Latest Articles (Page 1525)
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DmC: Definitive Edition details Vergil's Bloody Palace
Reveals "Must Style" modifier.
DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition has detailed the new Vergil's Bloody Palace addition to this remastered version of Ninja Theory's hack-and-slash spectacular.
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Review | Terraria review
The wide hole world.
I like to think of the Albino Antlion Memorial Highway as a grand public work in the Victorian, or perhaps even Roman, tradition. For miles and miles it chisels a clean, unbroken line across the sky, taking me from the dwindling forests of my base camp to the ragged sands of the frontier. The highway's made of dirt and of stone, with occasional glinting chunks of glass thrown in for good measure, and, like most modern highways, it was put in place because there was something nearby that its architects wished to avoid.
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Review | The Walking Dead: Season One review
An episodic epidemic: looking back on the full season.
There's a deliberate and sad irony to the title of The Walking Dead. On the surface, it refers to the shambling undead that have overrun the American South (and for all we know, the rest of the world besides); the survivors call them "walkers". But in the unflinching vision of a zombie apocalypse outlined by writer Robert Kirkman and artists Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard in their comic-book series - now adapted for TV as well as into this episodic adventure game by Telltale Games - it also applies to the survivors themselves.
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Review | Thomas Was Alone review
Write angles.
As games become ever more numerous, our old and trusted genre categories for them seem ever less useful - especially when they get in the way. Thomas Was Alone is a platformer built from the purest elements, but one that, in traditionally important aspects like challenge or length, wouldn't score highly. Does it matter?
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BioWare cancels its four-on-one online RPG Shadow Realms
So it can focus on The Old Republic instead.
Shadow Realms, the asymmetrical competitive online RPG from BioWare, has been cancelled.
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Contrast dev teases its next game
"It involves masks, drugs and memory loss."
Contrast developer Compulsion Games has teased its follow-up to its 2013 puzzle platformer.
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Review | Apotheon review
Go Greece fighting.
Like so many other indie games, Apotheon uses its visuals to draw your attention. Designed to look as if all the action is unfolding on an ancient urn or vase, the Ancient Greek adventure looks an absolute treat.
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Review | Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 review
Keeping time.
We've been here, mere hours away from the end of the world, before. World-saving has been the defining theme of video gaming's first 30 years, from fending off shuffling space invaders to skewering ideological threats in Civilization or Call of Duty. But it's rare that a game set on the eve of the apocalypse manages to elicit any real sense of urgency. Japanese role-playing games are the perfect example: the world may be perilously close to extinction and our band of heroes will be off racing giant chickens or pursuing a side-quest to upgrade a leather coat. We understand that the world is in danger and that we are instrumental in its salvation, but we also know that ours is an appointment which cannot be missed.
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Review | Joe Danger Infinity review
Bigger, better, more Battenberg.
Spookily, it's a year almost to the day since I wrote about Joe Danger Touch for this very site, and much of what I said then still applies to this follow-up. Like its predecessor, Infinity is a giddy, colourful joy of a game, a collection of brilliantly designed, hazard-strewn gauntlets which the eponymous stuntman - along with a collection of unlockable characters - automatically speeds through, as you tap and swipe to prompt him into endos, wheelies, backflips and several other tricks. If you liked that game a lot, as I did, I'm confident you will get on with this famously.
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Review | Persona Q review
Back to schooling.
While Persona Q's aesthetic is that of a Saturday morning anime cartoon series, all screaming colours and staccato dialogue, the game's core kernel of appeal is found in Greek myth. Like Theseus descending into the labyrinth in search of the Minotaur, you too must carefully chart your path through the complicated warren of corridors and chambers that form the game's gargantuan dungeons. Unlike Theseus, who used a ball of thread to lead him back to the exit, here your tool is a paper and pencil (or, more accurately, a touchscreen and stylus) onto which you draw the layout of the game's multi-tiered dungeon. Square by square you record the walls, doors, secret passageways and treasure chests in a curiously compelling act of digital cartography.
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Review | Elite: Dangerous review
Haul or nothing.
Elite: Dangerous is a game about graft. It's about taking the long way round, clawing your way towards an ever-changing definition of success by any means necessary. The long-awaited fourth entry in the space trading simulation series, arriving exactly 30 years after the original, it's no surprise that Elite's roots lie in the Britain of the 1980s. This is Thatcherism on a cosmic scale, Norman Tebbit's advice to "get on your bike" filtered through the Star Wars generation.
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Review | This War of Mine review
The art of war.
It hasn't been a good week.
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Review | Ys: Memories of Celceta review
That's pronounced 'eece', adventurer.
On the back of a recent betrothal to Sony handhelds, Falcom has already released definitive revisions of the first three Ys titles for PlayStation Portable. Thanks to US publisher XSEED's truffle-sniffing for the best of Japan's overlooked works, the action-RPG series is now party to a growing international fan base.
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Review | Fez Review
Just like that.
You don't need to go hunting for meaning in Fez. Chat to the villagers at the very start of the game and one wise old coot says, "Reality is perception. Perception is subjective." If there's a theme to the perspective-shift puzzles of Polytron's "2D platformer in a 3D world," then there it is. Philosophy so dispensed with, we can all just get on with soaking up the mystery and wonder of this fabulous adventure game.
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Video | Video: Oh my Cod - An ode to Resident Evil's Barry Burton
Seeing S.T.A.R.S
Imagine, for a second, a world where Chris Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy never became the poster boys for the Resident Evil franchise. A world where another surviving member of the original Alpha team didn't get forgotten about the second he left Raccoon City. Let's face it, Barry Burton has more badass cred in his itchy trigger finger than the rest of Resi's supporting cast combined. In celebration of his triumphant return in Resident Evil Revelations 2, here's our short, sweet, and not-at-all-serious salute to everyone's favourite S.T.A.R.S member.
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Review | Sniper Elite 3 review
Graze anatomy.
There's always been a linguistic connection between sex and violence, and no game illustrates it quite so viscerally as Sniper Elite. This is the series that has made its name by fetishising the entry of a bullet into the human body almost to the point of parody.
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Review | Spelunky Review
A cave story.
I haven't completed it. What I have done is die, hundreds of times, in a variety of gruesome and hilarious ways. I've been impaled on spikes. I've been nibbled to death by piranhas and clobbered into oblivion by angry shopkeepers. I've blown myself up with bombs, I've fallen down cavernous holes and I've been stung to the core by a giant queen bee.
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Sony will unlock the PlayStation 4's multiplayer capabilities this coming weekend, allowing for free and unlimited online play.
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Review | Spelunky PC review
What dies beneath.
In my experience, a 10/10 score at the end of a review is not meant to represent outright perfection. It's better to think of games that achieve these dizzy heights as doing just that: elevating themselves to the highest category of praise, reserved for experiences that come with a universal recommendation. When I saw Spelunky on Xbox Live Arcade receive 10/10 in our review last year, I once again imagined that that was the writer's message.
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Review | Saints Row 4 review
Grand heft auto.
It feels strange to say it, but Saints Row has to be chalked up as one of the success stories of the current console generation. It's an unlikely kind of triumph: what began as little more than a poor man's GTA has evolved into a kind of anything-goes sandbox action game, but it's hard to pick out a defining characteristic beyond the fact that it lets you do stupid stuff.
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Review | Rogue Legacy review
Eight days and 700 knights.
There's an enemy called a McRib in Rogue Legacy. I can't tell you what these guys look like, but I know they exist because I was finished off by one, and the game's epitaph screen tells you precisely what it was that eventually did you in. I also know that they often lurk at the top of rooms, and they love to drop jaunty showers of human femurs down on their prey.
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Review | Minecraft Review
Built to rule.
How would you review Tetris, if you were reviewing it today? "The puzzling is very tight, and the soundtrack is catchy." That's the thing - Tetris is so much more than that by now, but it's almost impossible to disassociate it from its cultural resonance. Minecraft, the free-form building and survival game, hasn't yet seeped into the global consciousness to the same degree, but it has become something far more than a mere game.
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Review | Dragon Age: Inquisition review
Tevinter is coming.
There's a definite end of an era feel to much of Dragon Age: Inquisition, whether or not BioWare has a fourth in the pipeline. This is what everything's been leading towards; all those choices, all the adventure, all the drama, and all the epic battles so far - of good vs. evil, of mages vs. templars and, of course, of RPG fans everywhere vs. Dragon Age 2.
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Her Story is a "desktop thriller" True Detective fans can get behind
Move over LA Noire. Step back into the shadows Phoenix Wright. There's a new beat in town.
Team Bondi and Rockstar's 2011 detective game LA Noire promised much and achieved a great deal. But it was the reality of playing LA Noire after the hope it would be perhaps the first true detective game, after all those pretty words about fancy face technology and heart-pounding interrogations were said and done, that rubbed developer Sam Barlow up the wrong way.
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Review | Volgarr the Viking review
Thor losers.
To paraphrase the legendary Nigel Tufnell, how much retro could Volgarr the Viking be? The answer is none. None more retro.
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Review | Sunset Overdrive review
Grind over splatter.
You can tell a lot about a game by the first thing it chooses to teach its players. Sunset Overdrive doesn't kick off by baffling you with a bunch of pointless upgrades and unlockables that you couldn't care less about. It tells you how to pull off a dodge roll, a punkish splinter of weaponised evasion that gets to the heart of the game's deliriously pleasing traversal system. Then it baffles you with a bunch of pointless upgrades and unlockables that you couldn't care less about.
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Review | Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth review
The rocket's red glare.
Sometimes, you need to achieve a little distance in order to get a little perspective. Beyond Earth blasts the Civilization 5 template into space, but it's ultimately less of an offshoot to the main series and more of a measured response. It's a response to the fact that Civ 5, even at its cruellest, is still so often a game for leaders who like to lean back and ponder their actions with a certain kind of holiday cheeriness. It's a battle, but it's also a bubblebath. Annex Te-Moak? Burn Boston to the ground? Go nuclear on Pedro II? Why not, eh? Why not.
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Review | The Evil Within review
An old kind of evil.
The Evil Within opens with the psychologically wrecked detective Sebastian Castellanos arriving at a mental hospital surrounded by the flash and wail of police cars and ambulances. The few seconds it takes for the building's double doors to creak open are all the time that the game bothers to spend on creating an initial sense of tension and dread. Inside the entrance, Castellanos finds a multitude of bloodied, slumped corpses. It's been nine years since Shinji Mikami directed a horror game with Resident Evil 4; none of that game's rhythm and pace has been lost in the intermission.
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Watch Super Mario Sunshine running in 60fps, thanks to Dolphin emulator
It'll fludd you with memories.
Nintendo fans have managed to get GameCube classic Super Mario Sunshine running in a smooth 60 frames per second.
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Review | Hotline Miami review
Call now to avoid disappointment.
I've been trying to figure out what it is about Hotline Miami that really works on me, because something clearly does. Something made me play through it all in one go, which took about two hours, and then go into the kitchen for a glass of water, return to my desk, and play through it all over again.
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