Reviews
Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wii – Review
Super Mario Galaxy 2 – £29.74 delivered
Apply coupon “FTSL15-1″
Review by Bobby Foster
Seriously? You want to read about Super Mario Galaxy 2 instead of play Super Mario Galaxy 2? You are, quite simply, wasting precious moments of your life that could otherwise be spent enjoying the greatest videogame ever made. Really. Honestly. I promise I’m not just saying that to catch your attention. Read more…
Joe Danger – Review
Joe Danger, £9.99 on PSN (£20 PSN money for £17.91)
Review by Lewie Procter
I’ve been playing this same level over and over. I’ve learnt every single obstacle. I know where they are, and I know how to get past them all. The controller has become an extension of my body, the buttons are mapped to my muscle memory in extreme detail.
I can do it. I know I have got a perfect run in me. Just one more try. Read more…
Iron Man 2 – Review
[DEAL GOES HERE]
Review by Will Templeton
I’ve been trying to write a review for the Iron Man 2 game since it launched. I’ve been writing and scrapping paragraphs for weeks, unsatisfied with every single one of them in the end, and I realised why – I was trying to see something that wasn’t there. I was wrestling with myself, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t all bad, that surely it had some redeeming qualities, and then maybe somewhere – God knows where, but somewhere – there was someone that this game was designed for and who would get some enjoyment from it. Read more…
APB – Review
It’s not very good.
Trine – Review
Trine, PC – £4.99 delivered
Review by Laura Michet
A friend of mine sidled over and took a peek at my laptop screen. “Wo-oah,” he said. “That’s pretty.” Read more…
Splinter Cell: Conviction – Review
Splinter Cell: Conviction, Xbox 360 – £27.95 delivered
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Review by Lewie Procter
I’m not sure exactly how to approach distilling my opinion on the new Tom Clancy’s™ Splinter Cell™ game down into text. Unlike the game itself there is more than one way I could accomplish that goal. Tom Clancy’s™ Splinter Cell™ has had a complete overhaul. Remember how in the old Tom Clancy’s™ Splinter Cell™ games you had to think? Not any more. In the place of intelligent stealth action is flashy whiz bang punchy shooty nonsense, where the most complex challenge you’ll ever have to solve is “how do I press the button that the game tells me to”. Read more…
Persona 3 FES, PS2 – Review
Persona 3 FES – £14.95 delivered
Review by Bobby Foster
Routine is important. I get that. Like most people, I learnt young that failing to brush your teeth every morning has disastrous consequences both hygienically and socially. And although I’ve always kinda felt that the alarm clock is the cruellest machine mankind ever made, I’ve come to accept that you have to use one to be successful in the modern world. Read more…
PixelJunk Shooter – Review
£20 PSN card, £17.95 (Game cost: £6.29)
by Will Templeton
There’s something about PixelJunk games that distils the absolute best mechanics of a genre down to a seemingly simple experience. It’s a pattern and an ethos that Q-Games have followed for each of the series – take a base mechanic, stretch it to the best of its ability without straying too far from it, build a game around the abilities that are produced and release it, all within the span of an extremely short development cycle. Read more…
Mass Effect 2 – Review
Mass Effect 2, Xbox 360 – £32.99 delivered
Mass Effect 2, PC – £19.99 delivered
Review by Bobby Foster
The first thing you’ll notice about Mass Effect 2 is the quality of the Brylcreem all the characters use. Every haircut in this universe stays perfectly shaped at all times, even when the hair is really long. It’s a truly exciting vision of what the future of hair care holds. Read more…
Tales of Monkey Island: Series One – Review
Tales of Monkey Island: Series One – £21.48
Review by Bobby Foster
Games in the early 90s mostly didn’t bother with narrative. The titles that sold best recreated the kind of experiences people were having in arcades, and you’d probably only catch a glimpse of a “plot” in the opening couple of screens. Even there, the aim was mostly to explain what the player needed to do and what was meant to be represented by the crude in-game graphics. Games that aimed to build a meaningful relationship between player and avatar were almost non-existent. Read more…
Blood Bowl, Xbox 360 – Review
Blood Bowl, Xbox 360 – £17.73
Review by – Mr Chris
Blood Bowl was a Games Workshop board game first released some time back in the, oooh, 80s or 90s or something. A while ago, anyway. Basically (for those of you who don’t know) it’s an American football style sports game played by the various denizens of the Warhammer fantasy universe. Your little plastic or lead team of Orcs, Goblins, Humans, Undead or whatever played a turn-based game of Extreme Rugby against each other on a big gridded board. Many dice would be thrown. People would get injured, or killed (and that’s just the argumentative teenagers disputing a dice roll). Touchdowns might be scored. Girls would likely be absent. Read more…
VVVVVV – ReVVVVVView
VVVVVV, PC/Mac/Linux – £9.36
ReVVVVVView by Lewie Procter
VVVVVV is the story of a little bloke with a big smile. He’s Captain Veridian. He has to save the day via puzzle platforming. Read more…
Torchlight, PC – Review
Torchlight, PC – £12.35
Review by – TychoCelchuuu
Do you like clicking? Do you like loot? Do you like putting skill points into skills? If you’ve answered yes to these three questions, you’re either pining for Diablo III or you’ve done the sensible thing and purchased Torchlight to tide you over. The brazenness with which Torchlight rips off the Diablo series would be criminal if it wasn’t so cute. This game plays like a refinement and a distillation of the classic hack and slash, and the only thing that hasn’t been pinched from Diablo is its violent, gothic tone. Instead, Torchlight has wholly appropriated World of Warcraft’s cheery stylized visuals, which means you will spend hours clicking on and picking up town portal scrolls from skeletons with endearingly large heads that you’ve smashed with bright, glowing swords. Read more…
Seizuredome, PC – Review
Review by Bobby Foster
Seizuredome is about shooting things before they collide into you. In that sense, it’s a direct descendant of the 30 year-old Asteroids. What Seizuredome adds to the mix is sumo wrestling, nudity and amazing music. I think I’ve fallen in love. Read more…
The Path, PC/Mac – Review
The Path, PC – £6.29
Review by Bobby Foster
I’ve become a willing participant in the rape and murder of seven young women. I say “young women”, but five of them you’d definitely call girls. What worries me is that I’m not sure I even regret it. Read more…
Secret of Mana – Review
Secret of Mana – 800 Wii points
Review by Bobby Foster
Single-player, fantasy-based roleplaying videogames are often a lonely, tedious experience. You spend hundreds of hours developing your character, trudging through predictable environments, and repeating the same attacks over and over again. Japanese developers in particular have a track record of making games where the core mechanic consists of battling against wave after wave of easily defeatable enemy, who exist solely to dispense the Experience Points you need to beat the more challenging and interesting boss encounters. Any time spent in combat with enemies who never realistically pose a threat is no fun, because a fight without some sense of peril is inevitably dull. Yet it’s become so commonplace in modern RPGs that fans of the genre have learnt to accept it and even name it: ‘grind’.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, PS3 – Review
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, PS3 – £29.99 delivered
Review by Amitai Winehouse (twitter.com/amitaiwinehouse)
If you’ve logged onto the internet (who really “logs on” to the internet anymore?) over the last two weeks, you’ll probably have realised that quite a lot of people like Uncharted 2. Not just like, like, but like, like like. Are they correct to do so? I suppose it’s my job to find out. Read more…
Wet – Review
Review by Will Templeton (continueorquit.com)
In movies, the best characters are those with which the viewer can sympathise; a character that, while flawed, can be enjoyed and identified with by the viewer. Considering that Wet draws so heavily from cinema, to the extent of running it as a motif throughout the game, it seems somewhat out of place that the protagonist is as blank a slate as she is. Rubi is a humourless, callous bitch, an outcast with only the pursuit of money on her mind and nothing interesting to say, and I simply do not identify with her, nor do I want to. Read more…
Atomhex, Xbox 360 – Review
Atomhex, Xbox 360 – 80MS Points
Review by Lewie Procter
Dual Stick shooters have seen a bit of a wonderful resurgence in the last few years, and you can very easily track it back to the release of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved on the Xbox Live Arcade. This indie endeavour has a bit of an interesting history to it though. Read more…