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The Creator
Markus Persson has the body of a politician but the features of a rock star: Fixed, handsome eyes and a deep-dimpled smile that offsets his baldpate and thickening torso. Perhaps this is why, when he visited Las Vegas in 2011 for the first international convention held in honour of Minecraft, the video game he designed ...
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Karateka – Review
Mariko, just like every winsome princess trapped against her will in a castle, longs to be rescued. But being rescued isn’t her only longing. There is, of course, the delicate matter of the rescuer. Salvation is all well and good, but the specifics of the saviour are just as important. Who’s the face behind the ...
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In search of Nolan Bushnell, gaming’s absent father
Asteroids arrests. Piercing white vector lines bisect the screen’s black void, issuing a flickering beacon out towards the bar, as if to plead: ‘play me, save us’. If you catch its gaze you can’t look away, pulled towards the machine as if drawn in a tractor beam. Break the spell and you notice the other ...
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Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy – Review
At first glance, Square Enix’s decision to celebrate its treasured fantasy series’ 25th birthday with a rhythm action game appears a curious one. The company has no experience making music games, while Final Fantasy itself, in its heft and epic sprawl, has nothing in common with a genre built upon three-and-a-half-minute pop foundations and an ...
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Pixeljunk 4AM – Review
Neither music game nor music software, PixelJunk 4AM is perhaps best described as a music toy. Somewhere buried beneath the ambient visuals and arcane interface, Q Games’ latest is built upon the well-worn fundamentals of multi-track mixing. But rather than providing players with faders and channels and the other familiar features of the mixing desk, ...
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Fez – Review
Five years in the making, and yet as fresh as one of the 10×10 pixel daisies that punctuate its felt-tip green hills, Fez is at once a tribute to the joy of childhood exploration, the wonder of adolescent Nintendo video games and the adult realisation of life’s unending mysteries. It’s a game without peril, without ...
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The Witcher 2 – Review
“Legends are almost always beautiful. The reality often leaves a lot to be desired.” The witcher’s remark is aimed at the Elves, who have strained out the grit of life, love and loss before writing down their history, leaving only romantic, idealistic odes to the past. But it could just as easily be applied to ...
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Street Fighter x Tekken – Review
It’s not the first time that two rival fighting game families have come together in a controversial, unexpected marriage. But when Capcom and SNK ran away together a decade ago, at least the two parties lived on the same side of town: 2D, sprite-based fighters that shared DNA and – in the case of some ...
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Catherine
Catherine is two puzzles games, really: one of the heart and one of the mind. In the first, shabby protagonist Vincent – a 32-year-old who is aimlessly stumbling through life – must choose between two women. His long-term girlfriend Katherine is career-minded, focussed, and eager to formalise their commitment in marriage. She mothers Vincent but ...
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Game of the Year: Portal 2
It’s gaming’s oldest trick: the mute protagonist, allowing us to project our own thoughts, words and humanity onto the blank slate avatar. But Portal 2′s silent heroine Chell invites us to identify with her in deeper ways. She is the white-collar worker in all of us, awakened to the corrupt, abusive system in which she ...
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Game of 2011: Dark Souls
A hazy myth, an elegant contraption, an eccentric vision, an unforgiving mistress: Dark Souls has many sides. All bear the fingerprints of creator Hidetaka Miyazaki, who in 2011 established himself as the most interesting designer working in blockbuster games today. Not that this, sequel to Sony-born Demon’s Souls, has much aside from giant sales figures ...
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Clone Wars: is plagiarism killing creativity in the games industry?
“Most people would assume it’s the money that hurts most and yes, the entire thing made us question whether we would be able to support ourselves financially moving forward. But that isn’t the main blow you take when your game is cloned. It’s more abstract, more fundamental than that…” Cloning – the practice of reverse ...