I’ve been looking everywhere for what might be good gaming merchandise. I’ve trawled through official sites, brick-and-mortar stores and even outlets like Red Bubble. I have to admit, there’s not a whole lot of variety across all three of these, and what’s there is usually not that good, covered in brands or weird quotes or…
Read More
It’s December! Which means presents, sales, friends, family… aaand End of Year Events across a range of games! It’s always great – developers preparing content to see the year off with their player-base, usually around a winter-Christmas theme, content to be playable and fresh through until the next year… it’s almost a tradition of online games to…
Read More
The shotgun is an immortal video game weapon. It’s simple — you click, they die. No arguments. If its a video game with guns in it, and most of them are, and it doesn’t have a shotgun in it … I mean, what are we even doing here? Its roots are deep, with the most…
Read More
In 2018, most new releases across the board from AAA video game titles are around 40 gigabytes in size. This is huge when you consider that games were much lower not too long ago. Skyrim was only 6GB when it was released in 2011. Assassins Creed II was 8GB in 2010, and Crysis was 7GB…
Read More
2018 has been crazy good for RPG’s. The worlds that have been massive and immersive, and deep in content. What is curious is how the developers of these games let players in on the facts of the worlds they’ve built. Information is given to players in interesting ways that differ from game-to-game. From letting players…
Read More
We have, if you can believe, almost reached the end of the current generation of consoles, and with news of PlayStation pulling out of E3 in 2019 in rumoured preparation of a hardware announcement, speculation is mounting as to what the selling points could be for the next generation. 2019 is going to be an…
Read More
Blizzard’s announcement of their latest mobile title, Diablo Immortal, shook many fans of the series to their core. For better or worse, Diablo Immortal on Blizzard’s to-do list and that is a fact that its detractors must learn to live with. They can, of course, simply elect to not spend any money on it if they…
Read More
It’s safe to say that Fallout 76 has been one of the year’s most controversial releases, plagued with issues ranging from internal bugs, to botched preorder incentives and now a serious privacy and security breach. One of the most recent of the controversies, before the, y’know, significant data breach, was the PR minefield regarding a canvas…
Read More
Australia has been absolutely spoiled with the eSports scene as of late. With people like Scott Kennedy (Custa) representing us on the world stage at the Overwatch League, for the LA Valiant, with the recently sponsored JB Hi-Fi Melbourne eSports open happening, and the even more recent Quake eSports event at PAX Melbourne, not to…
Read More
Decisions made by major developers have made this year have indicated Steam’s uncontested reign as the dominant PC gaming storefront may be coming to an end. This week, a conversation has sprung up around the Epic Games Store and the value it offers developers when selling their games. Does Valve finally have direct competition? To call Steam…
Read More
This year marks the second year that The Games Awards have celebrated an ‘Ongoing game’ award, beginning last year and being won by Overwatch, to recognise “A trend towards games that continue to entertain long after their release and continue to grow and evolve with their players”, as last years presented made out on stage….
Read More
Think about all the video games you’ve played. Now think about how many of those titles didn’t have a grappling hook in them and how lame that was. The grappling hook is one of the most iconic tropes in video games history. It has such longevity that people are still making games built around it…
Read More
From what I’ve seen, 2018 has proven to be one thing, above a whole lot of other things: the year of the Role-Playing Game. Between releases like Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, Vampyr, Octopath: Traveler, Monster Hunter World, and new studio attempts at RPG’s like Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed Odyssey and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, we have been…
Read More
I have a crippling desire to look good in video games. It’s an unfathomably stupid impulse, but creating the most beautiful possible avatar in any given game is a habit I regularly give in to. I am certain I am not alone in this. To preface this piece – the two games I really threw…
Read More
Warning, this article contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2, read at your own peril Red Dead Redemption 2 is likely to be “Game of the Year” from a tonne of different award ceremonies; it’s a juggernaut of design, deep in conception and brilliant in execution, to the pain of talented developers who have worked…
Read More
There’s been a debate for years (among those for whom these things are a concern) regarding the apparent superiority of PC gaming over console gaming — desires for higher frame rates, better graphics and wider variety of titles drive the debate, but something that’s prevalent within each argument is cost, from peripherals to internal hardware….
Read More
If you’re into the eSports scene in Australia, you’ve probably heard of the Gfinity Elite Series, hosted by Alienware. If not, here’s a quick rundown – it’s a competitive series running games of Rocket League, CS:GO and Street Fight V, to seek out and identify potential pro players that could use some sponsorship and be brought…
Read More
When Netflix announced that they would be taking on The Witcher as a TV series, fan excitement was overwhelming. Since then, Henry Cavill has been confirmed as playing the big man Geralt himself, with a character reveal recently shown off on Twitter. Get your first look at Henry Cavill in The Witcher! pic.twitter.com/1O2eWS1MkP — Netflix (@netflix)…
Read More
Warcraft III: Reforged is coming, and it’s easily one of the most exciting announcements BlizzCon has had in years. Fans have been waiting years for this particular reveal, to the extent that some began creating mods for Starcraft II that would allow them to play out their Warcraft III fantasies to their hearts content. However,…
Read More
As the medium has grown in complexity and ambition, the debate over whether or not video games can be considered art has continued unabated. The mixture of media elements that influence game development, from gameplay to graphics, art, sound design and narrative all lend themselves to the idea that games can be considered art, but…
Read More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sZsk8VHY2g New details have emerged surrounding Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, notably, you can play as infamous Mario level-hazard, Piranha Plant. https://twitter.com/Tetra_Flora/status/1058108258706186240 Piranha plant will be available to players who purchase early – either those who register their game card before January 31st 2019, or to those who buy digital versions. On top of this, Inceneroar…
Read More
Back in late September, Ken Levine, one of the driving forces behind the Bioshock series posted this to Twitter during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Attonement. Today is the Jewish day of atonement, it seems. So I’m here to apologize for the naked Atlas boss battle at the end of BioShock. pic.twitter.com/UeaEWV717Q — Ken Levine (@levine) September…
Read More
We could be ready to see something monumental on the horizon from Blizzard. Here’s the low down – Blizzard’s annual festival-like event, BlizzCon is kicking off on November 2. Blizzard takes that time to celebrate its different games — Starcraft II, Overwtch, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Hearthstone, and to celebrate the…
Read More
Developers being chewed up and spat out by the global video games industry is a topic that’s been cropping up a lot over the past months. As news of renowned studios closing their doors, sky-high developer turnover and, just as of this week, employees working 100 hour weeks in an effort to get major releases…
Read More
Last week, something occurred in the AAA gaming space that you don’t see every day. Players who pre-order their games digitally across Xbox, PC and PS4 are often extended the luxury of preloading games. Preloading is the process of downloading a game prior to its street date. You can’t play a pre-loaded game right away, the…
Read More
In 2010, Gabe Newell joined Sony at E3, in one of the most controversial crossovers of all time, to announce cross platform play between PS3 and PC for their then-forthcoming title, Portal 2. Newell also noted that he and the gathered throng were seeing a shift in the games industry. Video: Kahleb Olsson “Entertainment-as-a-product to…
Read More
Assassins Creed Odyssey launched last Friday, and to celebrate the launch of the game, Ubisoft held a parkour-themed event in Metcalfe Park in Pyrmont, Sydney. The Assassin’s Creed Challenge was a massive parkour course set up by Ubisoft’s Sydney team, featuring professional free-runners, cosplayers, and 16 booths in which to play the E3 build of…
Read More
Retrowave and synthwave are still rather under-the-radar sub-genres of electronica. They often involve a strong link to pop culture and 80’s-inspired musical themes. Last week, I got the chance to speak with ALEX, a U.K based producer and thought leader in the retrowave and synthwave genres. ALEX’s most recent album, Simulations, is a 10-track stream-of-consciousness…
Read More
Fallout 76 will be letting players start the apocalypse early, with the announcement of dates for the game’s B.E.T.A. test. Usually these kinds of short-window early marks are called a beta period, but the Fallout developers love their abbreviations — it stands for “Break-It Early Test Application”. But first, the Official In-Game Intro for Fallout…
Read More
Red Dead Redemption 2 is getting multiplayer. Red Dead Online will be the online multiplayer component in Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2, and will operate in a similar manner to Grand Theft Auto Online. It will drop players into the full size, open world map of Red Dead Redemption 2, catering for massive lobbies of players,…
Read More