All Features

10 Steps to a Rhythm Heaven (Odama)

Jul 25, 2007

To posses an inner metronome is a glorious thing; the dance floor becomes your domain; the lead role in the trash-wanging musical sensation Stomp is yours for the taking; you find that people will like you better as you bop on your merry way. Alas, were not all so blessed. But the musically challenged need fear no longer - were here to help. Welcome to our ten-step program, turning the rhythmically bare into Fred Astaire, all with the power of ...

Five reasons you suck if you don't play Okami (Okami)

Mar 26, 2008

If you didn't go out and buy Okami, you suck. Period. Okami is one of the best games that hardly anyone played. Despite having received rave reviews and numerous awards - including our very own “Too Beautiful to Live” accolade - sales for the title were lackluster. What the hell, gamers? Do you want to play crap like Deer Hunter 17 and Bratz: Inappropriately Sexed-Up Pre-Teens all your life?Luckily, the Wii version of Okami is just ...

Top 7... Death Rattle Games (Okami)

Mar 10, 2008

We'd like to think that every developer sets out to make the perfect game. But as budgets swell, stockholders throw tantrums, and release dates draw near, there's a whole myriad of snafus can explode in the face of well meaning folks. Plenty of games spit in the eye of gamers’ expectations and miscarry at retailers every year - that’s not special. These games are the great white whales that tanked so hard they dragged entire companies down with them. ...

10 reasons why Okami is a mad masterpiece (Okami)

Feb 22, 2007

1) It lets you control time One of the most visually-appealing and useful abilities is being able to control the time of day by drawing either a sun or a moon in the sky. Draw a moon and the bright sky will be slowly consumed by bleeding black ink, bringing with it nightfall. Draw a sun and a gorgeous spinning orb of heavenly glory makes it sparkle and scares off tougher enemies. This becomes more and more useful later in the game when certain missions only become available at a certain time ...

The Legend of Okami (Okami)

Sep 22, 2006

They say flattery will get you everywhere, and that imitation is the sincerest form of such behavior. But is there a limit to how much you can ape something before it crosses the line of "homage" into "ripoff?" Well, when the result is a game as life-changing as Okami, we're content to let it take everything that makes The Legend of Zelda a masterpiece and copy it any day of the week. Spending no more than a few hours with Okami will reveal how much it plays like a new Zelda game. You've got a ...

Meet the crew of One Piece (One Piece: Unlimited Adventure)

Dec 12, 2007

Dec 12, 2007 When theyre not swabbing the poop deck, battening down any un-battened hatches or doing any other cliché-ridden activity; the Straw Hat crew sails for adventure and most importantly, the One Piece treasure. However, every now and then Luffy and co. get sidetracked and duke it out with nautical nasties. Because good always defeats evil, we thought wed give ya a sneak peek at the winning team under your control in the Wiis upcoming One Piece: Unlimited Adventure. Anime, ...

Operation Flashpoint: The sequel (Operation Flashpoint)

Jul 26, 2005

Bohemia's battle plans aren't simple. They're positively complicated. It's working on two Flashpoint sequels, for a start. The first pressing on the boundaries of the original, critically-acclaimed Operation Flashpoint. The second game pressing on boundaries full stop. Operation Flashpoint was a tactical shooter like no other. Set during a hypothetical Soviet invasion of the West, its vast scale made you feel like a small cog caught in the wheel of a very large war. The lulls between ...

Gaming PaperCraft (The Orange Box)

Jun 10, 2008

Our origami gurus have designed some pretty sweet papercraft figures for you to decorate your office or gaming lounge. Read more to create your own Companion Cube, Big Daddy, Gordon Freeman and Vault-Boy with our printable cutouts. ...

The Top 7... inanimate objects (The Orange Box)

Apr 7, 2008

Inanimate objects. Wow, we must really be out of ideas, huh? It's true, at first pass this sounds absurd, open to all kinds of interpretation with an infinite number of potential entries, but after careful contemplation (i.e. shouting at one another for hours) we've come up with a list of in-game objects so desirable that every gamer should love 'em - even if all they do is sit there.

For our consideration, the items have to be ...

Opening The Orange Box: Portal (The Orange Box)

Feb 29, 2008

The games world has gone bat shit over Portal. By the time you read this, there will be around 23,456 more blogs about the Weighted Companion Cube and over 1.2 million references on forums about “cake,” beating the previous record set by “the knights who say ‘Ni’” by 67 percent. Despite Valve’s sci-fi spatial puzzler clocking in at less than three hours, Portal has become a phenomenon, built on a ...

Opening The Orange Box: Team Fortress 2 (The Orange Box)

Feb 28, 2008

Valve’s devotion to its customers, their unheard of desire to ensure that at every turn we are inescapably pleased with their product, is no more noticeable than with Team Fortress 2. Like doting mothers, they’ve been keeping tabs on how we play. Vast mountains of data stored in underground bunkers keep records of our every action - that time you were sniped on top of the bridge in 2fort? It’s in there. And all in the name of ...

Opening The Orange Box: Half-Life 2: Episode Two (The Orange Box)

Feb 25, 2008

In a winter packed with big-name shooter releases there was never really any doubt who’d win out. In value, pedigree and sheer gameplay magic The Orange Box delivered on every count: TF2 is the funniest multiplayer experience many have ever experienced, Portal is so self-consciously kooky that it has now infected every corner of the internet, and Episode Two continued the Half-Life saga with remarkable aplomb.While the long delay of the ...

2007 - The best gaming year ever (The Orange Box)

Dec 20, 2007

20th Dec, 2007 Gaming is an up and down experience. Some years cram top quality titles into our every orifice until were bursting with videogame joy and have excess polygons dripping messily out of our ears, while some other years… Well, some other years are 1983. In 2007 though, weve had a very good year indeed. A scarily good year in fact. One which has provided us so much brilliance on every format that its a genuine worry that the laws of karmic balance will soon bring us a plague ...

What G-Man keeps in his briefcase... (The Orange Box)

Oct 19, 2007

Oct 19, 2007 Huzzah! The Orange Box is released today (It's already out in the US), bringing what's perhaps the best videogame series ever conceived to Xbox 360 (and PlayStation 3, eventually) bundled along with one of the greatest multiplayer mashups and the world's first perfect game. Given that Gordon Freeman's only made one visit to consoleland, with Half-Life on Xbox and PS2, we thought living-room gamers might need to catch up. Much of the info contained in this article is only gleaned ...

Team Fortress 2 primer (The Orange Box)

Oct 9, 2007

Oct 9, 2007 The Orange Box goes live at 12:00 am Pacific Time on Oct 10, and 8:00 am in the UK. If you're on the beta now, prepare to own some noobs when the great unwashed come flooding in. And if you haven't preordered, you're going to need a headstart. Either way, it's time to brush up on a few of the lesser-known factors in the TF2 ...

The Top 7... games that don't deserve nostalgia (Oregon Trail 3)

May 12, 2008

You know that heartwarming sensation you get while remembering games of yesteryear? The one that makes you ponder, "Why aren't games this good nowadays?" It's a lie. It's a childhood veil that, once lifted, exposes how shitty some of your favorite games were all along. They didn't just sour with age - they were never that fun, you just put up with them because there was no better alternative.

Metroid, for example, is fairly crap by ...

OutRun 2 (Outrun 2)

Jul 23, 2004

Drifting. If there's one thing that OutRun 2 has got, it's drifting. While arcade-style car-'em-ups like the Ridge Racer series have always placed a premium on oversteering, nothing even begins to compare to the hugely exaggerated degree of powersliding available in the Xbox version of OutRun 2: you can barely turn a corner without finding yourself locked into a 15-second drift. It's a feature that was readily apparent in the coin-op version - which hit arcades earlier this year - but, based on ...

OutRun 2 (Outrun 2)

May 26, 2004

We are apprehensive. We've travelled 190 miles repeatedly asking ourselves 'why?' but it's now, during the short trip between Sheffield train station and Sumo Digital, the developer given the task of converting OutRun 2 to Xbox, that the anxiety is really mounting. (Traditionally, thirdparty translations of major coin-ops often prove bitter disappointments, let's not forget.) Eyes furiously scanning the moving scenery, any element, however absurdly tenuous, that potentially vindicates Sega's ...

Rocket-ride to boresville (Over G Fighters)

Jun 30, 2006

We were incredibly excited when we heard that Over G Fighters was going to be released on the 360. Finally, a detailed flight simulator featuring the latest in high-powered jet technology... or so we thought. When we actually got our hands on this dogfighter, imagine our dismay at the discovery that the game was mind-numbingly boring. How a game-maker can damage the experience of tearing the sky a new horizon by submerging the entire feel in the sludgy bowels of molasses where Over G resides is ...