Gaming articles
🐈⬛ We’ve had another small glimpse of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. During a 90-minute session at the Tokyo Game Show, Kojima Productions showed off a few new cutscenes and an odd Instagram-esque photo mode. The clips got my hopes up that Sam will spend more time with a fleshed-out team on his latest journey, giving more character to a game that had a lot of interesting ideas but too many soulless holograms for my taste.
Parking Garage Rally Circuit review - an addictive '90s-inspired racer
I said at the end of my Concord article that the current triple-A malaise might push me to play more indie games, and it wasn’t an empty threat. Astro Bot was a surprise double-A hit, with a stripped-back scope and simple gameplay loop that made it feel like playing a...
🎮 It’s been a busy month for Sony, who revealed both the PlayStation 5 Pro and a selection of retro grey consoles and accessories for PlayStation’s 30th anniversary. But there’s little to celebrate - the Pro will cost £700, and if you want to play physical games then all consoles in both lineups require a clip-on disc drive that must be registered online. The expense and restrictions killed my interest, and raise questions over the future of console gaming.
Astro Bot review - a shot of pure fun and PlayStation nostalgia
A lot of the weirdness in modern gaming comes from critics and consumers who are overly concerned with the business side of the industry, focused on sales figures, profitability, and competition between manufacturers rather than the quality of the games they play. It’s an odd predicament – perhaps unique to...
Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds - inspirational but sanitised
It’s no secret that Hideo Kojima likes attention, and I’m sure he would have loved the idea of Connecting Worlds, a film that is ultimately part-documentary, part-marketing exercise. This is 100 percent modern Kojima, post-his fashionable makeover circa 2019. There are a lot of arty shots of him in empty...
🤖 I finally played Astro’s Playroom! I initially wrote it off as a tech demo, but with all the praise for Astro Bot, I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I really enjoyed the flow and variety in the platforming, the unique ideas, and the nostalgic nods to PlayStation’s past. I’ll definitely play Astro Bot next.
Concord's failure should be a wake-up call for the video game industry
What a week it’s been in the video game industry! We’ve witnessed one of the most remarkable failures ever, as Concord - the Firewalk Studios-developed live service game into which Sony had invested so much in the hope it would be the next big thing - was shut down after...
GTA IV's Liberty City is still the best virtual city ever made
In its review upon the game’s release in 2008, GamesRadar called Liberty City “the biggest reason to delve into GTA IV”. Its writers said it was “easily 100 times more detailed” than the map of its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, concluding that altogether, the city was “convincingly like...
Heartbound: An intriguing Early Access indie game about life itself
How does your experience of a game change if you can listen to its developer talk for hours every day? That’s the rather unusual question presented by Heartbound, an Early Access game whose creator is also a streamer. But whether you’ve caught Thor online or not, the indie game has...
Stellar Blade is a challenging and stylistic gaming nostalgia trip
The Stellar Blade demo is here! There are many adjectives that could be applied to Level Up’s much-discussed PlayStation 5 exclusive - beautiful, unique, gruesome, and challenging, to name a few - but for me, more than anything else, the upcoming action-adventure title is a nostalgia trip to previous eras...
