• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

    December 3, 2020 - By 

    If you have been playing Assassin’s Creed games since their inception thirteen years ago, then you will already know how the franchise has redefined itself multiple times during that period, expanding outward from a relatively straightforward adventure to a more open world approach. Of course, the core storyline is as pleasingly bug-nuts as ever: deep breath… in the modern day, tech rebels enter the “Animus”, an enhanced virtual reality device that allows the user to relive the genetic memories of their ancestors. Through this interface, they can discover information about an ancient secret war that has been waged across the centuries between…

  • Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2

    November 17, 2020 - By 

    Back in the day, the Tony Hawk series was one of the most successful videogame franchises around. It is not difficult to see why: released at the tail end of the nineties when console rivalry was beginning to escalate, the original Pro Skater made extreme sports easily accessible to those who lacked either the means or the courage to go grinding through their local park or town centre. With minimal effort, players could quickly pick up basic tricks that, when strung together into combos, made them feel almost superhuman. It was empowering, fun and addictive, even more so with the addition of multiplayer albeit…

  • Paper Mario: The Origami King

    October 7, 2020 - By 

    In 1981, an unknown character called Jumpman first appeared in the arcade game Donkey Kong, bounding up a lattice of wonky girders to rescue his girlfriend Pauline from the titular ape. Four years later, the same rotund yet nimble character – now, inexplicably, an Italian plumber named Mario – appeared in Super Mario Bros., still valiantly coming to the aid of his girlfriend, and the rest is gaming history. There are few franchises that can compete with the longevity and universal appeal that Mario has held over the video game industry since its inception, and fewer still that have placed…

  • Carrion (Devolver Digital, Multiformat)

    September 11, 2020 - By 

    A blood red, mutating, tentacled organism rampages around a subterranean research facility ripping apart gormless scientists and security guards as it tries to escape its confinement. It is a set-up that should be familiar to fans of Horror or Sci-Fi cinema: we have seen such gruesome shenanigans many times before in media such as  Life, Stranger Things, The Thing and lots of others with the word “thing” in the title. However, the gimmick in this twist on the Metroidvania sub-genre is that the player controls said beast: you start the game as a relatively small globule of appendages and viscera, breaking out of a specimen jar…

  • Resident Evil 3 (Capcom, Multiformat)

    July 30, 2020 - By 

    Following hot on the shambling heels of the brilliant Resident Evil 2 remake, the latest port in the long-running series is very much a mixture of mercies. It is undoubtedly as exciting and enjoyable as its predecessor but it is also very short. Just when the game is hitting its stride, it strides even more quickly towards its denouement. It giveth and before you can savour its wares it taketh away. For many players, this will not be a problem: reminiscent of classic releases that could be completed in one or two sittings, Resident Evil 3 seems to be designed…

  • The Last of Us Part II (Sony, Playstation 4)

    June 19, 2020 - By 

    In gangster movie The Road To Perdition, Paul Newman’s mob boss character mournfully intones, “This is the life we chose, the life we lead… and there is only one guarantee: none of us will see Heaven.” This quotation is particularly apt for The Last Of Us Part II, which deals with similar themes of crime and redemption, heinous deeds and consequent trauma, and the repercussions of acts committed by ourselves and those who came before us. Rarely has a videogame so deftly and intelligently explored concepts of violence and the accompanying cognitive dissonance even if the way in which it…

  • Days Gone (Sony, PS4)

    June 7, 2019 - By 

    If you follow videogames media, you will no doubt already be aware of the polarised reception to Sony’s latest AAA exclusive title, Days Gone. Those in the positive camp have praised the intense atmosphere of this open world meets survival horror adventure while naysayers have criticised a release that contains more bugs than the Oval Office. Both sides of the debate have been particularly rabid in either their praise or their lambasting and, as is often the case, the truth resides somewhere in the middle. While there is much to enjoy about Days Gone, that enjoyment is all too often hamstrung by frustration, repetition…

  • 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…