Gaming

Windbound
GamingGame ReviewsPS4Switch ConsoleXbox One

Windbound (Playstation 4)

Guy 1832 Views ,  ,  , 

Stranded on a desert island, what do you bring? As much as I would love to say…. “a PS4 and a copy of Windbound”, alas I cannot.  Its beautiful art style and fun sailing mechanics, have been scuttled by the tough rogue-like penalties and clunky combat encounters.

Windbound is a survival game built around rouge-like mechanics and procedurally generated islands. Anyone who has played “Don’t Starve” will have a very good understanding of the design philosophy.

Windbound initially presents as a sort of paired down version of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Which, let’s be honest is a great place to start. Windbound will not however, have the broad appeal of Zelda. I think it’s going to be an acquired taste for many gamers as they will need to be patient and forgiving lovers of rogue-likes, to find joy here.

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Railway Empire Complete Collection
GamingGame ReviewsPC / MacPS4Switch ConsoleXbox One

Railway Empire Complete Collection [reviewed on PC]

Gerard Campbell 2051 Views ,  ,  ,  , 

Railway Empire Complete Collection doesn’t know I’ve never been one of those people that has found trains fascinating. Sure, I’ve been on trains but for me they’ve always just been a means of getting from point A to point B. There’s no denying that the steam locomotive was a pivotal instrument in the industrial age of the late 19th Century.

Railway Empire, which first came out in 2017,  builds on that pivotal time period and publisher Kalypso have just released the Complete Collection. The definitive edition, I guess, that comes with two years worth of updates, as well as eight pieces of released DLC. Which let you set up train networks in Mexico, the Great Lakes, The Andes, Great Britain & Ireland, France, Germany, Northern Europe & Down Under.

I can see Railway Empire Complete Collection appealing obviously to people who love trains. As well as those gamers who love the city management/tycoon games where you get to micromanage every little aspect of what is going on. If this is you, you’ll find hours of enjoyment in this empire builder.

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Game PassGame ReviewsGamingPC / MacPS4Xbox One

Wasteland 3 Review (Xbox One X)

Barrie Clarke 1455 Views ,  ,  ,  , 

I have made no secret that 1988’s Wasteland from Interplay is my favourite game ever.

It was ground breaking for the good old Commodore 64 and saw many, many hours of play from me. It even accounts for my greatest gaming achievement. So to see a official sequel in Wasteland 2 was just fantastic. A third, Wasteland 3, well, it is definitely a highlight of an otherwise pretty shitty 2020. With names like Deth, Vargas, and Brygo bringing a big smile to my face.

I was ready to return to the Wasteland.

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FitBit Family
GamingHardwareHardware Reviews

The Fitbit Family just got three additions

Richard Armitt 1608 Views ,  ,  ,  ,  , 

The Fitbit Family has been something of a revelation in wearables over the last two years. Especially for those of us without Apple phones. Falling neatly into our Tech area we’ve had the opportunity to get Guy in a sweat with a couple of them. His recent feature on Active Zone Minutes (AZM) was well worth a look.

As a spectator of Fitbit in my family, I’ve been impressed. Now FitBit have launched three new models. No doubt after such an unprecedented year they’ll be on a lot of virtual Christmas Lists come December.

I haven’t worn a watch in decades. However there is enough tech squeezed into this series to make it damn sexy again!

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Tell Me Why
GamingByte Size ReviewPC / MacPS4Xbox One

Tell Me Why – XBOX review

Dylan Burns 1312 Views ,  , 

Guest contributor, Dylan Burns makes a welcome entrance:

One might see Tell Me Why (Chapter One) as DONTNOD’s distillation of everything they have learnt.

Sure, there’s DONTNOD’s distinctive sense of place and domestic design, as well as their ability to create the illusion of small town America, but when distilled down to what you actually do in this first chapter, the handful of location changes and flashbacks cannot hide the fact that this is quite a bare-bones offering. 

I was impressed by the first Life is Strange and a big fan of the deliberate mundanity of Life is Strange 2, but in Tell Me Why I found myself struggling to get through the languid pacing, boring dialogue and questionable characterisation. Rather than being intrigued, I just wanted the story to hurry up and happen, for the characters to do something other than wander about each location looking at things and remembering the past.

Due to the episodic nature of Tell Me Why, we’ve added Dylan’s review of the following chapters here.

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GamingGame PassGame ReviewsPC / MacVideo Content

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020: Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away

Gerard Campbell 3290 Views ,  ,  , 

I didn’t expect to love Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 as much as I did when I first started playing it but I do. I love it.

There’s just something therapeutic and relaxing about taking to the skies in a Cessna or a Daher TBM930 single-engine and just flying from point A to point B. Heck, often there is no point B involved at all. I often just found myself taking off from an airport, be it Christchurch, in New Zealand, or Tekapo or Brisbane or Melbourne and just flying around, looking at houses and seeing how close I can get to the ground before the plane’s warning klaxon does my head in.

I’ll be completely honest: I’m a hopeless pilot. My first few take-offs were sketchy af. They still are sometimes, actually.

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GamingGame ReviewsXbox One

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review (Xbox One X)

Barrie Clarke 2535 Views ,  ,  , 

Welcome to the Stolen Lands of Golarion. You are the Pathfinder, the Kingmaker. Under the direction of Jamandi Aldori, ruler of Restov, you have the chance to make a fair chunk of these lands yours. All you have to do is assemble some companions and get rid of the Stag Lord and his bandits. Easy enough.

I’m absolutely loving Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Even despite a few glitches it has. The biggest problem it has? Launching so close to Wasteland 3.

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Epos Sennheiser GSX300 external sound card
GamingHardwareHardware ReviewsPC / Mac

Epos Sennheiser GSX300 external sound card

Gerard Campbell 1558 Views ,  , 

For those older gamers reading this, you’ll remember vividly how it used to be commonplace to have a dedicated sound card in your PC: On-board audio encoding wasn’t a thing back in the days of beige boxes, shareware and 486CPUs.

As PCs became more and more modern, motherboards started appearing with in-built sound cards offering OK but often not stellar sound. Still, it was early days and you made the most of what you had. I still remember my Creative Labs Sound Blaster sound cards with fond memories.

Fast forward to today

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GamingByte Size ReviewPC / MacPS4Video ContentXbox One

Relicta, PS4 Review

Guy 1857 Views ,  ,  , 

Relicta does not make a good first impression.

The opening puzzles which serve as the tutorial feel very, “seen that sort of thing before”. The tutorial then leads into a fairly drawn out story delivery sequence told by disposable radio chatter. I will admit, I rolled my eyes and did not have high hopes for my next few hours of gaming.

But poor introductions aside, when the gameplay proper kicked off and some headscratcher puzzles where unleashed upon my brain. I completely changed my views on Relicta. It’s actually a super solid wee puzzler.

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GamingByte Size ReviewGame PassPC / MacXbox One

Battletoads, Byte Size Review (Xbox One X)

Barrie Clarke 1444 Views ,  ,  ,  , 

Rash, Pimple, and Zitz are the Battletoads. Heroes from another era, back to show gamers how we rolled in the early 1990s. Created to take on those other green anthropomorphic creatures of the 1980s and 90s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletoads first arrived in 1991 on the NES.

From there we had several games on different systems and even an attempt at an animated TV series which never saw more than a half hour pilot.

So how will our toads fare today? Will they hop to success? Or will they just turn turtle?

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Horizon Zero Dawn - needs no introduction
GamingGame ReviewsPC / MacPS4Sony

Horizon Zero Dawn PC review: A troubled PC port

Gerard Campbell 1883 Views ,  ,  ,  ,  , 

There was a time where the chances of a PlayStation game coming to PC was an impossibility but Horizon Zero Dawn is the third recent Sony title, with Detroit Become Human and Death Stranding coming before it.

It makes sense (and Sony has a history of making laptops): PC’s offer higher  resolutions, faster frame rates and mouse and keyboard controls.

I can’t speak for DBH as I didn’t play it on PC but the PC version of Death Stranding was a smooth, trouble free experience for me. Sadly, the same cannot be said for my time with the PC port of Guerrilla’s Horizon Zero Dawn: It’s a gorgeous looking game, but the PC version is hampered by technical issues that mar the experience.

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