified, and some of it is the usual predictable self-entitled ranting from armchair critics with nothing better…

  • Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar, Multiformat)

    January 2, 2019 - By 

    After a pack of dynamite fails to ignite, you chase after and then jump onto the top of a speeding locomotive train, hoisting your friend up from the side just before he comes just a hair’s breadth of being cleaned by a passing metal pole. Before you can catch your breath, you are moving through the carriages towards the engine room, picking off enemies with headshots before they can do the same to you. After you halt the train, metal wheels squealing as it comes to a stop, you discover a coach with a hidden room before more bandits arrive…

  • Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (Ubisoft, Multiformat)

    January 2, 2019 - By 

    Just as the creators of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been building for a decade towards the conceptualisation and creation of Avengers: Infinity War, so the designers at Ubisoft have spent the same amount of time visualising the game world at the centre of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. It is arguably the most vividly realised title to date in the long-running series but it also plays fast and loose with concepts that fans have come to love and expect. These changes – some of which are cursory tweaks of basic mechanics, and some are fundamental shifts in the presentation of the virtual world…

  • Villagers – The Art Of Pretending To Swim

    September 20, 2018 - By 

      Not to put too fine a point on it, the latest full-length release from Villagers is a lovely thing. At times so fragile it appears as though the music itself might break, at others dense and swirling with otherworldly sounds, the album never fails to intrigue and surprise whoever takes some much-needed time out from the day’s push and pull. Opener ‘Again’ immediately sets both the tone and style of the entire work: delicate fingerpicking is counterbalanced by a strange, robotic voice repeating the title while Conor O’Brien, sounding as sweet and forlorn as ever, sings of dejection and searching for…

  • Far Cry 5 (Ubisoft, Multi)

    May 29, 2018 - By 

    The Far Cry franchise has never been known for its bashfulness but this most recent episode not so much pushes the envelope as takes that envelope and uses next level origami skills to transform it into a lethal weapon. From beginning to end, Far Cry 5 is a no-holds-barred romp of cartoonish ridiculousness, albeit one with a sting in its tail: while other open world games are set in fairy kingdoms or irradiated wastelands, here the player is invited to frolic in a gonzo vision of rural Montana replete with grain silos, roadside diners, white picket houses, plantation mansions and the like. Look for…

  • God of War (EA, PS4)

    May 18, 2018 - By 

    Put simply, God Of War is not only one of the best games on the current generation of consoles… it is also one of the best games ever released for any console. Yes, this may sound like embellishment, a factually questionable statement similar to those made by overexcited teenage boys just out of their first live concert: “Dude, that was the greatest thing ever, I mean, like forever!” But it’s true: God Of War is out and out excellent, so much so that at times it can be overwhelming. There are so many things happening at once onscreen, so many skill trees to complete and…