Games Review: Firewatch

Just because I have a PS4, it's not to say I've totally abandoned my trusty PC. Z and I are still playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, for starters, but I've also got a stack of unplayed games on my Steam account, and the PC gaming ecosystem is just so much more diverse than the console one. Also the Teenager is playing a lot of Overwatch in the lounge, so there is that, too. So away from the big and flashy excitement of the PS4, I've still be dabbling in the smaller, shorter gems I've not really got around to yet, and this is one of them.

Games Review: Rise of the Tomb Raider

It took me a long time for me to find a game in the long-running and oft-rebooted Tomb Raider franchise before I found a game I really liked, with the recent do-over called, unsurprisingly Tomb Raider. The story Lara before she really gets into the Raiding of Tombs (and a game which features very few Tombs to Raid!), I really liked it back in 2013 and was really looking forward to it's inevitable follow up. And, after a period of being one of those horrible console exclusives on the XBOne,  Rise of the Tomb Raider finally made it to PC and has eaten up most of my free gaming time over the last month of so. Does it, as I hoped, build on the last game? Do we get Tombs to Raid? Well, yes, on both counts. 

Games Review: Fallout 4

So since christmas I've been conciously trying to cut back on a lot of my commitments in order to focus on a plan "to do less things better". This is mostly driven by an ambition to finish off my proffesional exams by the end of 2016, which will involve a fair bit of work, and needs to be one of my main focuses. So in some ways it's ironic that I've found 69 hours in the last two and a bit months to play through Fallout 4. In my own defense, it's largely been in small sessions in and around other things, something that the game is surprisingly good for, but still, that feels like a lot of time to spend in a ruined post-apocalyptic Boston, especially given how much I've still got left to do. 

Best of 2015: Games!

Right, onwards with the review of the year. For all we watch about a movie a week, and for all I've managed to read quite a bit, this year has probably been dominated by gaming; both electronically and around a table. The former has become a main source of relaxation; and a lot more solo-oriented than previous years, whilst the latter has has largely been driven by the kids, now Robert is old enough to get into something a little more complex than Mousetrap. By my count I've played 14 video games this year, and 18 boardgames (some several times and one a lot) so I feel thats a pretty varied run. Lets break it down a bit.

Games Review: Mad Max

It's been a big year for the once dusty and slightly forgotten Mad Max franchise. George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road is probably the best film I'm going to see this year, with sequels on the way and burst of relevance I don't think the franchise has ever known thanks to it's treatment of it's female characters and lurking themes behind the exploding cars. On top of that, it's also gotten a big-budget, AAA gaming release in the "open world" style, promising the power to let you wander the wasteland and gruffly right wrongs. It's called, simply, enough, Mad Max, and I finished it over the weekend.

Games Review: World of Warships

One of the lasting joys of being a predominantly PC game-player is that there is a lot of diversity out there and a lot of it is Free. Well, "Free", I guess, as the "play to win" model is ever-present in there, but there is also a lot of games you can get a lot of fair, and balanced enjoyment out of without paying a penny for. I tend to find that if I've got a certain amount of play out of a game I'll end up spending money anyway, partly as a thank you, and partly because the sort of shinies a lot of these games offer can indeed be pretty shiny. In the case of World of Warships, we're talking about shiny, shiny battleships.

Games Review: The Talos Principle

Remember Portal? Portal (and it's sequel) felt unique; a first person puzzle game with simple mechanics leading to ingenous solutions, coupled with an interesting and engaging story. In fact, it pretty much was unique - puzzle games lean towards the abstract rather than the immersive, and even there the balance of challenge and frustration is tough to get right. After all, you want your players to beat the puzzles, don't you? Part of the joy of the game is the buzz you get from working it all out. Even so it's surprising that Portal didn't spawn a host of imitators, but whilst there has been a handful, none seem to have nailed the balance quite so brilliantly as The Talos Principle. 

Games Review: Heroes of the Storm

I thought I was done with Blizzard after the vague disappointment of Starcraft 2, and the harder disappointment of Diablo 3. I mean, both were decent games, I don't regret buying them, but both felt played out a little - neither as good as their illustrious forebears and both failing to bring much new to the table than Blizzards usual high polish. Thats not something you should dismiss lightly, but at the same time I'd seen the fundamentals of both games done more interestingly elsewhere, and in Diablo 3's case, without punishing the player by breaking a core feature like itemization to service some Valve-esque auction house system. So with my poor World of Warcraft hunter gathering dust in Orgrimmar, I'm done, right? Well no, because the buggers mailed me a Closed Beta invite for Heroes of the Storm, as it officially launches tomorrow, here's what I think. 

Games Review: Endless Legend

I remember when Grand Strategy Games made up a substantial part of my gaming diet. In fact, the first PC game I played with any great ferocity was the original Civilization, sat at the back of university computer clusters and running it off the disks it came on. Over the years I've hopped across the genre as they've come out, but increasingly the large amount of time it takes to really get to grips with a game - I'm looking at you, Crusader Kings II - has really put me off. At the same time I've developed a real fondness for co-op gaming, and have played a couple of Strategy Games that offer fun co-op experiences. R.U.S.E. was fun, as I recall, as was Endless Space. The latters most recent stablemate, Endless Legend, was a return to the style I will always have fond memories of, a large flat map dotted with cities and small armies, battling for supremacy. 

Games Review: Wolfenstein: The New Order

There was a bit of a buzz phrase that went around the gaming review world about the time that Bioshock Infinite came out; Ludonarrative Dissonance. Its about as pretentious a concept as it sounds; the idea that gameplay and story can jar badly in a game, pushing you out of enjoyment of either the moment-to-moment gameplay or whatever epic tale that gameplay is trying to tell. It's actually a pretty common thing - think Lara Croft getting teary over killing someone and then proceeding to kill about two dozen more - and its pretty rare that games successfully mesh the two, especially in the big, AAA action section of the market. But I've rarely had a problem with it, because its part of the gaming landscape, and I always appreciate the effort, story wise. In fact, the first such game I can think of where I've really had this problem is Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Games Review: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

"This game is a narrative experience that will not hold your hand" intones the opening statement of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, stark words on a black screen that act as the games main promise. And then, true to it's word, it dumps out on a disused railway line in a forest, as "psychic detective" Paul Prospero, and just leaves you to it. And so begins a fascinating, clever, wonderful, and yet deeply flawed experiment in what a game is, and how we, the players, relate to it. It's a game that generated a lot of buzz when it came out, but didn't seem to linger in the wider consciousness as much as fellow "Walking Simulator" Gone Home, but still wound up my first purchase from this years Steam Winter Sale, and the game I went straight onto after finishing Shadows of Mordor, because it seemed right up my street.