Category Archives: Gaming

Why you need to play Techland’s Dying Light

I was more than a little anxious as I placed Techland’s new zombie game, Dying Light, in my PlayStation 4. I’d been following its extended development for nearly two years and, whilst I liked the idea, what I’d seen in my early previews didn’t inspire much confidence in me. Suffering delay after delay, it seemed that Dying Light was causing the veteran Polish developer a bit of a headache. Continue reading Why you need to play Techland’s Dying Light

Battlefield Hardline PC review

What happens when you take an established franchise and throw the rulebook out the window? Well, you get something akin to Visceral Studios’ Battlefield Hardline. Taking over the stewardship of this particular entry from the franchise founders DICE, the Dead Space developer has taken Battlefield in a totally different direction.

You could argue that DICE, themselves, have already done this with their more narrative-focused Battlefield Bad Company games- but you’d be wrong. Bad Company still had soldiers and still had tanks. Hardline swaps all that cool military stuff out and replaces it all with the hard boiled world of cops and criminals. Continue reading Battlefield Hardline PC review

Is Cities: Skylines the city-builder that you’ve been waiting for?

Paradox Interactive, publishers of the so-so Cities in Motion transport planning simulators have now entered the full-on city-building fray with Cities: Skylines. After years of disappointment, I find out if this is the city builder that we have been waiting for.

Now I love a good city builder, going all the way back to the original SimCity on my Amiga. SimCity publisher EA and developer Maxis have been tinkering with their formula for decades giving us some hits in SimCity 4, some misses in SimCity Societies and a bit of a disaster in their 2013 SimCity. Continue reading Is Cities: Skylines the city-builder that you’ve been waiting for?

Ori and the Blind Forest Xbox One review

Ori and the Blind Forest blew me away when I first saw it after Microsoft sneaked it out at last year’s E3. Nine months later we can now all play Moon Studios’ labour of love.

I’m not much of a fan of indie games. For every gem there’s a dozen or so bits of pretentious rubbish. I’m too long in the tooth and nowhere near hipster enough to be charmed by retro graphics. I suffered lousy visuals the first time around. I want to play games that look so good that my eyes bleed. Continue reading Ori and the Blind Forest Xbox One review

Why you should play The Order: 1886

Sony Computer Entertainment have been teasing us with The Order: 1886 since they first announced the PlayStation 4 way back in February 2013. Over the last two years the publisher has been drip-feeding scant details about their cinematic third-person shooter set in a steampunk re-imagining of Victorian London.

In the run up to the game’s launch Sony’s hype machine was working on overdrive. So much so that when word of a five hour campaign length, excessive quick-time-events and a couple of hours of cut scenes broke the internet went wild and skinned the game alive. Continue reading Why you should play The Order: 1886

Why Hardline will save the Battlefield franchise

In only a few short hours gamers will get to play the Battlefield Hardline beta for the last time before its release on March 20th.

It’s a game that’s been a long time coming. I first played it at E3, when that first beta was launched during the EA press event. It was OK, but I wasn’t sure about it hitting the October 2014 release date.

And nor was EA. Continue reading Why Hardline will save the Battlefield franchise