Genres

The most common complaint leveled against mobile gaming is the seeming lack of "console-quality experiences" - which, despite being a bit of a moot point (it's a tablet, not a console, correct?), is grounded in some real complaints. There are too many money-hungry free-to-play games, and way too many physics puzzlers and endless runners in the App Store - so when Firaxis and 2K announced a fully-featured handheld port of the award-winning XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it presented an opportunity for the platform to show off its skills beyond forgettable $1 titles.

Have you ever dreamed of piloting an attack helicopter, loaded up with huge machine guns and enough missiles to level a major metropolitan area? I...have not. And if I had, Thunder Wolves may have turned me off to the whole exercise. Thunder Wolves is a 90s style arcade helicopter game. If you are looking for some sort of helicopter simulation, you'll want to look elsewhere. This is a game about easily piloting one of the most complicated vehicles on the planet and turning everything you see into a smoking crater. Sounds great, right?

Nintendo's “Year of Luigi” is here, and what better way to celebrate then by giving the oft forgotten brother his own game that doesn't involve catching ghosts? Well, New Super Luigi U is that game, currently available as a digital add-on for New Super Mario Bros. U, and set for a stand-alone retail release later this Summer. The result is a game that shines on its own in subtle and cagey ways.

The Dracula franchise started as a PS1 game back in 1999 and a mere three sequels have been released since, with each subsquential title being made by a different developer each time. This time it's the turn of developers Microids to try breath some life back into a dying franchise. The Bram Stoker story of Dracula should be excellent material for a pretty good video game. Blood-sucking vampires, gothic fantasy world, conspiracies, legends, horror and folklore would make for a good game if in the capable hands of a developer willing to go that extra mile. ...

Sonic After the Sequel is a fan made retro-inspired Sonic game set between Sonic 2 and 3 that was released as a free download this week. It's not a hack or a rebuild of something SEGA decided to ditch, but a full game designed and made from scratch, with new levels, new opponents, new obstacles and new music. If you didn't know much about Sonic history, you'd be forgiven for thinking this game is some long lost Genesis title. Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give it is that it feels like that regardless of when it was released or which platform it ...

As a manly man, I like my games to be very manly. But every now and then I'll set aside my lumberjack simulators to play something on the girly side. Among the girliest of games was American McGee's Alice which came out as a PC exclusive over ten years ago. After a decade of fans demanding more, Electronic Arts finally relented and released the much-anticipated sequel. That was two years ago, when fan expectations were incredibly high, and the game released to mixed reviews. I decided to strap on my pinafore, grab my teacup and take a trip down this rabbit ...

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is a game by Spicy Horse, originally released as a web browser title and now available for early purchase as a downloadable on Steam. It's still in development, with new features on the way over the next few months, so this probably isn't the last time we'll take a sojourn into historic Japan. An action-RPG of sorts, Akaneiro's beautiful art style covers limited, repetitive gameplay that may be fun in small doses on a tablet or in a browser, but which ultimately falls long short of greatness.

Since releasing Title Bout Championship Boxing 2.5 back in 2008, the boxing simulation series has laid dormant, as Out of the Park Developments shifted their focus full-time to their baseball management sim, finally selling it to frequent collaborator studio P.I.S.D. Ltd. back in May. Hand in hand with that news came word that the long-awaited Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013 would be released - and it arrived this week on PC and Mac, a (somewhat) successful for the oft-forgotten franchise.

Facepalm Games is a small developer that's had some buzz surrounding them ever since they debuted The Swapper a couple of years ago. Since then, the game has received plenty of accolades and awards in the indie scene, and those that have heard of the game have been anticipating its full release.

Shelter is a zombie-themed card game for mobile devices. Card games seem to be really hot now and zombies are never not the flavour of the week, so the combination of the two is something I'm amazed hasn't happened on this scale before. Shelter takes both ideas and pushes them to their max, mixing deep card mechanics with a Walking Dead inspired graphic novel style of storytelling. As an idea, and in many parts of the gameplay as well, Shelter is just as exciting as it should be. Occasional issues and a repetitive nature, however, may be too much for more ...