Latest game reviews

When is a game not a game? Some might say, when it’s a David Cage game.Although his studio Quantic Dream is known for its adventures, it can be argued that it is more a film studio than game developer. It has a reputation for creating big budget stories... Read more

Nobody would argue that the world is lacking in zombie games – especially open-world ones that lack conventional storylines. Miraculously, though, State of Decay 2 manages to achieve a new spin on the well-worn genre. Perhaps the best way to describe... Read more

Plenty was revealed during the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Community Event in Los Angeles. Developer Treyarch unveiled its additional modes, in the form of Zombies and Blackout - the all-new Battle Royale game mode to take on the likes of Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's... Read more

Famously, in the music world, bands' second albums are the ones which prove tricky to make. But difficult second album syndrome isn't so much of a factor when the first album isn't all that. In 2014's The Crew – Ubisoft's first stab at an open-world,... Read more

The Atari VCS - formerly Ataribox - has had a relatively rocky ride since it was announced last year. A delay to its crowd funding phase, let alone launch, brought the cynics out of the woodwork. Even though they, like everyone else outside of the development... Read more

The retro games console market is raging at the moment, not least thanks to Nintendo's decision to release remakes of the NES and SNES in miniature form. That's prompted others to follow suit, including Sega with a Mega Drive Mini planned for late 2018... Read more

A lot has happened in the years since the release of the last major South Park videogame, the controversial Stick of Truth. For starters, there's an elected president who has arguably been more controversial than the potty-mouthed protagonist fourth-graders... Read more

Although the PS4 Pro gets most of the attention these days, with its 4K visuals, the slimmer, standard PlayStation 4 is a great starting point for anyone who wants to get into console gaming and doesn't have a large budget.It is, by far, the most widely... Read more

When the original God of War was released 13 years ago for the PlayStation 2 it successfully combined fast-paced, combo-based combat with excellent platforming and puzzle solving. It soon became a fan fave.A sequel followed and was equally well received,... Read more

Zany, wacky, crazy, mind-boggling, pointless, bizarre, very Japanese. I don't get it.These are just some of the words and phrases that we've heard from others when talking about Nintendo's latest gaming concept: Nintendo Labo.But do any of the above really... Read more

Sea of Thieves well and truly busts the commonly held myth that videogames are all about full-on, constant action. At times, it can be positively restful, and it must be the only game out there which can sometimes feel like taking a yachting holiday.Developer... Read more

Although Microsoft makes a song and dance about its powerful Xbox One X console, and justifiably so, it was Sony that beat its main rival to the 4K punch, with this, the PlayStation 4 Pro.It is capable of playing games with resolutions up to 4K and with... Read more

Well over five iterations into the series (lest we forget the likes of Primal and Blood Dragon), we know what to expect from a Far Cry game. Namely, first-person shooter gameplay in a lush open-world setting, pitching you against some bunch of crazed... Read more

After the Xbox One X was released in 2017 you could be forgiven for thinking the lesser specced Xbox One S would be slowly phased out. Not so. Considering its beefier stablemate is over twice the price, this machine is more accessible; a better family... Read more

When Microsoft first announced it was creating “the world’s most powerful console” – under the working title “Project Scorpio” – there were few 4K HDR TVs around and even fewer sources for Ultra HD content to feed them.Now though, there... Read more

Back in 2010 Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was the epitome of a cult game, delighting the non-conformist subset of gamers who harbour an obsession with Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs, as they're universally known) but refusing to pander to... Read more

When Bandai Namco announced Dragon Ball Legends during a Google talk at the Games Developers Conference, it was strangely sandwiched between lectures about in-game monetisation and the importance of analysing user data to give gamers exactly what they... Read more

After the relative failure of the Wii U, and in the era of Ultra-HD gaming from PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, some were beginning to think that the days of a console with 'Nintendo' slapped across its front may have reached their last. Nintendo Switch vs PS4... Read more

Gamers love to sniff out off-the-beaten track, cultish games and, until now, that has been the only way to describe Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise.For years, Monster Hunter games - primarily confined to Nintendo handhelds, with the occasional port... Read more

You may not have noticed, but the biggest event on the international cricket calendar is poised to get under way: the England team is in Australia for an Ashes series, commencing 23 November 2017.Cricket nowadays feels like a rather neglected sport –... Read more

Take one of the best-loved franchises in the history of pop-culture, mash it up with an online game and you have a recipe for the sort of fanatical devotion that is naturally combustible. Then add tweaks which would appear to favour those prepared to... Read more

Any new instalment of Gran Turismo is a major occasion for those who own a PlayStation. Apart from anything else, these games don't come along very often.Kazunori Yamauchi, the legend who runs the series' developer Polyphony Digital, is renowned for taking... Read more

Crafting a modern version of a classic game is fraught with dangers – never more so than with a game as iconic as Doom.As the game which popularised first-person shooters (developer id Software's previous game, Wolfenstein 3D, invented that most enduring... Read more

If you seek pedigree from your first-person shooters, you can't beat Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Its bloodline can be traced back to the first ever proper FPS: 1992's Wolfenstein 3D. And in the process, it offers a mightily impressive illustration... Read more

Horror movie aficionados will tell you that, over the decades, Japanese film-makers have developed a fearsome reputation for making some of the most out-there, unconventional and bizarre fright-fests imaginable.If you had to characterise a Japanese horror-film,... Read more

Monument Valley 2 was one of the few genuine surprise reveals during Apple's WWDC 17 keynote in San Jose. The HomePod Siri speaker, iOS 11, even the new iMacs had been rumoured in the preceding months. But, we'd not heard that Ustwo was ready to unleash... Read more

Games publishers face a terrible temptation to relentlessly milk franchises that catch the public imagination and, for a while, it looked as though that fate had befallen Assassin's Creed.But Ubisoft, sensibly, opted to give its hugely popular time-travelling... Read more

We fully understand why so many remastered games are appearing for PS4 and other modern consoles, after all there are large, new audiences who never played the originals. However, many of them are simply tarted up graphically, or have resolution jumps... Read more

The Nintendo Switch couldn't have had a better start, with a game as scintillating as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and sales figures the Wii U could only have dreamt about. After its spring launch, however, things went quiet.We've had other... Read more

As soon as the NES Classic Mini was released last year we set our hearts on a follow-up, after all, the Super Nintendo was a better console and the first that really set our hearts a'flutter.That's why the announcement of the Nintendo Classic Mini: Super... Read more

Microsoft's flagship driving franchise, Forza Motorsport, has always had to perform a tricky balancing act. On the one hand, it's a big-budget production that boasts some of the most desirable cars ever made and most of the world's top tracks, so it's... Read more

Destiny was, and still is, a great game. It was overly ambitious to begin with, and a little pompous and overblown in its sci-fi tropes, but with each expansion pack it evolved into the epic first-person shooter we’d originally hoped for.We had one... Read more

There is a reason why there are two distinct types of driving games: there are also two distinct types of driving gamers. Some want an arcade-style experience which gives a sense of the thrill of driving fast, without worrying about whether it actually... Read more

The decades-long battle for supremacy in the football games market can be seen as a microcosm of the modern games industry itself. In one corner, you have EA Sports' FIFA franchise – the archetypal corporate behemoth, with its expensively acquired official... Read more

There's something rather special about being able to form a team of Iron Man and Rocket Raccoon and face off against some of Capcom's biggest and baddest characters. Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite makes that possible in the most bombastic of ways.Infinite... Read more

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle created a stir when it was unveiled at the E3 Show in June. After all, any original Mario-related game is bound to be big news.Back then it sounded like a rather strange proposition though. Developed by Ubisoft, and a cross-pollination... Read more

Because we all fancy ourselves as the next Lewis Hamilton, Formula One videogames have long been an annual staple. But in the past, creating them has been problematic – Microprose, Electronic Arts and Sony, at various times, held the official F1 games... Read more

In an era when everything gets picked over, trolled from every direction, analysed to death and over-thought, a game such as Agents of Mayhem - which merely aims to provide a dollop of good, old-fashioned fun - harks back to a refreshingly bygone age.If... Read more

On the Sunday prior to Gamescom 2017, Microsoft pulled a couple of console announcements out of the bag.There is an Xbox One X Project Scorpio Edition for die-hard fans to pre-order for day one. And a special version of the 1TB Xbox One S was unveiled... Read more

Not only was Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End a superb and fitting end to the adventures of Nathan Drake, it seemed to be an end to the series full stop.The game engine had evolved to near perfection over the years and how could Naughty Dog top it? Best... Read more

There’s no doubt that the future of Nintendo looks rosy or, at least, rosier than it did a couple of years ago.The Switch has proven a tremendous success, the decision to recreate former console glories in miniature form has also gone down rather well,... Read more

The Wii U may have been an unmitigated flop, but at least one good game came out of it: Splatoon. The clever, third-person ink-shooting platformer seemed to emerge fully formed, and somehow managed to establish itself as a sort of starter e-sport, even... Read more

The N. Sane Collection is exactly how you should do a remaster: it's three full Crash Bandicoot games, all lovingly redone, with no corners cut.This isn't a dodgy port of some 20-year-old games to a new PlayStation system, either. This isn't the same... Read more

If you value originality higher than polish and slickness in your videogames, you've probably enjoyed a number of indie games recently. At the moment, the indie developer scene is thriving, and Get Even – created by tiny Polish outfit The Farm 51 –... Read more

In 2017 Mario seems to be on something of a departure from his norm. Maybe it's a midlife crisis. First, there's Mario Odyssey on Switch, a game in which our intrepid plumber has ended up in not only familiar lands, such as Sand Kingdom, but also closer-to-reality... Read more

Life Is Strange. It really is. And the game of the same name explored that concept in a fascinating life-meets-supernatural way when it was released in 2015.Now there's a prequel: Before The Storm. Set in Arcadia Bay once more, it rewinds the timeline... Read more

Ah, the Brits. Cups of tea. Stiff upper lips. Crumpets with jam. Undead zombie hordes. We have it all.UK studio Rebellion's latest title, Strange Brigade, is a 1930s-style adventure which throws you into an adventure in forgotten civilisations. Track... Read more

Star Wars Battlefront was a well received multiplayer when it arrived in 2015. One of its main criticisms was that it didn't have a solo campaign mode and, therefore, no real story. That's something Battlefront 2 fixes: it touts a story mode said to "help... Read more

When Nintendo finally unveiled the Switch at a showcase just prior to its launch, Arms was one of the games that left everyone convinced that the Japanese giant had recovered its mojo, and that the Switch – cue sighs of relief – wasn't going to be... Read more