Indie

There is no combat to speak of in Whispering Willows; its more the element of avoidance and timing in the presence of enemies. There are few enemies, but they do occasionally turn up and are frankly one of the most frustrating things in the game.

At its heart, Shovel Knight is a platformer that echoes the NES classics of Mega Man, Duck Tales, Zelda 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3, then takes everything that works well within those games and throws away the tedium that can become infuriating.

To many people, the Playstation Vita is a system known best for only its Indies and its ports. When I saw the trailer for Vita Indie game Z-Run, I was shocked to find out it wasn't a port from a mobile game. With its poor visuals, simple Temple Run style gameplay and lack of depth, I was sure that Z-Run was a zombie re-skin of some dime-a-dozen endless runner, build for mobile technology and quickly ported to the Vita. In this case, it's probably best to judge the book by its cover.

I think it’s very important to start off this review of the new indie puzzle game Monochroma by highlighting that the entirety of the game is only about two hours long at most. The reason I begin with this statement is so that Monochroma is judged and reviewed for what it is: a simple, short game. This is no massive open world, this is no advanced fighting system, and there is no leveling. Monochroma is exactly what it presumes to be, a quaint and monochromatic game. Now don’t misunderstand this statement to mean that this is not a decent title, because it ...

With the release of Bastion in 2011, Supergiant games burst onto the gaming landscape. Bastion was critically acclaimed and was on several Game of the Year lists as well. Transistor is Supergiant's latest game, which has been three years in the making - and it was well worth the wait.

In Race The Sun players control a fast-moving hovercaft that speeds through an endless landscape of abstract geometric objects. Enormous cubes, cones, and walls fill the world as the player hurtles ever forwards towards a setting sun. The ship is unable to stop, only steer from side to side until the player makes an inevitable mistake and crashes in a shower of flaming pixels.

Survival games don't generally tend to be about survival. They tend to be about avoiding pitfalls and dangerous enemies. That's largely because, let's face it, actual survival - the drinking pee, eating rats, building shelter sort of survival - just isn't fun in a video game. Except it is. Don't Starve proves that, done right, simply making it through a week on your own can be incredibly rewarding, and addictive.

It's refreshing to see developers create a different kind of game then what they're typically known for. Starbreeze Studios is famous for their gritty shooters (The Syndicate, The Darkness), so it is a little strange to see them collaborate with Swedish filmmaker Josef Fares and create a thoughtful adventure game like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It was certainly a risk, but it's a risk that paid off.

It's a bit odd that the Resident Evil games have become synonymous with Survival Horror. After all, they're about heavily-armed police officers who kill zombies by the hundreds. Real fear comes from facing an army of unstoppable monsters and not having any means to fight them off. Outlast locks players inside an abandoned mental institution, arms them with just a camcorder, then leaves them to creep around in the darkness, thus combining a horror storyline with stealth gaming mechanics for a genuinely terrifying experience.

These days, it seems like everyone is trying to breathe new life into the zombie genre. Most developers are looking for the angle that nobody has done before, trying to make zombies terrifying all over again and forcing people to sneak around in the darkness lest they find their tender brains being chewed. What happened to all the fun we used to have with zombies, where we were the ones with all the power and they were just rotten targets, ripe for the shooting? Splatter brings it all back.