Geek of Oz

As this review is a First Impressions of a game that is still in development, there will be no */10 Geeks score at the end. Any aspects of the game discussed here are subject to change in the final version. --- If you were a fan of Project CARS , the 2015 racing simulator which offered some of the highest real world fidelity achieved only by the likes of  Forza  and the original Gran Turismo , you are almost guaranteed to like Project CARS 2 . It's bigger, it's more detailed, and it's brought back much of the first game's successful micromanaging of its cars for players of the expert class. This is as close to a real world driving career as you're probably going to get. Conversely, if you weren't  a fan of the original, you're going to have a much harder time with the sequel. Project CARS 2  is a well-designed and engrossing game for those who enjoy this kind of thing, even though I once again acknowledge my personal lack of affinity for driving g...

You may have noticed that my game reviews draw heavily on comparisons to past examples of other games. This isn't meant as a condemnation of quality or a signalling of the lack of originality in these newer experiences. When I say that Yooka-Laylee  is heavily reminiscent of Banjo-Kazooie  or that Little Nightmares  evokes Limbo , it's intended more to signpost that there is acknowledgement - and, in some cases, improvement - of previously published work in the game I'm reviewing. This notion has its limits, though. For instance, when I talk about The Surge it is almost impossible to do so without drawing a parallel to Dark Souls (a parallel which, it's worth noting, the producers set out to make ). That's not necessarily, in this case, a mark of quality. Where Dark Souls  was a tough-as-nails action-RPG set in an eldritch world bereft of cogent life and riddled with monsters the way Corrimal beach is riddled with bluebottle jellyfish, The Surge  ins...

If I ever needed a game that was wholesome, friendly and cute, Tarsier Studios would be one of my first ports of call. The Swedish developer has since moved from their colourful days as the custodians of the family-friendly festivals of Little Big Planet and Tearaway Unfolded , and is now intent on giving us arresting anxiety in Little Nightmares , a wordless story about a little girl in a yellow raincoat who moves through the bowels of a seaborne den of horror and gluttony, drawing on some of the most primal and deep-rooted fears dredged direct from my childhood. Needless to say, this is something of a gear change. I actually don't want to give much away of the story beyond that little snippet above, since part of the game's engrossing quality is figuring out the story for yourself. You play as a raincoat-clad girl named Six, who wakes up in a suitcase aboard a mammoth waterborne boat/submersible thing called The Maw. Making her way through the bowels of a bad dream bi...

As this review is a First Impressions of a game that is still in development, there will be no */10 Geeks score at the end. Any aspects of the game discussed here are subject to change in the final version. --- When I recently interviewed Katsuhiro Harada*, executive producer and franchise custodian of the Tekken series and co-director of Tekken 7 , I asked him what he thought about the impact Tekken 's legacy has had, and will continue to have, on the fighting game genre. Both he and his interpreter, game designer Michael Murray, were a bit thrown; apparently, nobody had ever asked them such a thoughtful question. If no-one was asking that then, they'd have to be asking it now. With the impending release of Tekken 7 and the end of a saga that has spanned more than two decades of gaming history, "legacy" is the word of the day. The plot, which is surprisingly accessible for those who may not have gone through the previous games, concerns consternation ...

THE SHORT VERSION   Comparisons between Nier Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn may be inevitable, but not wholly accurate. Though the two games emerged at roughly the same time, the former is a tightly-focused and coherent single character journey across a well-paced and thoughtfully written plot. Nier: Automata is...a little different. THE SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION  In a post-apocalyptic future with the drabbest colour palette ever conceived, humanity is attacked by aliens. The resulting conflict wipes humanity from the face of the Earth, relegating the survivors to a colony on the moon. To defend them, the humans commission a number of androids in the YoRHa initiative to reclaim Earth from the aliens and their swarm of robots who now occupy the planet. One of these androids, 2B, teams up with another android, 9S, to defend humanity and learn more about the alien threat. The plot quickly spirals out from that point. To call the story of Nier: Automata ab...

This is the second in a series of reviews that cover the new, episodic Hitman  game across most of 2016. Each episode will be reviewed and scored as it is released. Check out Episode 1 here . --- THE SHORT VERSION After the cold-toned mansion in Paris, Hitman uses more vibrant and thrilling locales for episodes that are mechanically solid but narratively shaky. STORY I've gotta be honest - I have no idea what the story of the new Hitman is anymore. On the margins, it seems as if a grizzly older guy - who may be a former ICA operative, or is perhaps just a nutter with an aptitude for murder - is after something being held by an organisation called Providence. Though we keep getting cutscenes at the end of each story mission that attempt to convey the narrative, the game makes Agent 47 feel divorced from the larger plot going on around him by its alarming lack of focus within gameplay. Sure, one of the Paris targets might have turned out to be involv...

NOTE: This review compiles an experience of both the pre-release and final versions of Dark Souls III . The following section, concerning the pre-release was published on March 3rd 2016, and is reproduced here in its entirety. An updated section for the final version of the game follows at the end of this review. ---  PRE-RELEASE: THE SHORT VERSION 'I may be but small, but I shall die a colossus.' - Lord of Cinder. Dark Souls III is everything you could be wanting from a From Software game. It balances the tonal feel of the first game, the better player orientation of the second , and the faster combat of Bloodborne . It is, in every sense, a From Software "Best Of Gameplay", a number of excellent factors struck through with an enticing plot, sumptuous visuals and killer sound design. Sounds perfect, right? Well, maybe, but only if you're a certain kind of person. We'll get to that. STORY What little narrative is given at the outset is f...