FUS RO DAH! More Skyrim! I love Skyrim and have put hundreds of hours into the original release back in November of 2011. So over a year later comes Dragonborn, the third piece of DLC for the mighty Skyrim, sending you off to Morrowind and the isle of Solstheim in search of the first Dragonborn. You didn’t really think you were the only one now did you?
Veering sharply away from Forza’s usual strictish racing simulator style towards a more Need For Speed style thrasher, Forza Horizon was always bound to polarise opinions. Forza faithful are likely to feel a little out of sorts early on as they’re bombarded with trendy people telling them that the most important thing in the world is to get more popular with the trendy people at the trendy Horizon music and car festival.
The first challenge is to win a heads-up race against a bunch of other cars to win the final entry to the Horizon races. That achieved, you’re thrown head first into a world of stereotypes who’ll exhort you to do silly things to gain popularity. I’ve still yet to decide whether the awkward caricatures that populate Horizon are intentionally absurd and hilarious or just poorly written. They’re mostly easy enough to ignore, and even someone like myself who’d rather wear a fresh scalp than a flat peak hat can look past the douchebag aesthetic and get down to some racing.
Not all retro revisits end in disappointment, Chris Wild is bringing one of the greatest 8-bit games back to life in December 2012 and it stands up tall.
The mid eighties were a blessed time for gaming, the teenage years of a fledgling industry – nobody could see the growth that was coming, yet even today those of us that were there still hanker after those early experiences and those that were not there are intrigued by the legends. Yearning for some of the magic that was squeezed into 48 or 64 kilobytes can be a distraction, more often than not the return to those 8-bit pastures is tinged with a sour taste. These games and game designers shaped the generation and many of those respected one man bands have become industry stalwarts today.
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Back in the glory days of video games many of the most popular games didn’t require the reaction speed of Bruce Lee on Speed, in fact with this type of game you could stop playing and have dinner without even the need to have a pause button. The style of game I refer to is the ‘Point and Click’ adventure, and in this modern high speed world even classic remakes aren’t really attracting newcomers and only getting love from us older gamers and our rose tinted glasses. So I was excited to find a new, up to date, take on the good old point and click adventure, but sad to think in this world of twitch gaming that it may just fade away into obscurity…
Everyone secretly loves playing the bad guys. And when it comes to Role Playing Games you can’t get more typically bad than Orcs and Goblins. The festering green skinned hordes who will always be standing in your way, whether you are on a world saving quest or just picking flowers for a local Mage, it’s always the green skins giving you grief. So now thanks to Of Orcs And Men you get to switch it up and become those nasty, pesky creatures and annoy the humans on your terms.
The Fable Franchise is one of the core IP’s for Xbox and I have enjoyed them for many great hours since the first one on the original Xbox, I even took a day off work on launch day to get stuck into it. And even if Peter Molyneux’s grandiose ideas never really came to full fruition, the Fable series has still captured a huge legion of loyal followers and been enjoyed by millions. So why would Mr Molyneux up and leave Lionhead pretty much on the eve of release of his latest ‘Kinect Required’ Fable title. Read on and it may just become clear.
Project Zero 2: Wii Edition is a remake of Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly, first released in 2003 on the PS2 and regarded by some as being one of the scariest video games of all time. It is the second title in the series of games known as “Fatal Frame” in the North America. Why this cult title warrants a re-release as the sun sets on the aged Wii is a question that may never be satisfactorily answered, but in any case it presents an appealing opportunity to dust off that old console one last chance before the relay baton is passed over to its successor.
Heroes of Ruin is an ambitious title which takes on a challenge few have attempted and even fewer have had any significant success at – taking a Nintendo console online for a compelling multi-player experience. While this action RPG can be played offline (important for a handheld console of course), there is very firm encouragement for players to join the online component, with the game defaulting to this mode from the very beginning. It is admirable that developer n-Space has attempted to bring Nintendo gamers a decent online gaming experience, being the first (hopefully of many) 3DS game to incorporate in-game voice chat – a feature which has been sorely lacking from the huge library of DS and Wii titles.
Crysis 2 (Xbox 360)
Time for a mid-winter B3 and to avoid me becoming too dis-organised I have started numbering them. So here is the 6th quick verdict on a sub-$25 game picked up as a bargain bin purchase. Crysis 2 was a solid release in 2011, but does it still offer value for money if picked up cheap in 2012?
