This is best described as a simplistic Advance Wars with all the colour – not to mention joy – sucked out of it. It’s a competent turn-based strategy game, sure, but compared to the more sophisticated efforts we’re used to, it feels bland and unexciting.
Cave Story is firmly on the 8-bit tip, but manages to feel modern, fresh and brilliant because of it.
Well, this is nuts. It’s part interactive manga, part dating sim and part hardcore turn-based scrapper with mechs. It’s set in an alternative ’20s New York where the city’s guardian angels are called the New York Combat Revue, a group of female mech pilots who perform in nightly Broadway musicals at the Little Lips Theatre.
Forget Red Steel. The first one, that is. It was a heavily hyped mess rushed out for Wii’s 2006 launch, one that failed to deliver on all its promises (precise aiming, intuitive swordplay, competitive graphics). Its deficiencies made the prospect of a Red Steel 2 less than enticing, but this completely overhauled sequel is easily the best FPS on Wii and a wonderfully shocking example of how damn good a Wii-exclusive shooter can be.
Loading up Excitebike: World Rally this week was like opening up the floodgates and unleashing a deluge of warm, fuzzy 80s gaming nostalgia. This faithfully designed remake of what was arguably one of the best 8-bit racers on the NES captures the pure essence and spirit of the original. The visual updates and online multiplayer modes catch this classic up to present times, but it’s really surprising how little the actual gameplay has changed
Legend tells of an online forum populated by the dead. Forumites, faces gaunt with a deathly pallor, lure you in with smileys, before plunging the knife in your back. But enough about ngamer.co.uk. Ho ho. We’re talking about The Black Page, an allegedly haunted chat room. You log in, LOL, ROFL, pretend to be a 17-year-old girl, meet a ghost. Wait. G-g-ghost?! Turns out the dead have pretty reliable internet access.
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the heroine eats a cake to grow larger, drinks a potion to grow smaller and meets all manner of extraordinary characters. It’s an interesting starting point for a videogame and when focused through the prism of Tim Burton’s imagination, even more so.
Like Doshin the Giant and Electroplankton before it, the western release of Endless Ocean was one of those somewhat inexplicable Nintendo moments. They’re all games that could quite easily have remained in Japan without anyone being particularly bothered, and when they were launched over here – relatively unheralded, considering their first-party status – hardly anyone seemed to notice.
It’s the bit where he breakdances with an astronaut on the moon. Wait, no, it’s the part where the salaryman in Tomena Sanner uses a bowling ball to topple a line of Frankensteins in Hell. Actually, it’s the section where he dropkicks a man in a giraffe suit, dances with a schoolgirl, befuddles a robot, then slaps a Mexican wrestler in the face.
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