Like most gamers of the 90’s, Spyro thje Dragon was one of the first ever games I’ve ever played and when the Spyro Reignited Trilogy was announced I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Until it was only released for the PS4 and Xbox One (versions we’ve previously reviewed). Having only Nintendo Switch…
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Nintendo were not messing around this morning. After announcing yesterday that a 40-minute Nintendo Direct broadcast was scheduled for 8am AEST this morning, the Big N followed through with an E3 level slew of announcements. There’s so much to get through that we’re just going to bulletpoint this and sprinkle some trailers. Ready? Here we…
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Untitled Goose Game, the goose-based civilian torment simulator by Melbourne developer House House, will finally launch on September 20. In development for nearly three years, the game caught the internet’s attention for its exceedingly irreverent pitch — you are a goose and you mess with the life of a put-upon farmer just trying to go…
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Boy, Nintendo sure have been dropping high profile titles like there’s no tomorrow. It wasn’t that long ago that we got our hands on Fire Emblem: Three Houses and here now we have Astral Chain. This Switch-exclusive got its hooks in early, keeping me from sleeping on a 12-hour flight and some subsequent nights after….
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Rad marks another genre turn for developer Double Fine, the studio behind classics like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango and Broken Age. Inkeeping with Double Fine studio lead Tim Schafer‘s abstract sense of humour, Rad is an imaginitive, colourful and wonderfully wacky rogue-like dungeon crawler. Bursting with colour and character, Rad might not be the best game…
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Damsel is the debut title from Brisbane-based developer Screwtape Studios, and a that weilds is distaste for corporate culture like a cudjel. It’s a balletic, side-scrolling arcade shooter about a special agent on a mission to investigate Red Mist, a drink created by a corporation owned and run by literal, actual vampires. Damsel’s pulpy, comic…
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For the first few hours, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order feels very much of a time and place — specifically 2006, which was when the previous installment was released. My first impression was of a game that felt rather samey, and a touch clunky at times. Critically, and despite its 13 year hiatus,…
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Whatever the reason we had to wait so long to get this in Australia, I for one am just glad that it’s here and that it exists. Adelaide-based indie developers Team Cherry truly blessed the gaming community when they released Hollow Knight a few years ago, followed by a widely acclaimed roll-out on all current-gen…
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Let’s face it. The release of Wolfenstein: Youngblood has been predictably depressing. Angry men whining that the game has a SJW agenda. Angry men whining that it’s putting politics in their gaming. Angry men just being, you know. Angry men. And 2019 is peak angry internet man season, let’s be real. Parcel out a gleaming…
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses is made up of so many narrative and mechanical moving parts that it feels like it should be collapsing under its own weight. Instead, like one of its steely tactical field commanders, it never wavers in its vision or its confidence in itself. A far cry from the Fire Emblem games…
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My Friend Pedro plays almost exactly like an old Xbox game called Total Overdose, which is to say that it sits somewhere between Max Payne and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s a game about stylish murder, one that teaches you to look for ways to make the most of your carnage. It rewards effective play,…
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I’m a huge fan of the fighting game genre. Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur. You name it, I love it. But Samurai Shodown, a venerable SNK franchise I had heard of but never played, had eluded me. Part reboot, part sequel, the latest entry in the long-running series (which reduces the title back…
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It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Crash Team Racing released on the original PlayStation, a game determined to set itself apart from genre titan Mario Kart. Thankfully, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled recaptures the experience of playing CTR again for the first time, bursting with flavour, variety and fun, and packed with…
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You don’t appreciate how many different kinds of Mario levels there are until you try to make one of your own. Super Mario Maker 2 had only been running on my Switch for about fifteen minutes, unfettered latitude to design the greatest Super Mario Bros title ever made at my fingertips, and I could already…
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Listen, if you haven’t played Crypt of the NecroDancer then I think you should remedy this right away. One of the most enjoyable and inventive roguelike titles released in the last five years, NecroDancer married rhythm games with dungeon delving in a way that hooks the player and won’t let them go. It borrowed the…
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Nintendo have confirmed that a sequel to 2017’s platform-defining, formula altering The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is in development. The announcement came at the end of one of the biggest E3 Nintendo Directs ever broadcast. The trailer promises a similar aesthetic and a direct continuation of the Breath of the Wild story….
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It finally happened. After years of asking, of patient and dedicated petitioning, Bear and Bird are coming home. Banjo-Kazooie was confirmed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate during this year’s Nintendo E3 Direct broadcast. We get a look at the dream team at work in-game, complete with classic N64-era design and move-list. It’s the stuff of…
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It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Mario & Sonic at the Olympics title but with the Tokyo 2020 games on the horizon, you’d better believe Nintendo is getting into the spirit. The trailer, which first appeared during this morning’s E3 edition of Nintendo Direct, features a number of new sports including surfing, skateboarding,…
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Luigi’s Mansion 3 was one of the first games Nintendo had to talk about during their E3 Nintendo Direct broadcast this year. The first time the series has returned to a major console since the original Luigi’s Mansion back on the Gamecube after a brief detour onto the 3DS in 2013. The game looks to…
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Nintendo fans have been waiting quite some time for news on when they could expect to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons. While originally slated to ship in 2019, the game has slipped to March 2020. While this may be disappointing for fans hoping to have an Animal Crossing game under the tree at Christmas, the…
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This is a news story for anyone that came up in the early 2000’s playing Super Nintendo ROMS. Seiken Densetsu 3 was the sequel to Seiken Densetsu 2, a game released in the West under the name Secret of Mana. Secret of Mana was and is still considered one of the greatest roleplaying games ever…
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Nintendo just won E3. It’s not even up for debate. The best press conference by far went down at 2am Australian time and featured everything from Banjo-Kazooie in Smash Bros, Animal Crossing, No More Heroes 3, Fire Emblem and the announcement of a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This was…
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Gaming was a whole other world in 2011. Skyrim, Arkham City, Portal 2 and Dark Souls had arrived, changing the face of games as we know it. Open worlds were in vogue, indies were out, killing was cool and games were only for ‘true’ gamers. Saints Row: The Third was released in this strange hyper-masculine…
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Sonic the Hedgehog’s been through a lot in the last twenty-five years. Repeated, flavourless sequels that cast a wide genre net have dogged the old blue blur, from 3D platformers to endless runners and puzzle games, and the less said about his upcoming movie the better. Team Sonic Racing is the third in Sega’s series…
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Brief Battles is a solid four-player party brawler from two-person Adelaide developer Juicy Cupcake that lands somewhere between Smash Bros, Worms and Bomberman. Its goal is to be a simple, fast, pick-up-and-play multiplayer experience and in this, it certainly succeeds. Each battle consists of moving your character — chosen from an array of sentient underwear…
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Final Fantasy XII is the latest in the iconic franchise to head to Nintendo Switch. This edition, The Zodiac Age, is an expanded version of an existing remaster localised for the first time in 2017 on the PlayStation 4. Like the majority of Final Fantasy remasters, ports and what-have-yous, the game looks slick, plays smoothly and…
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Nintendo Switch has had a brilliant run of ports to date, with most of them thoughtfully refined to fit onto the docked/portable hybrid system; Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is no exception. Though Capcom’s action-RPG has been re-released several times in the past, it’s position in the world of action-RPGs remains firmly as an underdog –…
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My Time At Portia is a solid and inoffensive little farm sim. It has all the usual trappings of the genre – travelling to a new city, taking over a farm, building some things, farming other things. Remarkable moments are few and far between, and that’s okay too. Sometimes, a game can just be a…
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The last time I properly played the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy was on the Nintendo DS Lite. It was a visual novel that felt at home on the handheld, an exciting courtroom drama that was never held back by the hardware it was on. Funnily enough, though those DS versions were the first…
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Entering the world of Hob is a magical experience. With no dialogue, a minimalist soundtrack and a towering, robotic companion as your only companion, the world is beautiful – but empty. The wind whistles through the grass, trees sway and the earth breathes, but you appear to be the only humanoid around. It’s a world…
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