Being a long time fan of RPGs and a gamer of advancing years, I remember when The Zodiac Age was first released back in 2006 on the PlayStation 2. I vividly remember spending hours running around, trying to get my guys strong enough to put a dent on the Hell Wyrm, and reading through my guide book (remember those?) to find out hints and tips for getting better weapons. Now, 13 years later, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age has been remastered for the Xbox One, so the question is, has time been kind to this game, or should it have stayed in my fond memories? I dived back into the world of Ivalice to find out.
50 years. That’s a long time in anyone’s book, but yes, 2019 is Konami’s 50th anniversary and things are shaping up very nicely indeed. To celebrate, the good people at the Japanese games company are treating us to three different collections: Arcade Classics, Castlevania and Contra Anniversary Collections. Most recently, gamers were invited to “trace the origins of the historic vampire franchise”, with the release of eight games in the Castlevania series. After such a long time, are these titles worth a revisit, or have they, er, lost their bite?
There are tons of zombies games littering the market, but no matter how many we see arrive year after year, there is always one more just on the horizon that hopes to bring something fresh and enjoyable to players once more. The latest title to bring the undead to our living rooms is 2URVIVE, a game with a title so artistic that it leaves the hairs standing on end.
By this stage, Sonic is no stranger to the racetrack, as Team Sonic Racing follows in the footsteps of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. This next outing for Sonic and his blue car borrows heavily from the previous two games – minus the additional non-Sonic characters – but also a large chunk of Sonic Heroes to produce perhaps the best kart racer available on the Xbox One.
At its core, Party Golf is a simple golf game in which you, some mates, or the AI are left to strike your golf ball into a hole in the fastest time possible, but then it goes and throws a few little extras into the mix. Well, a lot of extras actually. And quite big ones at that.
Skelly Selest, despite its very familiar gameplay styles, still has a lot going for it. For one thing, it at least goes out of its way to distinguish itself from the competition
Playing Darkwood feels like stepping into some dark twisted Eastern European fairytale. It’s undeniably magical, unquestionably disturbing, and often terrifying. It’s a world that will stick into your conscience long after you have stopped playing. An experience that connects emotionally and mentally, it never lets you go. Rarely has a title shocked me as often as this game has, and fighting through the woods is a tense and difficult challenge, but an endlessly engaging gameplay experience. It is a horrifying audio visual trip through the twisted rabbit hole.
Episode 3 of Life is Strange 2 brings us to over halfway through Sean and Daniel Diaz’s journey from Seattle to their new life in Mexico. We rejoin the brothers who are now camping in the Redwood Forests of California as part of a community of drifters and runaways.
There’s not a lot I haven’t seen in the point-and-click genre, with experiences often featuring the likes of alien planets, devious sorcerers and a whole ton of clever puzzles to tax the old grey matter. Which begs the questions, what can Rumpus Animation conjure up to stand out in the ever-crowded market for such games? Well, we’re about to find out as Adventures of Bertram Fiddle Episode 1: A Dreadly Business has released on Xbox One and it’s taking us to Victorian London for a super serious adventure.
Void Bastards boasts an impressive amalgamation of gameplay and progression systems. Combined with its rogue-like core and fascinating graphics style, Void Bastards achieves the feat of being one of the stand-out indie titles of the year. I enjoyed my hours with Void Bastards, even if there was a little room for improvement on the story, and the level of variety offered.
In terms of strangest character to play as, Woodle Tree Adventures has you experiencing life as a walking tree-stump. It is right up there with some of the weirdest.
To celebrate 40 years in the business, the imaginatively titled SNK 40th Anniversary Collection has been released on Xbox One, including 13 games at launch, with a further 11 promised as free DLC. There’s certainly no shortage of content included but can games from this period hold their own today? Is this a history lesson worth looking into?
A lot of great things were happening in 1995, but Diesel’s run with the WWF Championship certainly was not one of them, and neither were the tank controls or locked camera angles of early survival horror titles. Back in 1995 is a 2019 release which plays like something which should belong in the year 1995, and stay there too. Perhaps the game’s title should have been Back in 1992 given the stark similarities to the original Alone in the Dark (1992).
The Deponia series had always been a point-and-click saga that eluded gamers who prefer the Microsoft brand of consoles, with only a solitary title reaching the Xbox One catalogue in recent years – the second instalment, Chaos on Deponia, oddly. Daedalic Entertainment, the developers and publishers behind these adventures, have decided to bundle the entire series together as the Deponia Collection for a release across all the major console platforms. Was it worth the wait to get the whole story at once, or will possessing the complete collection of four games feel somewhat like overkill?
Back in October 2018, Devious Dungeon released on consoles to a fairly middling reception. Largely regarded as a solid if somewhat unspectacular sidescroller, the game was clearly successful enough for the studio to develop a sequel. And now, that moment has arrived with Devious Dungeon 2. Question is, can the sequel improve upon the original, or is it just more of the same?
