Simulation

Ever since its first global release for the Nintendo Gamecube a decade ago, Animal Crossing has amassed a very large and devoted fanbase. Its Sims-meets-Harvest Moon real-time gameplay is notable for its charm, depth and accessibility. This fact alone easily makes Animal Crossing one of Nintendo's most popular franchises. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the latest iteration of the series, this time finding its home on the 3DS. For many, this was a highly anticipated game, especially after it was revealed that the Japanese release last September was an instant ...

If you've heard of Game Dev Tycoon, there's a good chance it's for one of two reasons. Either you've seen the story of their day one anti-piracy stunt, in which developer Greenheart Games uploaded a version of their game to torrent websites, a version in which your games are violently pirated and never make any money, or because of the accusation that Game Dev Tycoon is basically Game Dev Story slightly reworked. Either way, you're probably starting your little garage-based development studio with an opinion on how things are going to go already. You're ...

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?

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.

Unlike most iterative sports game series, the Out of the Park development team never rests on their laurels in the off season, making it one of the only sports titles worth purchasing on a yearly basis. Out of the Park Baseball 14 is no different: where OOTP13 received a number of cosmetic changes and feature additions, OOTP14 is about refinement, reworking a lot of the game's code and adding another layer of depth to its core gameplay mechanics – in other words, it's a completely different, new experience, something many other sports titles can't boast ...

For some baseball fans, the Out of the Park Baseball series appears too dense and text-based to be enjoyed. At first, it can be – managing an entire baseball organization from top to bottom is no easy task. But the beauty of the series is how user-friendly it is, allowing players to sculpt their own experience, allowing both hardcore stat heads and casual GM-wannabes to enjoy the game in their own way. The mobile little brother to the desktop version, the iOOTP series has always been a great showcase for this versatility in gameplay, scaling the experience ...

Football Manager 13 was released last September, just in time to cause poor exam results up and down the country this year. A crown I’m sure it was keen to keep from last year, as the Football Manager series has always been a favourite of the side-tracked student turned PC gamer. Some have even called it an addiction, but will this year’s instalment keep you hooked?

Roguelikes can be an acquired taste. The randomness, the perma-death, and the genre’s notorious difficulty can leave a bitter taste in the mouths of some gamers. Well-crafted titles like FTL, however, can embrace these conventions and come up with a demanding but truly rewarding gameplay experience. FTL is a highly addictive blend of action and strategy that, for $10, you simply cannot afford to miss.

Omerta – City of Gangsters had a lot of promise. It’s developed by the same people that make the endlessly fun Tropico series and promises a Gangster-based strategy game, not really something we’ve seen since the sequel to the Eidos classic Gangsters: Organized Crime. The incredibly high price point at least hints at the idea that Omerta has been worked on to the level that’s deserving of that amount of money. Gangster Sims are criminally overlooked and I’m sure there’s a market for them. Unfortunately, Omerta has probably put off any of that market taking ...

The original Sims game was a massive leap forward for gaming. News articles were run announcing that AI had finally got to a point where little people could run around inside your computer and teenage boys everywhere were making the girls they knew at school WooHoo in heart-shaped vibrating beds. Finally, a game where you could truly define the lives of your characters – so long as they weren’t hopping up and down on the spot or burning the house down. The Sims 3 for PC builds upon the franchise by add more options and making lives more realistic. This brings ...