Latest Reviews
 
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by Sean Meakin-Bolderston | Tuesday 21st December 2010
It's reasonable to assume from you reading this review that you have more than a passing interest in Formula One and the games that come out in conjunction with the seasons. That being the case, then you will most certainly remember the Formula One games of old. There was a time when you couldn't move in games stores for racing games with the official Formula One seal emblazoned on them, despite most of them being a poor representation of the sport, which lead to unhappiness within the fanbase. Then, Sony got hold of an exclusive license, and finally we would have a game that did the sport justice...or so we thought. Sony appear to be one of the only companies in the world who can take a sport as fantastically spectacular as Formula One and make it as dull as watching dried paint dry.
Review continues after the jump. 
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by Sean Meakin-Bolderston | Wednesday 22nd July 2010
When Lego Harry Potter was first announced, I distinctly remember the first thought that jumped immediately into my head, it was 'F***ing hell, they're making ANOTHER?!', and this was all due to the previous games in the franchise, and, when I say previous games in the franchise, I am, of course, referring to Lego Batman, in the main at least.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love the Lego games, I find them charming and good all-round fun, but they have the problem that the games tend to become repetitive, the gameplay is too similar. So, when I inserted my Lego Harry Potter disk, I sat there expecting the game to have the same formula, to be just another game using the same dynamics, the same style. Oh how wrong I was [...]
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by Rob Vicars | Wednesday 7th July 2010
There is an irrefutable amount of fun to be had in donning an over-sized cowboy hat, a plastic gun and a strong Texan accent and diving around a shanty town made of pillows, much to the annoyance of anyone trying to watch the TV, or ignore you. But sometimes the real thrill of the West lies not in peculiar childhood activities you should have grown out of, but with your beloved digital entertainment output device. Or your Xbox 360 if you like. And it looks like Rockstar have come up with just the ticket.
A ticket that, in fact, starts on a train, and with the journey of John Marston. The West is dying, and the age of automobiles and Starbucks and ringtones is teetering on the edge of fruition. Amidst this change is our hero, trying to leave a world of gang-running, bank robbery and people-shooting behind, but is stopped in his tracks when friendly Government types kidnap his wife and kid and tell him he's got some cleaning up to do, spurring Marston off on his quest to put an end to his former gang buddies. In his own words, it's him or them, and the way he sees it, it might as well be them [...]
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by Sean Meakin-Bolderston | Monday 14th June 2010
Sequels are well-known for being worse than the original, especially when taken on board by different developers entirely, but with Majesty 2, this simply isn't the case. In fact, the game has been radically improved from its predecessor, improved gameplay elements and more in-depth characters, while still retaining the original charm and humour that came with the original Majesty.
It's difficult to compare this game to another on the market; it takes the best elements from so many different games and forces them all together in one package, and this is one of its best qualities. Too many recent games have simply followed the same formula as others in their genre, something that rapidly becomes tiresome and tedious, and puts everybody off it completely. Majesty 2 can help rectify this, being an RTS game, but with a twist, perhaps it can inspire more games like it, more games that take one base element and build on it to create something new, unique and ultimately enjoyable. Review continues after the jump.
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by Rob Vicars | Thursday 10th June 2010
The Xbox Dashboard is a great place for little nuggets of information that appear to you at times most unexpected, and prove to be incomprehensibly invaluable in their later use. Or at least, that happened to me once. Most of the time it's largely the opposite. However, whilst watching the E3 call-back video this week, it happened to mention that in 2005, at the first E3 unveiling of the Xbox 360, Alan Wake was announced. Thereafter I learnt that the game was in its planning stages as early as 2001. And then I learnt that there are some long lost historical writings that say the Sumerians actually started work on Alan Wake BEFORE EXISTENCE BEGAN. Okay that last one wasn't true, but the others were entirely.
So, it's been NINE years Mr. Wake. That's a lot of books you could have been writing [...]
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by Rob Vicars | Thursday 10th June 2010
So you may have noticed my previous articles here at GC have largely been filled with me elatedly foaming at the mouth in such vast quantities I've managed to drown anyone approaching within a metre radius. This was because these days when we're told a game is going to be good, and the game looks to be really good, it seems like there's no way the game could possibly mess it all up for you. Only when it turns up low and behold it's a bottomless pit of disappointment, only to actually have a bottom, where, once you land, you're imprisoned and regularly beaten by Ant and Dec with a sharpened copy of Saints Row 2. Splinter Cell: Conviction seemed like it was too good to actually be any good. However the demo, as tooth-pick-cautious as I was booting it up, told me otherwise [...]
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by Matias Peltonen | Tuesday 25th May 2010
I know, I know. It's not that new if you happen to own a Nintendo DSi but now that the game is released on the PC (and iPhone too), I think it's time for me to finally try it out and tell you people what I think about it.
If you don't know what this game is all about, shame on you. Dark Void Zero is an 8-bit spin-off of a game called Dark Void, it was a pretty average game on the X360, PS3 and PC with pretty cool ideas, but they could have used those ideas a lot better and there was some technical problems with the PC-version but don't worry! Zero isn't anything like it's big brother and delivers you excellence in almost every way. The first time you start up Dark Void Zero, You notice something strange [...]
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by Benjamin Dalby | Tuesday 25th May 2010
A handful of things in life are inevitable, and those of us who have devoted an unhealthy number of hours to the pursuit of strategy gaming have come to realise the release of new titles in Sega's Total War series is amongst them. Touted by Sega as the most the most advanced instalment yet, how does Napoleon stack up?
To people who have played Empire, the previous instalment in the series, Napoleon may appear on the surface to be little more than a new story and a set of fancy cinematics containing a certain Monsieur Bonaparte; but delve a little deeper and it soon becomes apparent that a lot of work has been put in behind the scenes. Battle AI has been the focus for much of this activity, an area which has too long and often been an overlooked afterthought for many a publisher, and although not quite there yet this is gradually making for a refreshingly realistic game experience where there is no way to learn to beat the game, the player must learn to fight as if they are playing a fellow strategist [...]
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by Patrick Barnett | Friday 23rd April 2010
The sequel to Phantom Hourglass lives up to its predecessor, improving on the handheld Zelda formula, without introducing a broad range of new ideas. I found myself enjoying the experience, but it felt repetitive after playing its predecessor. If it were not for the inclusion of a train in lieu of a boat, this could have been called Phantom Hourglass 2.0.
The greatest change in this game; are the railways that connect the various towns and dungeons. This gave the game a feel of connection and not just randomness, created by sailing around from island to island which were all radically different from each other [...]
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by Nathan McLean | Sunday 14th March 2010
With every comic book hero, there has to be the super natural quality that allows them to stand out from their counter parts. Batman Arkham Asylum surpasses this basic rule with such a simple but effective method and that is by making the Batman the enforcer of justice which overpowers his adversaries with brain and not always brawn.
Batman Arkham Asylum is a third person action game which allows you to become the impervious Dark Knight. Your mission: To unravel the Joker's mysterious plot deep within the mental institute. Where you begin is within the Bat-Mobile tearing down the streets of Gotham where he is to transport the recently captured Joker to Arkham Island [...]
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