David Smith is the former games and technology editor at The AU Review. He has previously written for PC World Australia. You can find him on Twitter at @RhunWords.
The third episode of Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series resumes very shortly after the conclusion of Episode 2: The Lost Lords. Things aren’t looking great for the imperiled Forrester family and, if this new episode is any indication, their trials show no signs of abating any time soon. Episode Three, titled A Sword…
Read More
Picking up where the previous episode left off, (and to “Something Good” by Alt-J) Life is Strange: Episode 2 – Out of Time continues Max Caulfield’s story, but not especially far. There’s not a lot of narrative ground covered in this second episode – instead, Dontnod devote more to the development of their leading lady….
Read More
UDPATE — Netflix have officially confirmed the below pricing to Gizmodo AU. To reiterate, that’s AU$8.99, $11.99 and $14.99 on each plan. Original news piece follows. — There’s only two days left before Netflix officially reveals their Australian pricing and library of titles but someone on Reddit may have beaten them to the punch. Hit…
Read More
Battlefield Hardline takes the venerable combat FPS series in some pretty new directions. Eschewing military combat for a cops-vs-robbers angle, Hardline works hard to make the most of it’s premise. If you’re reading this review, it’s probably to find out what the game’s multiplayer is like – Battlefield’s multi has long been it’s big draw….
Read More
Ori and the Blind Forest marks a return to a kind of game we haven’t seen for a while, that most enjoyable of beasts, colloquially known as a “Metroidvania”. It bears all the hallmarks of those 2D exploratory juggernauts but looks for clever ways to update that formula for the modern era. In this, and…
Read More
It’s been almost four months since the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands was released and the wait for the next installment has been an especially long one. Telltale are obviously aware of the delay, opening their “Previously on” intro with the line “Yes, yes, it’s been a while. Everyone knows.” This cheeky, self-aware…
Read More
Created by Defiant Development, an indie studio in my home town of Brisbane, Hand of Fate strives to be different. It combines elements of a deck-building CCG, a roguelike dungeon crawler and action RPG’s to come up with something entirely new and, while it doesn’t always completely succeed, there’s still a lot to like here.
Read More
2014 was a pretty rough year to be a fan of Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft’s attempt at bringing the series into the latest console generation was calamitous at best, but in all the tumult surround Assassin’s Creed Unity, it was easy to forget that it wasn’t the only AC title being released. Assassin’s Creed Rogue, previously…
Read More
Oscura: Lost Light the third game in a series of platformers by Australian developer Chocolate Liberation Front. Based out of Melbourne, CLF has many tendrils in many Australian media avenues with ventures into TV and online projects as well as games. Oscura: Lost Light combines the old-school, challenging platforming of the 16-bit era and combines…
Read More
The Bright Lord is the latest DLC to be released for Monolith Soft’s 2014 surprise hit Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Surprisingly substantial, as DLC goes, it’s a welcome return to Mordor’s barren, Uruk-infested plains and allows itself to tell a rather important story in Middle-earth history while it’s at it.
Read More
Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? Man, that game was awesome. Building crazed, malevolent roller coasters specifically to make anyone who dared ride them barf up a lung the moment it ended? Brilliant. It’s clear that the people at Frontier Games have played a lot of Roller Coaster Tycoon because Screamride is both an ardent homage to…
Read More
Dragon Ball Xenoverse is the latest in a line of over a hundred video games based on Akira Toriyama’s enduring manga and wildly popular anime adaptation, Dragon Ball Z. With the best and most true-to-the-anime visuals of any DBZ title to date, and a story that messes with the established DBZ story, you could be…
Read More
Nintendo’s recent foray into more mobile games has been cause for jubilation for some long-time fans, determined for Nintendo to survive in an industry more cutthroat than ever before, and dismay for others who would prefer Nintendo not dive into the cheap-and-cheerful world of mobile gaming. This new willingness from Nintendo to embrace cheaper and…
Read More
A few months ago, we brought you our review of Sony’s Xperia Z3 smartphone. At the time, Sony’s PlayStation 4 Remote Play functionality wasn’t available at the time and we weren’t able to include it in the review. With Remote Play now well-and-truly rolled out, we decided to revisit our review and talk a little…
Read More
What can you say about The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask that hasn’t already been said? As the first Zelda title to follow the revolutionary The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask had it had its work cut out for it. Pushing the Nintendo 64 hardware to its limit, Majora’s Mask dared to…
Read More
The Total War series is a venerable one. Releasing one game after another over the last 15 years, it remains willfully experimental, seeking a way to combine real-time strategy with turn-based strategy into one cohesive whole. Total War: Attila not without its problems but, like its namesake, it’s more than willing to take a few…
Read More
Evolve is one of those games that feels like it’s been in the pipeline for a really long time. Developed by Turtle Rock Studios, the team behind Valve’s multiplayer zombie shoot-em-up Left 4 Dead, it sees a sci-fi future (plainly influenced by 80’s sci-fi films like Predator and Aliens) in which a squad of four…
Read More
Life is Strange – Episode One, like its protagonist Max, is kind of a weird kid. Part Twin Peaks, part Juno, with just a pinch of Veronica Mars, it borrows liberally from the episodic point-and-click formula that’s been so successful for Telltale Games. It does, however, try to present something we haven’t seen in the…
Read More
Disney’s Fantasia: Music Evolved feels like a bit of a strange beast when you first encounter it – it’s a Kinect-controlled game based on Fantasia, Walt Disney’s 1940 love note to classical music. But this feeling of uncertainty lasts only as long as it takes to get into your first song which is where the…
Read More
The latest Australian Video Games release dates… 2018 JULY 3/7/18 Jurassic World Evolution (PS4, XBO, PC) 6/7/18 The Lost Child (PS4, NS) Ys XIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (NS) 12/7/18 Shining Resonance Refrain (PS4, XBO, NS) 13/7/18 Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (NS, 3DS) Earthfall (PS4, XBO, Hero Defense(PS4) Octopath Traveller (NS) Runbow Deluxe Edition (PS4) Nintendo…
Read More
If you, gentle reader, are anything like me then you might spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting the near-extinction of couch co-op as a multiplayer component. All but gone are the days of having a few friends over and playing a game together on the same screen, in the same room, competitively or cooperatively….
Read More
The Lego series’ core gameplay loop is extremely familiar by now. You jump from character to character and smash your way through a series of levels, punching baddies and solving rather basic puzzles in order to proceed. Obsessive collecting of lego studs is rewarded with unlockable characters, vehicles and even stages. This loop has seen…
Read More
Telltale’s second offering of the holiday season is the product of their fruitful partnership with Warner Bros on The Wolf Among Us earlier this year. This new adventure title, Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series – based on HBO’s wildly successful fantasy series of the same name – offers immense value both to fans…
Read More
LittleBigPlanet 3 is the first main title in Sony’s long-running series of creativity-focused platformers not to be developed by series creators Media Molecule. Developers Sumo Digital have been tasked with taking Sackboy on it’s latest adventure and, though they do a respectable job for the most part, LittleBigPlanet 3 still falls short of everything it…
Read More
The Wii U’s most hotly anticipated title is finally here. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has been a very long time coming indeed and for fans of the series keen to beat their friends up all over again, it’s everything you ever wanted from a Smash Bros title and much, much more.
Read More
The second of three Telltale Games releases this holiday season, the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands is a step in a different direction for the developer. Usually preferring slower-paced story-telling with a focus on dialogue, “Zer0 Sum” smashes theatrically through the walls of Telltale’s comfort zone and takes you on a pacey, action-oriented…
Read More
I’m kind of a comic book nut. When Telltale Games announced that they were releasing a noir point-and-click adventure based on Bill Willingham’s FABLES series of graphic novels, I was pretty excited. Though The Wolf Among Us released earlier this year in it’s entirety on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, the game has just seen…
Read More
Where do you start with a game like Dragon Age: Inquisition? Bioware have unleashed on an unprepared world a game with so much to see and do that it defies belief. Bioware have taken the lessons they learned from Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II and their mechanically similar Mass Effect series and applied them…
Read More
I am what could be called an Assassin’s Creed apologist. I’ve defended the series against hyper-critical friends and co-workers, I even managed to find things to like about Assassin’s Creed III — and everyone hated that one. Where many have grown weary of the series since it became a yearly franchise, I’ve continued to look…
Read More
Halo: The Master Chief Collection is an anthology title comprised of all four games starring the enduringly popular one-man-army (and unofficial Xbox mascot) Master Chief. For Halo fans anxiously awaiting the next entry in the series, Halo 5: Guardians, the Master Chief Collection offers a comprehensive stroll down memory lane in the interim. This collection…
Read More