Kairo intrigues me. It’s been longer than I like to remember since I last played a game that drew a line in the sand and said, “Here’s some puzzles and nothing more”. It’s become the fashion for puzzle games to be narrative-led and Kairo stands as a striking counterpoint to both the folly and genius of story-based puzzlers.
Contrary to the experiences of every other reviewer of Impire, I’ve never played Dungeon Keeper. I certainly tried, back when my family first bought an old PC from my Mum’s office. It did not go well. The game would stutter and lag and despite my expert technical knowledge (I was 10), I couldn’t ever actually play it. I did, however, play a lot of Theme Hospital, so before you condemn me for what you’re about to read, know this: I do have experience with this building management genre.
At first, I’ll be honest…I didn’t love BioShock Infinite the way I did its predecessors.
In fact, I kind of disliked it. It didn’t feel like a Shock game. The palette was too bright, the characters all human and in good cheer. Yeah, sure, the soundtrack in just the first ten minutes was incredible, and the visuals great, but I wasn’t…terrified. I wasn’t sprinting wild-eyed as an unknown person screamed at me, or trying to lay low in a bathysphere while a maniac tried to claw her way in. Where was the heart-pounding terror? After the first ten minutes, there wasn’t even anything super, overtly sinister happening! It took a little while for it to catch with me, but when it did…it all sort of made sense. Be warned, there are minor spoilers in this review.
While most gamers are busy salivating over the PS4, retro gaming fans have a lot to look forward to over the next few months, thanks to the debut of the Capcom Live Arcade Cabinet on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.
Everyone who knows me knows that I love cheesy action movies more than a bloodthirsty mouse. Whether it be Arnie flinging doors from the side of cars, Jackie Chan running over villains in a hovercraft or Van Damme holding a be-rollerbladed foot in someone’s face, I will be there cheering them on. I know they can’t hear me. Deep in my heart though, I wish they could.
However, the 80′s action movie hasn’t had as much of an effect on the gaming scene as it should have. We could have had wildly over-the-top shooters complete with cheesy one-liners and hilariously low-production-value set-pieces instead of staid man-shoots, with po-faced military professionals firing at a series of foreign targets. Somewhere between the need for antagonists with sentimental back-stories and the rush to be the most inwardly sceptical about the violence proffered, games forgot that action should be fun. We need less Red Dawn, more Last Action Hero.
I have a journalistic bias towards adorable robots. I should make that perfectly clear before I begin here that my heart melts at the thought of R2-D2, Josef and the unnamed hero of Celestial Mechanica. They’re so adorable, they think they’re people. Thankfully, Celestial Mechanica has a lot more to offer than just a cute mechanoid with a nostalgia-inducing retro aesthetic and the most powerful soundtrack I’ve heard in a game since Bastion.
Welcome to Dungeons and Disneyland. My name is Bea. N. Evil and I’ll be your guide today. We hope you’ll enjoy your time here, but first, we need to set down some rules for your enjoyment and safety. Please always travel in groups, keep all heads and limbs attached at all times and please refrain from feeding the ogres. Human flesh plays havoc with their intestinal system. Thank you for your patience and welcome to your doom. MWAHAHAHAHA!
Dead Space 3 is not a horror game. Let’s just get that out of the way right up front. Visceral Games’ latest entry in the Dead Space series is a AAA blockbuster action title through and through.
It’s hard to look at a game like Riven without the fog of nostalgia clouding my vision.
I remember spending hours playing the game, and its predecessor Myst, on my family’s old PC, taking down detailed notes and calling my dad in to help me with some of the harder puzzles.
I remember being completely absorbed with the world’s detailed environments, rendered in a more stunning way than any game I’d seen on my home consoles.
When I saw that developer Cyan Worlds had released an iOS version of the game as part of Myst‘s 20th anniversary, I was more than curious to see how a game I was so enamoured with as a kid held up after all these years.
