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 […]

Over the last few months I’ve signed up to various alpha- and beta-tests of games in development. Ones that I’ve spend an appreciable amount of time exploring are Metaplace, Quake Live and Magnetic Billiards – three very different projects, all of which promise technological innovation of one form or another (well, except perhaps Magnetic Billiards, […]

King’s Bounty: The Legend (KB:TL) is the latest product of the burgeoning Russian game development scene to have piqued the interest of Western PC gamers. It was brought to my attention by Rock Paper Shotgun whose initial puzzled amusement seems to have snowballed into championing the game as a shining example of where PC games […]

Engineers are a peculiar bunch. Anyone seeking proof of this need only attend a local Dorkbot gathering. Billed as “people doing strange things with electricity”, Dorkbot meets are informal, sometimes ‘open mic’ gatherings of likeminded hardware hackers, held every few months in cities around the world, which provide a platform for artists and engineers (and […]

I’ve always been a big fan of robots. From an early age I was immersed in a culture of Usborne books, Tomy-bots (I’m still working on a plausible sounding reason to spend £200 on this little guy), Asimov’s Laws, Capsela, Kryten, Marvin and Nono. (Although no Transformers, oddly.) Aged six I even won a prize […]

This piece was originally published here in April 2004. Puyo Puyo is my favourite of the many falling-block puzzle variants. Puyo Puyo 2 on the Mega Drive (now available on the Wii Virtual Console) is probably the version that best balances presentation and functionality, but Fever is a respectable entry to the series, and it […]

Continuing the trawl through my old games writing, here’s a look at Treasure’s 2005 remake of their breakthrough hit Gunstar Heroes. My opinion of the game hasn’t really changed, it’s a technically strong but otherwise unremarkable romp. At the time of course we didn’t realise that Gunstar and games like it would represent the peak […]

The Neo Geo Pocket Color (NGPC to it’s friends) was SNK’s attempt to revitalise the handheld market in the early 1990s, having recognised that Nintendo’s decade-long dominance of the sector had led to stagnation, and that there was an untapped audience for a more technically advanced system with games that appealed to players who wanted […]

WiiWare finally launched earlier this week. Good news for me, as I’d been looking for something to buy with the Wii Points I’d been sent by Nintendo Europe by way of apology after they accidentally offered the “Star Points to Wii Points” service before it was meant to go live. (It turns out they were […]

Freedom Fighters is one of the hidden gems of the last generation, and is a textbook example of why publishers are often wary of releasing games based on original IP. It reviewed well, has a good pedigree, an interesting premise yet still (unless I’m mistaken) bombed at retail. It is a game that sets out […]

In the last couple of years, the line between PC and console gaming has been (in some respects) almost completely erased. The simultaneous release of high profile titles on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 is becoming the norm. It’s easy to forget that before the mid-1990s, computer and console gaming were completely different worlds – […]

I played through the single player campaign of Call of Duty 4 a few weeks ago. I’m not sure what I can add to that statement, as judging by the sales figures, most of you will have also played it and formed your own opinions already. Shifting over seven million copies in a few short […]