Carrion is a new Metroidvania game from indie developer Phobia Game Studio. You are fast-moving, utterly vicious monster on the loose in a remote science facility. Carrion delights in taking the tropes of the genre — power creep, exploration and backtracking — and turning them on their ear in ways that are surprisingly effective. One…
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It finally happened — after decades of waiting, a brand new Pokemon Snap game is on the way. The announcement came during last night’s Pokemon Presents broadcast, which highlighted a number of brand new Pokemon games coming to the Nintendo Switch. Though it only ran for 10 minutes, the broadcast had a lot to cover….
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Crysis Remastered is coming. Confirmation came via a leak from its official site. At this time, the site has not gone live with the announcement. Here’s the blurb straight from the site: “Crysis Remastered brings new graphic features, high-quality textures, and the CRYENGINE’s native hardware – and API-agnostic ray tracing solution for PC, PlayStation, Xbox,…
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Let me preface this review with an admission: despite my love for Pokémon, I’ve never played any of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games before. Rescue Team DX is a remake that combines the DS titles Rescue Team Red and Rescue Team Blue into a single package. Since I’ve not played them, it allowed me to go into…
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Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl is another RPG developed by Level-5 (developers of the Layton series). Originally released in Japan in April of last year, Snack World is now available for the rest of the world to enjoy. Why “Gold”? Well, because this worldwide release features all the DLCs available from the Japanese version. You…
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Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath first released back in 2005 on the original Xbox. Released in what was then the late-January dead zone, Stranger’s Wrath was critically adored but sank commercially when Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords launched around a fortnight later. I was one of the few that bought Stranger’s…
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Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is yet another Wii U game making its way to the Nintendo Switch. When the original Tokyo Mirage Sessions made its debut on the Wii U, it didn’t exactly make much of a splash. Like so many titles to launch on the Wii U, it languished in relative obscurity. Now,…
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Nintendo has unveiled a special edition of its popular Switch console, inspired by the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Look at it. So simple. So beautiful. As charming and soothing as any Animal Crossing game. The redress starts with pastel blue and green coloured Joy-Cons with white wrist straps. The Switch unit itself features a…
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Luigi’s Mansion 3 is exactly the kind of game to get your kids if they love Halloween. Uncomplicated in design and low on overall difficulty, it smoothes over any potential wrinkles with trademark Nintendo charm. It’s spooky in the ways that kids love and is always careful to undercut its low-grade scares with good humour….
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the greatest role-playing games ever made. I knew that the first time I played it at a preview in January 2015 and it remains true now over four years after its release. CD Projekt Red’s masterpiece/labour of love operates at a scale that would make other genre…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Aragami: Shadow Edition is a rather clever blend of modern stealth elements and old school action-adventure. Its most obvious mechanical influence seems to be Tenchu: Stealth Assassins with a little of Splinter Cell‘s shadow cover thrown in for good measure. It adopts an animated look reminiscent of Okami. Indeed, like Okami, Aragami is steeped in…
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There are only four good skateboarding video games, and the OlliOlli series are two of them.* Roll7’s OlliOlli and its follow-up OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood are side-scrolling skateboarding titles that are all about putting the sickest runs together and racking up massive score multipliers. Both games have a deceptively simple 2D look that belie…
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