Space Combat games have always been a favourite genre for me. Starting with Descent back in 1995 and most recently with the excellent Star Wars: Squadrons on the PSVR.
But the genre often struggled to get AAA quality outings. Certainly, any tangible story and world building rarely occurs within them.
BUT, Chorus has literally come out of my blind-spot and some how managed to be both an awesome arcade space combat game, with an interesting story.
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Real Time Strategy (RTS) titles like Iron Harvest on Console are a rare beast.
And even rarer is a Console RTS that has a control and user interface (UI) system, which isn’t a finger twisting nightmare on a controller. But it can be done.
Halo Wars and Sudden Strike 4 have nailed the UI in an RTS for Console gamers, and Iron Harvest…almost did.
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Yet again I chuck on the rose-tinted glasses to revisit some good memories from the early days of the original Xbox.
This time it is a bit of an obscure HD remake in the form of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
Originally released in 2002 in the gaming vein of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Banjo-Kazooie, Ty definitely hit a chord with New Zealand and Australian gamers.
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Football Manager 2022 brings me back to one of my most beloved genres. Having spent the best part of 40 years playing these games. All the way from Kevin Toms’ 1987 Football Manager, through my love affair with CM97/98 to here and today. Sports Interactive are way ahead in this game and it shows.
Yes.It’s make believe and even the best of them look like a spreadsheet, a keen eye soon learns where to look. But, once you’re under and engaged with these players it all starts to become important, to you, personally.
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Call of Duty : Vanguard, being the 2021 annual entry to the series Dylan takes us back to WWII to battle latency, with or without Zombies.
Until Vanguard, my relationship with shooters has simmered the last few years. I used to love them. Loved those AA and AAA shooters. I loved CoD 2 – the house-to-house fighting still jostles inside my gaming memories for prime position.
I loved Wolfenstein and Rise of the Triad and Doom and Quake and Singularity and even Timeshift. I’ve enjoyed quite a few Calls of Duty. I even got sent to LA to preview Black Ops 3.
We played MW3 on the morning of my wedding to take our minds off the day. But since then, I’ve just kinda . . . not played many.
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I had very little basis to be as hyped as I was for the new Guardians of the Galaxy game.
The E3 trailer looked pretty good, even if Star-Lord was presented as bit of a “dude-bro” and the dev team (of modern Deus Ex fame) have a reasonable pedigree in the AAA space. But I had concerns as the Comic book, super-hero genre is hard to get right.
However…against the odds Eidos Montreal crushed it!
With an absolutely fantastic Marvel game and some of the best characters I have experienced since Mass Effect.
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nd the first Forza Motorsport on the original Xbox, it had me hooked. But then in 2012 came the first Forza Horizon on the Xbox 360.
It was the Horizon Series that reeled me in. The freedom and forgiveness that Horizon has over its Motorsport brother is far more to my liking, and driving style. And here we are now in 2021 with the fifth instalment in the Forza Horizon franchise.
Viva Mexico!
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many are calling a spiritual successor in the form of Back 4 Blood. Developer Turtle Rock Studios (renamed as Valve South) are the team behind the Left 4 Dead games and even the format of the game name points towards a sequel to Left 4 Dead.
But thanks to Copyright/Ownership/Politics Turtle Rock Studios in its current form had to create a ‘new’ IP. And so Back 4 Blood is born.
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Well, the cars are the stars. It’s that simple, yes its a sturdy arcade style racer that’s accessible and entertaining, but grinding the collectible and familiar cars. That’s where it’s at.
It’s a cool game, with fun bells and whistles. I really like the concept, I don’t like getting frustrated at certain things. There is a buzz attached to finding a rare car, but under the hood, they’re not that different. Although I tend to melt them for Gear Bits or coins to upgrade or buy something else.
Hot Wheels Unleashed has plenty of fun factor for now, I just can’t see it staying exciting for long.
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not looking forward to Far Cry 6 at all. I haven’t been interested in a Far Cry game since the brilliant Far Cry 3. I’m happy to say Far Cry 6 has grabbed me in a big way and it is great fun.
There is no great mystery around what sort of game and genre Far Cry 6 is. It’s an FPS open-world action game. Exactly like all those that have come before. This time round it is set in a fictional Caribbean archipelago called Yara, which for all intents and purposes, is Cuba. Ruled by the ruthless “El Presidente” Antón Castillo played by Giancarlo Esposito. Yara is controlled by his military and as expected, there is a grass-roots resistance movement. Which it turns out needs my special ‘Guerrilla’ gamer skills to overthrow the “El Presidente”!
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Gearshifters is a game that fits right into a classic arcade niche. Up until recently it was completely off my radar, but for catching a Tweet and having my fancy tickled. It turns out this indie game is right on the money.
Red Phantom Games have pulled out a fun, playable homage to cult car games and arcade shooters. Now, I’m off for one more go before bed.
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