Category: Reviews
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Panzer Corps: Afrika Korps Review
The history of wargames saw a divergence of play styles back in the late 80s and 90s. There were hardcore traditionalists, who slavishly painted model soldiers and gained equal pleasure from showing off their models as they did from actually playing games with them. Then there were the board game enthusiasts who, spurning the use…
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Confrontation Review
Writing video game reviews can be a frustrating business. Every writer relishes the occasion when an absolute cracker lands on their desk; those reviews practically write themselves. When a solid, well thought out title makes it way onto the market, every reviewer knows that credit is due where credit is due. The opposite also holds…
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Star Trek Review
The vision and scope of Star Trek (the new video game based on the new version of an ancient franchise) is truly impressive. Commanding the Enterprise, co-op with Kirk and Spock, it has the obvious foundations of a solid, if not spectacular, videogame. To developer Digital Extremes’ credit, they really went for it. It’s got…
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Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen Review
Dragon’s Dogma was a weird game when it hit in 2012. It was a unique Japanese take on Western fantasy, peppered with gameplay systems there were unlike anything people had seen before, but also with a lot of rough edges. It was a risky endeavour for Capcom – a new and untested IP, in an…
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Crysis Warhead
I hate aliens. Not because I am afraid they will one day take over the world, consuming us through their vaguely organic orifices and using our blood to terraform earth into the spitting-image of Mars. Nor do I hate them because they might one day tempt us into building a gigantic spinning thinga-ma-job with no…
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Indiana Jones and the Lost Puzzles Review
We love puzzle games wrapped up in good narrative elements, and Indiana Jones and the Lost Puzzles wears its licensing like a custom fit fedora. In Lost Puzzles you’re not just solving a colorful tile-matching puzzle, but you’re helping the one and only Indiana Jones collect priceless artifacts in ruinous ancient temples, and helping him…
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Rolando Review
Although iPhone is picking up ever-increasing amounts of attention as a games platform, the mainstream gaming press still looks at it askance; to their jaundiced eye, it rates somewhere between “messy oddity” and “half-baked gold rush.” What gamer in his or her right mind would want to dig through the App Store’s burgeoning collection of…
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Splice: Tree of Life Review
Science: it’s no longer reserved for nerds and chemistry teachers stricken with cancer. Just kidding. Science, of course, makes the world go ’round. And while it may seem confusing to the uninitiated, there are certain video games that seek to turn the allure of science into entertaining diversions. Splice: Tree of Life is one of…
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Renegade Ops Review
The most pleasant thing about Renegade Ops is it never once tries to be what it isn’t. With clear nods to The A-Team and G.I. Joe, Renegade Ops is the spiritual sequel to each and every one of your favorite late ‘80s titles – as long as they involved cruising around and blowing shit up.…
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FIFA 18 Review
Right now a lot of people are probably eyeing up FIFA 18 and asking themselves the annual question of whether to upgrade. In much the same way as the iPhone 8 which arrived last week, it’s difficult to weigh up the improvements and justify the cost for anyone who purchased last year’s edition. Afterall, with…
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Edge Review
What if we told you it was a good idea to pay $5.99 for a game populated solely by simple boxes, modeled in various shades of grey, with no textures to speak of? You’d probably think we were crackers… but we’re not. We’re describing Edge, a new platformer from Mobigame that takes minimalist design to…
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Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai Review
Creative Assembly seem to have a knack when it comes to extending their games. Given the phenomenal size and depth of their strategy titles, it’s a testament to their development that they keep churning out new add-ons and additions for strategy buffs to tinker with. Ealier this year I had a chance to one of the…
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The Last Guardian Review
The Last Guardian is a bad game – at least, by every metric we use to talk about things in this medium. Its design is dated, it’s a technical mess, and the controls are sluggish and unresponsive. And yet despite all that, one thing kept coming to the surface in my time with it; the…
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Deponia Review
Deponia is a point and click cartoon adventure, strongly reminiscent of LucasArts’ classic Monkey Island series. It’s jam-packed with quirky cartoon characters, clever puzzles, an overabundance of (mostly) witty dialogue, and hilarious slapstick moments. The setting is about as far removed from the Caribbean as you can get, though; Deponia being a planet covered in…
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Red Faction: Guerrilla (PC) Review
Red Faction: Guerrilla is not a game for people who enjoy character development or meaningful dialogue with NPCs. Red Faction: Guerrilla is not a game for people who enjoy collecting custom weapons and other items. Red Faction: Guerrilla is not for people who enjoy broad, scenic vistas and haunting soundtracks. Red Faction: Guerrilla is for…
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The Walking Dead – Starved for Help Review
Aylon takes a look at the second of five chapters in Telltale’s latest multi-part adventure game. If you’re not already aware of the title, which is based on the hit The Walking Dead comic books, be sure to check out for a bit of background. While it may start off quietly, it takes less than five…
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Fury (PC) Review
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (or MMORPGs, for short) are, thanks largely to media darling World of Warcraft, very much on the rise. The genre is positively exploding; it seems you’re not a real video game publisher if you don’t have a few on the boil. Commanding some ten million players (at last count…
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Secret of Mana Review
When Secret of Mana first hit the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993, players wondered about the nature of the “secret” that was hinted at by the game’s title. 18 years and one iPhone release later, we still have no clue what this secret actually is, so we’ll just assume Mana steals cable, and move…
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Homefront: The Revolution Review
Homefront: The Revolution is a game with flaws. Lots of flaws. Nothing about the game is particularly broken, it’s just so many things seem to be done poorly or are just jarringly ill-fitted. At its most basic, Homefront: The Revolution (H:TR) is a first person shooter set in a world where North Korea has taken…
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Wargame: European Escalation Review
For you young-guns, there was once a series of escalating political tensions referred to as the Cold War, during the late seventies and early eighties. It was an era when the doomsday clock ticked and the world lived under the ever-present threat of nuclear war. Peace was maintained thanks only to a strategy known as…