Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair gets a lot of things right, and chief among them: it proves that the character platformer genre, the long-dead moneymaker of the 16-bit era, can still engage and excite in 2019. The original Yooka-Laylee was considered by most to be a good if unremarkable 3D platformer. Created by many of the…
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I’ve heard it suggested that the Dark Souls series is a modern take on the Metroidvania genre, and I generally think that’s correct. There are many parallels, from exploration and frequent backtracking, specific save locations, the memorisation of enemy patterns, slow power creep and subtle environmental storytelling. Developers The Game Kitchen have taken this comparison…
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It’s been a little over two years since Daemon X Machina was announced at Nintendo’s 2017 E3 Direct and, after suffering through a troubled beta earlier in the year, has finally launched on the Switch. The trailers paint a picture of an amazing mech brawler with a lot of potential. Coming off of Astral Chain,…
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The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is a remake of the 1993 Game Boy title of the same name. In many ways, Link’s Awakening is an ideal game to remake — because it appeared on a system that many players today would never have owned, and has never been considered a must-play entry in the series, it will…
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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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When the blue shell hits, please try not to have a meltdown in public. Mario Kart Tour, the latest entry in the storied racing franchise, is coming to iOS and Android mobiles in September. The game seeks to provide a complete Mario Kart experience for your mobile with the iconic tracks, items and Nintendo racers…
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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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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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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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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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Empire of Sin is a new strategy game from Paradox Interactive and Romero Games, the independent studio founded by Doom co-creator John Romero. It dropped its first trailer during this morning’s Nintendo Direct at E3 and looks to merge the top-down strategy of XCOM with 1920’s prohibition era America. The trailer features baroom brawls, gun fights…
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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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E3 2019 is almost upon us. The year’s biggest storm of gaming news begins in earnest next week but the announcement-packed press conferences kick off as early as Friday morning Australian time. This year’s show promises to be a pivotal one, with two high profile changes to the lineup. The first change has to do…
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Arguably the best title in the series long history, and inarguably its most popular entry, Final Fantasy VII has never been far from the gaming popular consciousness since its release in 1997. It was the first time Squaresoft (now Square Enix) had been able to truly convey every part of the world they’d created. Previous…
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Yoshi’s Crafted World has been made with all the love and care in the world – and it shows. From the subtle, crafty touches to the gorgeous soundtrack, cutesy worlds and stellar gameplay, everything about it screams wholesomeness. The game is so wholesome that it makes me want to be a better person. Story If…
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Kirby has always been the spark of joy in the occasionally cheerless games landscape. I mean, how can he not be? He’s a literal ball of cute pink fluff, and in this cotton-themed adventure, he’s every bit the pure, shining saviour of games that he should be. Kirby is wholesome, Kirby is brilliant, Kirby is…
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I’ll preface this review by saying that despite owning a Sega Mega Drive, I never played either of the original ToeJam & Earl games in their heyday. I also never played the series’ abortive third entry on the original Xbox either, though I understand that this is probably for the best. Well may you say,…
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Ape Out is not a terribly long game, but it is a fun one. It’s an entertaining and creative riff on the format popularised by Hotline Miami, a barbarous explosion of violence that belies its more rhythm-based gameplay. You play an angry, caged gorilla ready to throw off the shackles of oppression and embark on…
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Claiming Final Fantasy IX is your favourite of the PSOne era FF titles is a bit like saying Ringo is your favourite Beatle — most people think you’re a wanker and that there are far better musicians in the group. But what Ringo fans know is that he’s often unfairly overlooked. Sure, he’s responsible for…
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Those (everyone) who saw it coming when Game Freak announced that they would be working on a set of mainline Pokemon titles for Nintendo Switch have finally got the revelation that they’ve been waiting for. We all clamored over each other for the fairly recent Pokemon Let’s Go titles, and now it seems that we’ve…
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Observer walks a line between cyberpunk, noir and psychological horror that displays a deep love of all three genres, drawing its most obvious inspirations from films like Alphaville, Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner. The story follows cyborg detective (or Observer) Daniel Lazarski, played by Blade Runner’s Rutger Hauer. Daniel Lazarski is your quintessential hard-boiled detective; as analytical…
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It’s hard to believe this is the second Tetris review I’ve written in three months. Even harder to believe, the franchise’s raw adaptability. Like the patterns its falling blocks create, Tetris seems able to change its shape at will, wholly altering the core experience with the addition of a single extra mechanic. Tetris Effect leveraged…
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It’s been 16 years since the release of Intelligent Systems’ Advance Wars 2, widely considered one of the greatest turn-based strategy titles ever made, and 11 years since Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (titled Days of Ruin in the US). The intervening period saw the popularity of Intelligent’s Fire Emblem series explode in the West, an unexpected turn…
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Very few Nintendo DS games ever fulfilled the potential of the console’s unique dual screens, but one title came incredibly close. That title, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, has finally gotten the recognition it deserves with a brilliant new remaster for the Nintendo 3DS. Originally released in 2009, Bowser’s Inside Story is an RPG…
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When we think about game design that could be considered “timeless,” the classic Super Mario Bros formula still leaps readily to mind. 34 years after its first appearance on the NES, Shigeru Miyamoto’s original push-forward platformer design remains as compelling as its ever been. New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe only proves this further, taking…
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Choosing your favourite game of the year is hard. We’ve done it every year since we founded The AU Review’s games section in 2014, and it never gets any easier. In 2018, we played so many incredible games that it became impossible to list and number every last one of them, so we opted not…
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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…
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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…
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