Geek of Oz

Life is Strange: Before the Storm (hereafter just referred to as " Storm" for brevity of word count) is the kind of prequel which will produce two responses. One will be distinct for those who've played the original game, and thus experience the prequel with knowledge of what's to come. The other will render a story for those who've never played Life is Strange before. Unlike most examples of prequels, in any medium, those responses will probably be vastly different. So to that end, I'm reviewing this game twice. First, for those who have no idea what the hell Life is Strange is, and secondly - with spoilers - for those who do. If you're just looking for a brief summation on my thoughts: I enjoyed it to a point, and am tentatively awaiting the next episode. FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED LIFE IS STRANGE   Chloe Price is your average sixteen-year-old. She's skipping school, mouthing off to her mum's new boyfriend, breaking curfe...

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...

THE SHORT VERSION Gorgeous post-apocalyptic vistas, unique creature designs and an engrossing, personal plot combine to forge one of the best games of the last decade, and certainly the best exclusive offering for the PS4. It's pretty, it's got a good story, and you fight robot dinosaurs with a spear. THE SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION Horizon Zero Dawn 's concept ultimately boils down to a strong, intelligently-written female protagonist killing bandits whilst battling mechanical beasts in a tribal, "Mad Max by way of that post-apocalypse story in Cloud Atlas " setting. I've certainly heard worse elevator pitches. Humanity has slowly grown in the shadow of an apocalypse, now living in segregated pre-medieval tribes across the world. These tribes are threatened by deadly robot creatures, which infest the wild and spawn from an unknown source. Aloy, a motherless, martially-proficient young warrior born as an outcast to the Nora tribe, sets out into ...