• Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games, PS3/PS Vita)

    July 11, 2013 - By 

    Most videogames, whether or not they choose to profess it, are rooted in violence. And we’re not just talking about bête noires such as Manhunt, Call Of Duty or Carmageddon. Something as innocuous as Super Mario Bros. involves jumping on enemies’ heads to make them disappear, and at the end of each final stage the big boss plummets into a fiery pit. Space Invaders is all about the shooting. Street Fighter requires beating your opponent into submission. Even Tetris involves making harmless blocks disappear. Call it “deleting” or “subtracting” if these euphemisms make the killing and destroying more palatable. There is no doubt that to progress in any videogame you must be…

  • The Last Of Us (Sony, PS3)

    June 25, 2013 - By 

    There is an infamous moment in The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan’s justifiably maligned vision of the apocalypse, in which Mark Wahlberg talks to a plant lest it get angry and secrete a neurotoxin which hastens his madness and eventual suicide. The scene is as ridiculous and cringe inducing as it sounds, and illustrates how in the wrong hands a concept can be totally bungled. The link between this box office disaster and The Last Of Us, the most accomplished and original videogame to be released this year, is that when nature turns angry it can be very deadly indeed. The simple yet…