Before we can get down to discussing the long-awaited second installment in 2K Czech’s rich-simulation crime saga, we must first clear up a piece of mindless vandalism. I am referring of course to Eurogamer’s catastrophically mishandled review, penned by freelancer John “Who?” Teti. The review shows the downside of Eurogamer’s freelance review policy. Their reviewers […]

Machinarium is a point and click adventure game for the PC by Czech independent development studio Amanita Design. I still dimly recall playing Amanita’s debut game Samarost in 2003, and thinking at the time that I’d pay good money for a full-length, commercially released game with the same gameplay style. (Samarost was more of an […]

Followers of my twitter feed might have gathered that this is what I’ve been up to at work over the last few weeks – arranging for this game to be sponsored by Gimme5games.com. We launched it on the site earlier this week and you can play it here. The developers inform me that the iPhone […]

Research and Development is a puzzle-oriented single-player mod for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 developed by Matt Bortolino. It was released in July and is slowly starting to generate a well-deserved buzz in the wider gaming community. In single-player gameplay terms it’s perhaps the best thing that anyone has ever done with the Source engine, and […]

This article is part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color: 10th Anniversary retrospective. I wrote about this game before in 2003, but these are my updated (and hopefully final) views. If you take a group of artists that has been denied meaningful creative freedom for years, and give them carte blanche to make what they want, […]

This article is part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color: 10th Anniversary retrospective. One of the few games released for the NGPC that didn’t piggyback on an established gaming brand, Faselei! is a turn-based tactical game about giant robots. It appeared in the UK right at the end of the machine’s life, with a limited quantity […]

This article is part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color: 10th Anniversary retrospective. While most of the games for the NGPC were developed by SNK (or their partners), there was a small but consistently high quality third party presence. SNK presumably offered favourable terms to encourage Capcom, Namco, Sega and Taito to speculate on the system. […]

This article is part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color: 10th Anniversary retrospective. Ruddy mine carts. I’m tempted to leave the review at that, but I suppose I should explain. SNK made two Metal Slug spin-offs for the NGPC (the 1st and 2nd Missions). These feature micro-miniaturised versions of all the recognisable elements from the arcade […]

This article is part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color: 10th Anniversary retrospective. To eke out some more mileage from the Capcom license, SNK devised Card Fighters Clash, a virtual CCG based around collecting, trading and battling with charmingly-illustrated cards based on characters from SNK and Capcom’s back catalogues. They were probably as surprised as anyone […]

This article is part of the NeoGeo Pocket Color: 10th Anniversary retrospective. With SNK’s pedigree, you’d expect that the NGPC’s library would bountifully stocked with fighting games, and it doesn’t disappoint. SNK released no fewer than eight portable fighting titles, covering all of their main franchises at the time (King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Samurai […]

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw, again In the previous post, I complained about the Dead Space franchise, and the prevalence of “pot-boilers” in publisher’s catalogues – games that tick […]

It must be incredibly frustrating for a developer to deliver a game that convincingly nails its design goals, only to see it flounder in the marketplace for reasons beyond their control. This sometimes happens when another game in the publisher’s portfolio has become a smash hit, leading everything else to be neglected regardless of quality. […]

Cubello is one of Nintendo’s “Art Style” games, a franchise of simple puzzle games (mostly developed by skip Ltd.) with stylish minimalist presentation that developed from the “bit Generations” series which accompanied the launch of the Game Boy Micro. It’s currently available to purchase through the Wii Shop Channel* in Europe and North America for […]

There are some games that should be kept out of the hands of people with addictive personalities. For me, Card Fighters Clash was one. Kingdom of Loathing, for a time, was another. And don’t get me started on Animal Crossing: Wild World – everything UK:Resistance say about the game is true (and if anything an […]

This is something that doesn’t happen enough these days: stumbling across a new, unheralded game and then not being able to stop playing it, for the rest of the afternoon, until it’s beaten. And then blogging about it to enthuse about how awesome it is. The game in question is Knightfall, a new Flash-based puzzle […]