The Paper Mario series follows the trials and tribulations of the flattened, mustachioed Italian through worlds composed entirely of paper. The series has always been brimming with innovation, imagination, and humour and has long been a favourite of mine. So does the latest in the series, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, live up to its predecessors? Read more …
Ever felt as if you’re a tiny, insignificant spec floating aimlessly in a huge, uncaring world full of bigger, more important and more aggressive things than you? Well the developers of ‘Limbo’ certainly have. Read more …
I sat down to play the much maligned Aliens: Colonial Marines with two different biases moulding my expectations. On one hand, being a lifelong Aliens fan, the prospect of rushing down blue corridors with two-mouthed other-worldly life forms in hot pursuit filled me with anticipation; on the other hand, I found it hard to doubt that practically every game reviewer on the planet was wrong. I don’t need to tell you of reception this game has received. The cashier who served me at my local games retailer frowned and slipped the game into a bag shamefully as if I’d just bought an erotic magazine. Things did not bode well. Read more …
You know, there is an easy way to do horror. All you have to do is make the environment in which the player stumbles around dark, make visibility low and finally (and this is the clever part), have the chosen monstrosity leap out suddenly accompanied by some hideous shriek. Although this technique might very well provoke a split-second reaction from the player, who may produce a sort of, ‘waah’ noise on occasion, it doesn’t make a game scary. It makes a game jumpy, and jumpy and scary are two disparate things. I like to call this brand of horror ‘dumb horror’. Read more …
Horror games have become more and more infrequent in recent years. Perhaps it’s due to the gradual desensitisation of gamers who think nothing of firing both barrels into the back of a soldier’s head because he’s on the other team, but games are just less scary nowadays. However, there are games out there that will terrify and entertain in equal measure, and I’m writing this feature to celebrate those games that do manage to scare and discuss where many games are going wrong in terms of horror. I thought I’d start off with Condemned: Criminal Origins, because it is undoubtedly horrifying. It is illegal to distribute copies of Condemned in Germany. That is the sort of game we’re dealing with. Read more …
When the triple-a game we are playing inevitably tells us that aside from saving the world/the universe/our girlfriend, there are a hundred meaningless trinkets that we also have to find for some completely arbitrary reason, we don’t even blink. Collectibles have become as ubiquitous to modern gaming as frowns and rippling biceps. But why do developers feel the need to dot their world maps with curios?