100-Word Review: The Incident (iPhone)
Posted by Chris Evans in 100-Word Reviews, Handheld, Mobile, Reviews on 24. Aug, 2010 | 0 Comments
The App Store is awash with clones of the ever popular Doodle Jump, but The Incident at least brings some fresh ideas to the table. The structure you climb is formed of objects that fall from the sky, be they cars, pianos, arcade cabinets, comedy weights or who knows what else. The graphics are pleasingly [...]
Review: Limbo: For better or worse, the hype machine gets it right
Posted by Chris Evans in Console, Featured, Gaming, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 26. Jul, 2010 | 7 Comments
I’ve been waiting for Limbo for four years, from when I was first shown the original trailer and concept art. Since then, it’s all been worryingly silent, to the point where I feared the project would never see the light of day. Imagine my surprise then, when I woke up to find that [...]
100 Word Review: Risk Factions
Posted by Chris Evans in 100-Word Reviews, Console, Gaming, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 13. Jul, 2010 | 1 Comment
Converting a board game into a video game is tricky process. Risk: Factions attempts to straddle that line by having both a faithful recreation of the original game and a newly designed campaign mode. The two sit a little oddly together, with the cartoon characters and comedy dialogue jarring somewhat with the methodical, [...]
Review: Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4
Posted by Chris Evans in Console, PS3, Reviews, Wii, Xbox 360 on 11. Jul, 2010 | 2 Comments
After two Lego Star Wars games, two Lego Indiana Jones games and Lego Batman, it’s fair to expect the formula to be going a little stale by now. It’s a formula that is mostly unchanged for Lego Harry Potter – use different characters abilities to advance through levels, find a multitude of collectables, then return [...]
Preview: Child of Eden shows Kinect can do more than just Wii clones
Posted by Chris Evans in Console, E3 2010, Gaming, Previews, Xbox 360 on 23. Jun, 2010 | 0 Comments
While Microsoft’s press conference left me entirely unconvinced by Kinect, Ubisoft’s conference peaked my interest within seconds. Watching Tetsuya Mizuguch stood in front of Kinect was like watching a conductor in front of an orchestra. After all the promotional videos from Microsoft showing Minority Report levels of control, finally here is something showing what the [...]
Eyes on: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, the most faithful videogame movie in history
Posted by Chris Evans in DS, Gaming, Handheld, News, Previews on 29. May, 2010 | 4 Comments
It’s not very often that the words ‘movie based on a game’ result in something that does the original justice. Those of us gathered in the lobby of the British Film Institute seemed to share a feeling of not knowing quite what to expect from the somewhat bewilderingly titled Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva. [...]
Review: Splinter Cell: Conviction
Posted by Chris Evans in Console, Gaming, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 18. May, 2010 | 0 Comments
To say Splinter Cell: Conviction has had a troubled life would be to put it mildly. Three years of development, multiple delays and a huge redesign midway through don’t sound like the best recipe for a successful videogame, but somehow Ubisoft Montreal have delivered exactly what the series needed. Sam Fisher’s last outing, Double Agent, [...]
Opinion: Playing a role in role-playing games
Posted by Chris Evans in Gaming, Opinion on 05. May, 2010 | 5 Comments
RPG is one of the wider ranging genres in gaming. In fact, there are few games nowadays that don’t boast having some kind of that wonderful marketing buzzword, ‘RPG elements’, but when you boil it down, what does it mean for a game to be an RPG? Levelling up? Screens of stats? Tech trees? It’s [...]
Review: Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)
Posted by Chris Evans in Console, PC, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 25. Apr, 2010 | 3 Comments
What do you feel when you complete a game? Happiness? Satisfaction? Sadness that it’s over? Relief that you’ve made it to the end alive?
Any well-written, story-driven game should give you some combination of these, but there are a select few, for me at least, that seem to go that little bit further, combining all of [...]
Review: Dragon Age: Origins (Xbox 360)
Posted by Chris Evans in Console, PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 25. Apr, 2010 | 2 Comments
I’ve always had a strained relationship with RPGs. Little about the classic RPG model has ever appealed to me, but at the same time I generally hold story above anything else in my enjoyment of a game. It’s only in recent years that certain Western developed titles, such as Mass Effect and Fallout 3, [...]
