• Dying Light (Warner Bros, Multiformat)

    March 31, 2015 - By 

    Zombies, eh? You can’t live with them, you can’t live… well, you know what I mean. It’s funny to think how crucial a mainstay of the gaming medium the groaning, slavering undead have become in recent years. Whether they are the slow or the fast variety, they’re everywhere, clutching and clawing, scratching mindlessly, mouths agog and leaking out glottal moans; or pegging it after moving cars like decomposing Usain Bolts, flailing their limbs and yowling. From Ghosts ‘n Goblins to a cameo in the children’s animation Wreck-It Ralph, zombies pop up all over the place, and even made the numb-skulled Call Of Duty almost bearable.…

  • The Order: 1886 (Sony, PS4)

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Style versus substance. The eternal question. Which you favour, of course, very much depends upon your personality. There are those who will be wowed by the purest aesthetics of an art form, in this case videogames, who will froth and rave about graphical detail, texture pop-in, draw distance, facial animations, particle blur and so on. And then there are those who will prefer to be immersed in an engaging story deftly told with empathic characters, surprising twists and an emotional pay-off. Unfortunately, The Order: 1886 falls between these two stools, and is more often that not perched uncomfortably on the former. There…

  • Resident Evil HD (Capcom, Multiformat)

    February 20, 2015 - By 

    Fittingly for a videogame about zombies, Resident Evil refuses to die. First released way, way back in 1996 on the Playstation, it was entirely rebuilt and remodelled six years later for the Nintendo Gamecube. Now Capcom have given us the remake of the remake, a concept that would sound like charlatanry if it were not for the fact that Resident Evil remains a fantastic game twenty years after it shuffled into the medium, groaning, clawing and chomping for brains. There is no doubt that some aspects of the gameplay feel archaic: the rhythm of get key, open door, obtain map, flick switch does seem…

  • Decemberists @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    February 14, 2015 - By 

    …in which the good ship Infanta sails into Dublin on a sea of whimsy and English tea, bearing forth a band of bohemian minstrels, sweating absinthe, smoking shisha pipes, brandishing muskets, sextants and satchels overflowing with sonnets scrawled on rolls of teletype paper. Right from the outset, it is clear that the audience, squeezed into a venue fittingly bedecked in wooden friezes, will be treated to something truly rare in modern music: originality. Firstly, there’s frontman and songwriter in chief Colin Meloy’s lyrics, which are uniquely literate, ribald and at times just a tad sinister in the best possible way.…

  • Grand Theft Auo V (Rockstar Games, PC/PS4/Xbox 360)

    December 13, 2014 - By 

    Attributing the title of “Greatest Videogame Of All Time” is, of course, a purely subjective pursuit. Does the addendum “of all time” include all the games that shall ever be released in the future? Is it etched in stone, never to be challenged or usurped? Choosing which release deserves this award is entirely fruitless because such hyperbole is most often greeted with at best scepticism and at worst scorn. It is, however, an accolade that has been buzzing around GTA V since its initial release late last year, and while its levels of violence, bad language and generally salacious tone will certainly…

  • Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions (Sierra Entertainment, Multiformat)

    January 1, 2015 - By 

    This game should come adorned with a government health warning as it will surely turn the player into a drooling, blank-eyed husk of a human being. It will no doubt lead to the break-up of relationships and loss of jobs, and it will cause great physical displeasure to those who allow themselves to be sucked into its vortex. They will forego eating, sleeping and comfort breaks as they sit, legs numbed, controller in hand, boggling at the screen. Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is the gaming equivalent of the videotape in The Ring, as once you have seen it you will…

  • Dragon Age: Inquisition (EA, Multiformat)

    January 1, 2015 - By 

    Videogames, as anyone knows, are a distraction. They offer a welcome excuse for avoiding sorting out that mounding pile of laundry or changing the blown bulb in the downstairs toilet. They provide respite from the tedium of everyday life and an opportunity to embody a fictional character in an entirely fantastical world. Consequently, David the biochemist will spend an average evening saddling up dragons and scorching riverside hamlets, grinning with glee as petrified villagers scream and run for safety. Brian from accounting will fill a random weekend ranking up on Shooty Shooty Bang Bang 3 so he can unlock a…

  • Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

    December 10, 2014 - By 

    Those of us who can’t get enough of Assassin’s Creed will be tickled pink at the release of not one, but two games in the franchise. Whereas Unity is the first title to be developed exclusively for next generation consoles,Rogue offers something else entirely. To some it might seem like a fond farewell to the consoles on which the series launched: evidence that, while abandoned by many gamers, the lowly Xbox and PS3 still have plenty of life in them yet. To others, it is a curio, an excised chapter from a parent narrative that is already fairly convoluted. In reality, Rogue is all of these things…

  • Destiny (Multiformat)

    November 12, 2014 - By 

    It is fair to say that the development company Bungie knows a thing or two about making videogames. With the critically acclaimed, million selling Halo franchise in their portfolio, they would have been forgiven for hanging up their boots and never working on another project again. However, with that incredible success comes the incredible expectation that has weighed upon the release of Destiny since its initial announcement. It has, in one way or another, evaded neat pigeonholing, described in some quarters as a first person shooter in an open world setting, and in others as commingling MMO and RPG mechanics. It has variously been…

  • Alien: Isolation (Multiformat)

    November 10, 2014 - By 

    Two powerful forces collide head-on in this latest iteration of the classic Sci-Fi Horror movie. Firstly, there is the expectation that the chief tenet of modern videogames is bombast, that they should be loud yet morally and intellectually lacking. Outer space is not the only vacuum in recent releases, which favour the shooty, shooty, bang, bang stuff over anything resembling characterisation or an engaging plot. Secondly, there is the unavoidable fact that previous titles bearing the Alien brand have not been very good. The flailing series has moved further and further away from what made the source material so enthralling. However, just…