Genres

It's not unusual for a fan of video games to believe the industry is going wrong somehow. Through the use of DLC and the like, they feel the industry is losing what is most important to it: the games. With the likes of Game Dev Story giving these same fans the opportunity to do things differently, a new subset of the "Tycoon" genre has been born. Publisher Dream, a new title recently released for DSi and 3DS (via DSiWare), is one of those games, but how effective is it in allowing you to make your publisher dreams come true?

When Sony opened their doors and welcomed indie games to be sold on their PSN Store, it was like a flash flood. Games like Braid, Limbo, Knytt and many more could now be enjoyed by a much wider audience. Console gamers got a break from their action-packed retail games and got to experience games they normally would never have had the pleasure to try, and developers were enjoying a bigger success riding on the back of the PSN. For the price of a sandwich and a cup of coffee you can now download these smaller games which in all honesty are often better and last ...

Legendary designer Keiji Inafune has dabbled in macabre video games before. He's most well known for co-creating Mega Man, but he also has Resident Evil, Onimusha and Dead Rising production credits under his belt. Since leaving Capcom, he's decided to dive back into darkly atmospheric game design with his latest project, Soul Sacrifice.

The first Zeno Clash game could be easily summed up as “A game where you get punched in the back of the head every ten seconds.” That’s both a literal description of the gameplay, and the effect of the visual design and story. It was a weird little indie game that focused on hand-to-hand combat from the first-person perspective, and put the Player inside a distorted fantasy world filled with bizarre creatures. People who loved their brief journey through the first Zeno Clash will be happy to get a much larger adventure with Zeno Clash 2. People new to the ...

I have a magazine from when the PS1 classic Metal Gear Solid was originally released, upon which is the quote "[Metal Gear Solid] gave me flashbacks." Sometimes I look at this magazine to remind me just how far things have come, and how well we thought we had it back in the day. Either way, Metal Gear Solid was a big enough deal that it kept getting front cover treatment for months after release, and even today it manages to stand up with the best of them. By bearing in mind a few more permanent cobwebs, Metal Gear Solid still manages to be a top title.

Asphalt 6: Adrenaline continues the Asphalt series with new cars, new tracks, and more intense racing action on mobile devices. Visually, this game is as close to Triple-A as it gets on Android and iOS, but the title reveals the design challenges inherent in creating a racing game for mobile devices. Asphalt 6 is fun and compelling enough to have kept me interested all the way through, but there are a few blatant and nagging drawbacks that keep the experience from being as polished as it could be. Despite its weaknesses, this game is definitely worth a try ...

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon came out of nowhere. “This is just an April Fool's joke!”, people claimed. “Oh, it's just going to be some lousy DLC!”, cried the cynics. Thankfully, none of this was true, and the Kojima-esque viral marketing campaign successfully drummed up interest. Blood Dragon is its own game, is definitely not DLC, is definitely an homage to 80s blockbusters, and is definitely awesome.

The story behind Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing is almost as interesting as the game itself - a frustrating, occasionally inspirational story about an indie developer fighting a 'clone war' against another title that essentially stole the heart of their fishing game. But after three years in development, the Dutch developers finally released their arcade fisher to the App Store, where praise was rightfully heaped upon it: Ridiculous Fishing is the best iOS game to release so far in 2013.

Path of Exile is a new MMORPG from Grinding Gear Games, currently in open beta. The new action RPG introduces exciting and complex new elements to the genre, and should be a delight to fans of games such as Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2. Path of Exile places players into the dark and gritty world of Wraeclast, which is designed to be the antithesis of modern action RPGs' slant towards bright and cartoony motifs. Although it is certainly not adult-themed, this game is intended for mature players and long-time dungeon-crawler fans. After playing the open beta ...

So it's come to this. The likes of Farm Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator have become beyond a joke, have become mainstream and apparently deserve a parody of their own. From YouTube onwards, Surgeon Simulator 2013 is the main topic of conversation, with hundreds of thousands of videos popping up in a matter of weeks. It's difficult, it's wacky, but is it worth buying and will you get your money's worth out of it if you do? The answer depends on how far you're willing to stretch a joke.