Opinion: The Xbox Live Price Hike…And What You Can Do About It
Posted by Thomas Walters in Console, Opinion, Xbox 360 on 03. Sep, 2010 | 3 Comments
It emerged this week that as of November the price of an Xbox Live Gold subscription is going to be creeping up, rising by $10 a year in the States. On this side of the pond, the UK arguably comes off slightly better (surely a first in any international pricing comparison), with only the month-to-month [...]
100-Word Review: Alpha Protocol (Multi)
Posted by Thomas Walters in 100-Word Reviews, Console, PC, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 15. Aug, 2010 | 0 Comments
Alpha Protocol features some of the least fashionable clothing ever rendered. This is important, because what holds it back more than wonky combat or dodgy voicing for the main character is a lack of style. It aims for the high octane thrills of Bourne and 24, but instead hits Spooks: earnest, respectable, but lacking the [...]
100-Word Review: Eufloria (PS3,PC)
Posted by Thomas Walters in 100-Word Reviews, Console, PC, PS3, Reviews on 15. Aug, 2010 | 0 Comments
Eufloria is an RTS game where you control, well, plants, spreading across the galaxy by dispatching hosts of seedlings to neighbouring planets, then colonising them by planting trees on their surface. If a rival floral empire controls a world, your seedlings must wrest it from them using lasers attached to their front end.
It’s better than [...]
Opinion: How Blizzard made the specialist gaming press redundant- and why it matters
Posted by Thomas Walters in Opinion, PC on 08. Aug, 2010 | 0 Comments
So, after a brief flurry of controversy around the fact that no reviews were available until after the launch, Starcraft 2 has been showered in (admittedly belated) critical praise, and the astronomical sales have enabled Blizzard to wallpaper the east wing of their offices with money. The delay on reviews, though, still interests me. [...]
Review: Crackdown 2’s carefree sandbox gameplay continues to delight
Posted by Thomas Walters in Console, Reviews, Xbox 360 on 20. Jul, 2010 | 0 Comments
Crackdown 2, like its predecessor, is an object lesson in game design. I’d normally try to maintain a little more mystery in the opening paragraph of a review, but in this case I think its best to get my feelings out in the open from the off.
The game casts you as a superpower policeman working [...]
Editors’ Blog: APB Review: How Dave Jones got it wrong
Posted by Thomas Walters in Editor's Blog on 09. Jul, 2010 | 1 Comment
My APB review has been somewhat gazumped by Dave Jones’ interview with Eurogamer, commenting on…well, commenting on APB reviews.
It’s all fairly polite and civil, so I’m loath to fly off on too much of a rant, but there are a couple of points in it that have a slightly unpleasant undercurrent, most particularly the suggestion, [...]
Review: APB’s action-MMO hybrid tries, fails to inspire (PC)
Posted by Thomas Walters in PC, Reviews on 09. Jul, 2010 | 0 Comments
All Points Bulletin (APB) is an interesting beast. It’s an MMO, but it ‘aint your average MMO. APB is a real time action game set in the semi-open city of San Paro, where you step into the role of either a criminal or enforcer to take part in the street war raging between the two [...]
Opinion: I Came, I Zerged, I Conquered
Posted by Thomas Walters in Opinion, PC on 13. Jun, 2010 | 1 Comment
I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with the strategy genre. Dune II was the first game I played in any kind of dedicated way, hunched over the keyboard of my family’s shiny new PC with its 486 processor and 8MB of RAM. No game I’d played before could quite compare to that moment [...]
