PIXEL GRAVE

Death Tank on Xbox Live Arcade was released in February 2009 by Snowblind Studios and is a remake of one of my favourite games ever created. Despite the Sega Saturn being about as popular as a Tesco beef burger and selling a fraction compared to the Playstation - it’s rival at the time, it had some brilliant games exclusive to the system. One of these was so exclusive it was even hidden inside a game as an unlockable. Death Tank Zwei came hidden inside Duke Nukem 3D (wait, it gets stranger), and the only way to unlock it was to either have another save game from another Lobotomy game i.e. Quake or Exhumed (or PowerSlave as it was named outside Europe) or shoot every urinal in the game. Once you had achieved this might feat, you then could select Death Tank from the main menu. I have to add, PowerSlave (aka. Exhumed) also had the original Death Tank locked inside though I am unable to find any information or pictures of what this differs from Death Tank Zwei. For my friends and I, D...

When first loading up the Dead Space 3 demo you’re politely greeted by a video thanking you for downloading the demo and giving a quick tour of what you’ll find in the 2gbs you just downloaded. It’s a lot like that video that repeats itself on aeroplane tvs and more inclined to be as the demo begins with Isaac waking from a crash landing, and whether you’re playing the solo or co-op campaign demo, another passenger will wake from the wreck as well. I was somewhat disappointed that the solo campaign is exactly the same as the co-op but without the brusque banter between Isaac and his new co-op partner, John Carver. This did make up for the lack of communication between myself and whoever was controlling John at the time (as players can drop in a out) and gave the characters a much more realistic bond. The mechanics of the game are still the same, get spooked, stamp on boxes and get hurled around like Uncharted’s Nathan Drake. One big difference though is the work bench which now allow...

I would have had this review finished a long time ago if it wasn't for something particular, but I'll get to that point later on. Wizorb is the name of the game and what it's about - that could be quite confusing when regarding just the name. Essentially it's block breaker in a retro 8 bit aesthetic but up to date by ... hmm, being released today? It's an innocent £2 on Steam for PC & Mac but has also been released on Xbox as an Indie game for, I dunno,  about the same amount of Xbox points as a sock for your avatar. The game takes place in a beautifully created nostalgic fantasy world in which you, the wizard, must turn into a ball and break blocks, monsters, chests, secret doors, bosses and more blocks, to rid the world of evil (probably). At the beginning of each level you see you, the wizard, but only for a split second before he's turned into an orb and his staff into some sort of bigger staff which is now horizontal. It's this panel / staff...

I have to say this outright - XCOM : Enemy Unknown looks fudging incredible. Too long has it been since I've played a damn good strategic tu rn-based game, maybe not since Civ 2 (I felt the later games lacked all the detail the originals had to offer).  Also by Firaxis, XCOM : Enemy Unknown  will place you in control of a secret paramilitary organization called XCOM. As the XCOM commander, you will defend against a terrifying global alien invasion by managing resources, advancing technologies, and overseeing combat strategies and individual unit tactics. Though this new X Com game is not a sequel and has instead been labelled a ' re imagining' and will expand on that legacy with an entirely new invasion story, enemies and technologies to fight aliens and defend Earth. You will control the fate of the human race through researching alien technologies, creating and managing a fully operational base, planning combat missions and controlling soldier movement in batt...

It took only a matter of days after ME3's release that I had heard or read through top news websites such as the BBC that Mass Effect's ending was so disappointing that one gamer had even taken it up with the federal trade commission. So before I'd even started I'd heard this news and had been blasted out of the air-lock of the high hopes ship I had happily been aboard. None the less I was determined to see out the ending of this epic trilogy though I didn't play from any save I had made before. I had played ME1&2 on the Xbox 360 though had somehow lost my save from the first game meaning I've only played each Mass Effect game without any of my previous choices or decisions brought across except for the gaps you fill in through a few questions at the start of the game. I wish I had experienced more of the cross-over between each game as just ticking boxes about which character died and which lived based on the decisions I'd made before made my first ...

With the second series of The Walking Dead coming to a close, videos have emerged for the video game adaptation of Robert Kirkman's popular comic and TV series. Created by Telltale games, it seems to take on a similar art style to the studio's recently created Back To The Future game as well as also being released as episodic titles. The art style also resembles that of comic books, illustrated by Charlie Adlard. Although the TV series and comics are similar they aren't completely parrallel, though this game will NOT follow Rick Grimes, the protagonist and main focus of the latter. If I may add, I feel the fact that the TV series and comics being slightly different a good point as although the comics are way ahead, you aren't watching exactly what you've read and can't predict that events that may happen. Telltale Games have stated that the first episode will be set before Rick Grimes has even woken from his coma (that's not a spoiler, tha...

There are rumours circulating that the next Xbox will be disc-less and therefore support no optical media at all. Though this is inevitably a step into the future of digital media, one that has already been taken in PC gaming, music, mobile phone software and now more and more people are moving on to streaming films and/or TV. Is it time for the next-gen of games consoles to take this step too? As far as the current generation goes, you can download games through Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and the Wii's Virtual Console. Furthermore, on Xbox 360 & PSN you can buy and download full retail games direct from their respective marketplaces which are then downloaded to your hard drive where they will belong. This alone raises issues for the next generation and whether they will be backwards compatible. One always hopes the next generation consoles will be able to play their games they own for that previous generation. The reason being that gamers won't have to...

I've been tempted recently by a few XBLA horror / survival games such as Alan Wake: American Nightmare and I Am Alive but after seeing a few game-play videos about Dead Light , I can't help but put away my MS point purse and wait for what is looking to be an absolute gem of an XBLA title. The game is being created by Tequila Works (yeah, me neither), a Spanish (maybe that's obvious) third-party development studio for Microsoft. Though to give them credit, this seems like their first project and it's looking absolutely phenomenal.  As Tequila Works describes on their website, Dead Light depicts an apocalyptic world where existence is futile, and only a solitary man treks the American west coast.  The year is 1986 and a mysterious disease has decimated mankind, transforming people into killer automatons. Survival is the measure of all in this original cinematic puzzle platformer. Deadlight is the frightening odyssey of an ordinary man fighting ...

The sun is my guide but also my enemy. The blazing heat stabs at my blistered skin but I have to keep moving, I have to get back to America to hand a stranger a bunch of flowers … I can sense their eyes, they stare at me through the shallow vine, waiting to see if I hinder, take it slow and wonder into their path. A cub grows impatient and begins barking wildly, spinning in circles around my stout steed. Fashioning a heroic ‘stationary-jump’ before hammering the ‘get the hell out of here’ button to spark my trusty horse through the pack I dash out in a random direction forgetting my route and straying from the road. Either I was working it too hard or this horse isn’t as trustworthy as I thought. It buckles, screams and throws me off my saddle like a stroke of bad luck in Buckaroo. My face slams into the rough desert sharply, a snake nearby mocks me as it slithers away; whilst I slowly come to and get to my dusted, aching feet. As the orange-ashed world around me comes back int...