Here’s a little known fact; while the original DiRT Rally may title itself as a rally sim it’s actually a horror game in disguise, especially in VR. It has an uncanny ability to constantly put you on the edge of your driving limits with rocks, trees and drops mere inches away from your spinning tires. It’s fucking terrifying, like being stuck on a roller coaster that’s falling apart while you urge it to go quicker and quicker.
I won’t try to lie and claim that Ubisoft’s The Division left me feeling impressed when it first launched. There were some good ideas and man was it beautiful from a visual perspective, but it was ultimately a hollow experience. Still, with The Division 2 coming in a few months and lots of people saying The Division is far better than it was at launch I fired The Division back up.
Y’know, I don’t know why it’s called Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs when none of the birds look particularly furious. Sure, they maybe look a tad serious but when you bring them up to your face they’ll cheerfully wave at you, ready to achieve their goal of smashing stuff up and probably dying in the process. If I was one of these birds I think I’d be a tad more angry at the prospect of some psychopath using a slingshot to fire me face-first into stuff.
These days there are very valid fears surrounding massive corporations, the power that they wield and how much of the world they already control. Their influence is often terrifying, especially when you begin to research how only a few corporations own the vast majority of the media we consume. The point is, Spinnortality plays on problems in an entertaining strategy game about making money, pushing around governments and directing Earth toward the future you want. Oh, and you can build a giant laser on the moon.
While platformers might not be powerful juggernaut that they once were we gamers are still treated to a relatively slow but steady stream of new games in the genre. Unruly Heroes is the latest in that stream, but as always the question is a simple one; is it actually any bloody good? Yes. Yes, it is. This is a hugely entertaining romp that’s near perfect for family gaming.
on Shafer’s At The Gates has had a rather long and tricky development spanning some six years, a Kickstarter campaign, personal struggles and finally launch in 2019. As for the titular Shafer, he used to work for Firaxis, the same company responsible for Civilization series. In fact, Shafer was the lead designer on Civilization V. In 2012 he left to form his own company called Conifer Games which then launched a Kickstarter in 2013 for At The Gates, a new 4X game. So, roughly six years after its initial funding has Jon Shafter’s At The Gates been worth the wait?
Once again it’s time to go back to the eternally dark Warhammer universe where friendly hand shakes are a myth and even the baby sitters wear spiky armour and wield lethal weapons. The first Battlefleet Gothic: Armada proved to be a surprise, offering up some brilliant spaceship battling. Considering that the Warhammer licence gets handed out like free candy these days it was even nicer to be gifted a game about massive spaceships clashing. Now, though, we have Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2, the sequel that offers more ships, more factions and more awesomeness.
There are a lot of survival games centred around crafting out there, so Smoke and Sacrifice has its work cut out when it comes to standing out from the crowd. Initially released back in 2018 for PC and Switch, Smoke and Sacrifice has made its way to Xbox One and Playstation 4 for 2019. Has it been worth the wait?
Its become a bit of a joke around the Internet that game reviewers often cite Dark Souls in their work. Anything remotely challenging is compared to Dark Souls, and any vaguely similar game design elements are, too. But in the case of Ashen it’s a very fair comparison. In many ways Ashen is Dark Souls Lite, a game that takes what people love about Dark Souls and finds ways to pare it back into a streamlined package. Somehow, Ashen still manages to be its own thing, too.
Having been named the leader of an entire rebellion and charged with incredible responsibility I cannot help but feel my troops may be questioning their choices as they watch me float a cow into the sky before triggering the booster rockets strapped to its backside, sending it spiralling into the air before it crashes into a nearby cliff. This isn’t some cunning ploy to distract the enemy or some ingenious new bovine weapon, it’s just me dicking around. This revolution is screwed. The oppressed masses are about to become the squashed masses.
