Weekly Gaming – The Typing of The Dead: Overkill (PC)
As a Kid, I used to beg my dad to go on his PC and play some of the games I watched him play. I recall loving the look of The Typing of the Dead as it was a game that I remembered from arcades at the seaside, and wanted to revel in this myself. Being only 13/14 at the time, I wasn’t very good at typing, and had to look at my keyboard every time a new word appeared on the screen so I could find the appropriate keys and press them. I was terrible, but it was still fun to play the game that I played in the arcades, albeit with a different control method. Does the new, “improved” Typing of the Dead live up to my expectations from yesteryear? Read on my friends. Being that the original Typing of the Dead was just a rehash of The…
Weekly Gaming: Titanfall (PC)
Given the amount of hype TitanFall has received since its debut at E3 last year, I had to give the game a go on release day to see what all the fuss was about. Without thinking, I slammed £25 into the Origin edition from CDKeys.com and preloaded it onto my machine days before launch. With a download size of 50GB, and a host of games sites going crazy for its imminent release, I hoped the money was worth it. After 42 hours of game time later, I suppose I can say that I have a few opinions on the game, and whether you should purchase it or not. First up: TitanFall is a multiplayer only game, and although it comes with a campaign mode, it’s little, if anything worth mentioning. Upon starting Titanfall, you’re greeted with a main menu which has very few options. Pressing start brings you to…
Weekly Gaming: Shelter (PC)
Shelter has been on my radar for a while. I mean, a game where you play as a mother badger caring for its young in this harsh reality that is life is certainly a unique experience that doesn’t come around often, if at all in todays fast paced, adrenaline-fuelled industry. It’s a new game from the indie studio Might and Delight which brought us Pid, and is certainly ambitious for this young studio. The very premise is emotional in nature, but does the game deliver on that emotion, or is it just a selling point in this crowded and hard market to break? You start the game in a cave, with you (the mother badger) and 4 cubs huddled around a grey cub on the floor, moaning and crying. The game gives no prompts, no instructions, but you just know that you somehow have to help this cub out. It’s…
Weekly Gaming: The Stanley Parable (PC)
You think you know what the Stanley Parable is, but do you really? That’s the question the developers at Galactic Cafe will keep asking you throughout the course of the Stanley Parable, including before you even buy it. The whole game centre’s around the premise of getting your pre-conceived notions of what a game is and messing with them to the point you’re not even sure whats happening anymore. It’s something that interested me profusely, to the point I had to pick up a copy of the game and play it as soon as possible to ensure that I heard no spoilers whilst listening to the Giant Bombcasts Game of the Year deliberations. You start the Stanley Parable in an ordinary office, taking control of Stanley, who’s job is supposedly different today as there seems to be no one around. From here, it’s all down to you as the player,…
Weekly Gaming: Papo & Yo (PC)
I recall reading a edge article about how Papo & Yo was a landmark game for the Brazilian games industry, and how it showed they were starting to mature, becoming a part of our inclusive and unique industry. Whilst all of this is true, Papo & Yo isn’t just a great game because it’s Brazilian, it’s a good game because it’s unique and charming, and tells a story like no other medium can. You start the game off as a little child named Quico, who’s stuck in a cupboard as a monster is stomping around outside the doors trying to get him. Out of nowhere, a teleport appears next to Quico, inviting him in to get out of this current nightmarish situation. Going through the teleport, Quico is transported to a warm, tranquil, sunny town; a far cry from the nightmare he just got out of. It’s here that you…
Weekly Gaming: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PC)
I’ve read about Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in the past, with articles usually talking about how its producer is a movie director by the name of Josef Fares, and how his background has shaped and influenced the design of the game. It’s certainly been on my radar, and I wanted it the day it was released, but being stripped for cash last year, I had to hold off. Over Christmas, Brothers was reduced to £3.59 on Steam; without hesitation, Brothers instantly became a part of my game library, ready to be explored until I was satisfied I had seen every nook and cranny. You start Brothers with your story explained within 5 minutes: your father is sick and needs a special ingredient from a tree to survive. With this little bit of information, the Brothers embark on an epic journey to find this tree, taking on all the elements…
Weekly Gaming: Gone Home (PC)
The gaming media have salivated over Gone Home since its initial release in August, with critical acclaim coming from every news outlet I read. Being tight on money, and having the game never come down in price until the Christmas sales meant that I didn’t get to play this until recently. I’m glad I did get around to buying and playing it, as I feel this is a landmark game for our industry, and one that changed my GOTY list instantly. You play the role of Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 21 year old who has just returned home after a year of travelling abroad across Europe. In the hallway of your house, you notice that no ones home, which is surprising considering how long you’ve been away. A note is found on the side in the porch explaining to Kaitlin that whoever wrote the note is sorry that they’re not there…
Weekly Gaming: State of Decay (PC)
Having seen brilliant reviews on State of Decay over the summer whilst travelling, I was curious as to how another zombie game had managed to entice journalists. Thanks to a friend, when my Birthday came around in Novmeber, I was given the gift of accessing State of Decay during its Early Access program, something I am extremely thankful for, and put to good use. The game starts you off in a camp site next to a lake, making you fight off a hoard of zombies that are attacking your friend. It doesn’t give you much context as to where these zombies came from, and just explains it away by saying that because you were camping, you haven’t heard anything from the outside world. Once you make your way to the ranger station, you meet your first group of survivors, who set about tasking you with gathering resources and scouting the…
Gaming Week 51: Gunpoint (PC)
I’ve had Gunpoint on my radar for a while now, learning about it whilst it was still in development, and going so far as to show my friends and family what little footage I had found as I thought it was a genius concept. After finally getting it around my Birthday a month ago, I jumped in without hesitation, eager to immerse myself in this sublime and wonderful creation. Gunpoint is a 2D platformer with strategy mechanics, which sounds like a weird combination until you see how flawlessly they’re pulled off. You play as Richard Conway, a private eye investigator who is forced into his line of work after purchasing some Bullfrog trousers which malfunction and put him at the scene of a crime. Through clearing his name, Conway is lead deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, one in which innocent bystanders request Conways assistance to clear their name,…
Gaming Week 50: Batman Arkham City (PC)
I absolutely adored the original Batman Arkham Asylum, going so far as to 100% the game twice on both normal and hard difficulty, doing every online challenge, and playing it to the point I was once 42nd in the world on the leaderboards for one challenge. To say it was going to be a difficult act to follow up would be an understatement, something the gaming press agreed with unanimously. The game starts out with Bruce Wayne at a press conference outside the portion of the city sanctioned off for prison use (hence the name, Arkham City), making the argument that the prison is a disgrace to the citizens of Gotham. He’s arrested by police guards, and chucked straight into the pit with all the inmates he helped arrest breathing down his neck, waiting to pounce. You’re soon introduced to Penguin, and upon escaping and reaching higher ground, don your…
Gaming Week 49: Rock of Ages (PC)
I recently bought Rock of Ages after years of seeing journalists giving it praise for being random, yet successful for such a small studio. I knew it was a physics based game, where you control a ball and destroy levels, but nothing could have prepared me for the craziness that ensued. Rock of Ages starts out with a cutscene comprised of old portraits from history, and tells the story of Sisyphus snapping after constantly pushing his rock up a hill for it to fail many times. He decides to take on the other gods and notable heroes of history, and so begins your campaign through this weird and wonderful world. Each level is comprised of a tower defence style set up, with the ability to then control your ball to defeat your enemy. The enemy is doing the same as yourself, which means you have to spend most of your time…
Gaming week 48: The Swapper (PC)
The Swapper was recently on Steams Halloween sale, and having heard a lot of positive buzz about it this past summer, I decided to take the plunge and give it a go. Giantbomb praised it in their podcast, and I felt this indie studio needed all the help they could get, and in hindsight, £3.50 wasn’t a pad price to pay for such a solid game. The game starts out with some fantastic cut scenes that starts with your character being sent to a planet from a space station. Upon landing, you can take control of your character, and proceed to explore the planet on which you’ve landed. Eventually, you come across a strange looking device, one that allows you to make clones of yourself and switch your “soul” between them. It’s an interesting premise, one that The Swapper makes good use of, with puzzles that’ll push you to your…
Gaming Week 47: Crysis 2 (PC)
Crysis was the brilliant successor to Far Cry, a game that was original and ground breaking for its time. Giving you the ability to approach any mission how you liked, Fay Cry set a trend that the games industry would follow for quite some time, Crysis took the torch and continued this trend to new heights. Crysis 2 was only the natural successor that took this torch to a new audience: the console gamer. In order to cater to this new gamer, the Crytek team had to dramatically change a lot of what made Crysis, Crysis. It was a shame, but a necessary evil to cater to this new market of customers, so the nano suit was revised to make for quick and easy allocation of powers, and the graphics were scaled down to compensate for the console’s lack of power. Don’t get me wrong, Crysis 2 is still a…
Gaming Week 46: Superfrog HD (PC/PSN)
I have extremely fond memories of Superfrog as a child, my dad would get his amiga out and let us play it for hours back in 1993. At the age of 6, I found it far too difficult for my young age, but everything about it fascinated me, from the Lucozade (Americans read: Energy drink), to the slot machine, all the colours and charm rubbed off on me as if it was a genuine product for a kid. Nostalgia has a weird way of changing ones perspective of pervious events, so I decided to take the plunge with Superfrog HD and see if it lives up to my high expectations from my youth. Superfrog starts out like most 90’s and 80’s platformers: with a small intro to show how your hero begins his adventure and his motivation for doing so. Apart from the HD drawings, nothings changed in this respect…
Gaming Week 45: The Binding of Isaac (PC/Mac)
Like most of my steam collection, I’ve owned The Binding of Isaac (which will henceforth be shortened to Isaac to save my sanity) for a while now, but have never actually gotten around to playing it properly. That was the whole point of my one game a week idea, but in this time I’ve collected more and it’s becoming a impossible task to finish my game collection. I’d played Isaac before, for about an hour, and just couldn’t understand why people found it so addictive and enjoyable. That’s how it’s been left for years, until these last few weeks that is, I’ve been hooked, playing dozens of hours of the game to try and beat the game over and over again. The game starts out with a little intro to let you know the plot of Isaac before giving you the main menu. The general gist of the story is…