Adventure

Like everyone, I looked at Disney Infinity when it was announced and saw only a money grabbing rip-off of Activision's popular Skylanders series. ANOTHER game where I have to buy overpriced toys to unlock some on-disc DLC? Ridiculous.

When the Wii U was released, it brought with it a handful of ports and "enhanced" editions, partly because they were awesome games and partly because Nintendo wanted to prove that the Wii U was just as capable of playing "grown up" games as any of the other consoles. That they didn't need to worry about proving themselves in that way, and that many of the quickly-rushed ports actually seemed to prove the opposite probably didn't come into it.

While many indie developers are attempting to make old genres relevant again, there are those that are trying to create new ones. One such dev is Lucas Pope, with his latest game, Papers, Please, being labeled as "A Dystopian Document Thriller". The word "Dodocument" will no doubt throw some people off, but after spending some time cross-referencing passports and work releases as an immigration inspector in the fictional country of Arstotzka, I can safely say that stamping papers can definitely be thrilling.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a PlayStation staple. Along with Rayman, I'm not sure there was a single person I knew that didn't have that iconic green sewn-up mouth grinning within their PS1 collection. When the Oddworld series jumped to the Xbox, abandoning not only much of the userbase but also, in a small way at first, Abe himself. Stranger's Wrath ended up under-performing and would have been lost to time if not for Just Add Water and their release of Stranger's Wrath HD.

Nicolas Eymerich, the main character of The Inquisitor, is not a nice man. While the likes of Guybrush Threepwood and Eric Idle's Rincewind kept us playing with their fish-out-of-water optimism, Nicolas has already seen it all. He probably yelled at it as well. He does a lot of that. He's a very angry man. And while I can't help but think that the developers hoped his anger and intelligence might inspire players to love the darkness in the same way as House, the character is underutilized and underdeveloped. And without a full-bodied lead, the entire ...

Releasing games in chunks similar to a TV show seems to be a growing trend among developers, thanks in part to the success of Telltale's The Walking Dead. German developer KING Art, notable for their award-winning title The Book of Unwritten Tales, has opted to go for the episodic route with their latest adventure game, The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. This first chapter sets the stage for their throwback detective tale, which contains some good ideas but might not be as gripping as it wants to be.

At the heart of every Walking Dead story is the disintegration of humanity and the ultimate loss of innocence: when civilization is stripped away, the world turns into a cruel, dark place where death becomes the only place to be safe. With their single-handed resurrection (and revolution) of the point-and-click adventure genre, Telltale Games' Walking Dead: Season 1 delivered one of the most harrowing, emotional gaming experiences in recent memory - showing the TV show (and reminding the comic) how to tell a heart-wrenching (but satisfying) narrative in the ...

It seems like every game they release these days calls itself a 'survival' game. How many of them actually are? To me, if you are calling a game a survival game, that implies consequence. If you are playing a game and the only consequence of failing to survive is that you have to go back to the last checkpoint, then what you are playing is not a true survival game, in my opinion. I can say one thing with absolute certainty: Don't Starve is a survival game.

Taking cues from Portal, 3AM Games' debut title is one of the many physics-based puzzlers that have been emerging as of late. Initially conceived on Kickstarter, Magrunner: Dark Pulse uses magnetism as its core game mechanic and has a heavy focus on narrative. Regrettably, this ambitious project is held back by some pesky flaws.

With light beams shimmering around sails, and the deck glistening with a mixture of rain of seawater, the opening gameplay of Jack Keane 2 is a more cinematic adventure than you’d expect from point and clicks. You might be fooled into thinking you’re playing a genre where the main mechanic isn’t clicking randomly on everything in sight.