The Most Effective Strategy Games Ever Created: A Finalised Ranking Which Almost Drove Us Crazy We knew that listing the most effective strategy games ever produced would ultimately result in another couple of weeks of broken friendships and a growing number of group chat blockages. Marcus immediately began arguing that real time games are less mentally taxing than turn based games whilst David said that any strategy game which did not include multiplayer could never…
The plastic shell cracked under my thumb with that satisfying *pop* that meant business. I was eight, maybe nine, wrestling with a copy of Super Mario 64 that had picked up some dust bunnies from underneath my mate's sofa. Dad was watching from the kitchen doorway, shaking his head at my technique—"You'll break the bloody thing," he muttered, not understanding that cartridge maintenance was basically surgery and I was the family's unofficial Nintendo surgeon general.Those…
It is hard to put into words exactly how I reacted the first time I threw a punch in a video game, that actually hit something that resembled a human being. I know this will sound insane now, but that is how I remembered it. At forty-one years old, I had been studying the history of gaming for approximately one year. During that time I went through all of the classic games that my daughter…
My mate Dave convinced me to start cataloguing every N64 game I could get my hands on about three years ago. "You've got loads of them anyway," he said, gesturing at my slightly concerning pile of grey cartridges. "Might as well write down what's worth playing." What started as a weekend project has turned into this bizarre archaeological dig through Nintendo's 64-bit library, and honestly? I'm still finding gems I'd completely forgotten existed.The thing about…
“Alright, let’s get this settled,” Carl declared after what was meant to be an informal Thursday night phone call. “Greatest stealth games of all time. Ranked properly. No fudging with honourable mentions.” Three weeks of the most vicious arguments since the Street Fighter 2 tier list debacle ensued. Timothy continued to argue that Thief did it first and therefore deserves to be recognised more than anyone else. Joe nearly walked off the group chat when…
Tim wrote this review so we get the view of someone who found out about this classic way after everybody else decided that it did indeed count as the 4th Indiana Jones movie. So here’s why the 1992 point and click adventure game is the definitive Indiana Jones experience outside of the original trilogy. When LucasArts combined their SCUMM adventure game engine with the Indiana Jones licence they produced something truly remarkable. Fate of Atlantis…
The other day my kid found my old Game & Watch collection buried in a shoebox behind some Christmas decorations. "Dad, why is this Game Boy so thick?" he asked, holding up my pristine Donkey Kong unit like it was some ancient artifact. I couldn't help but laugh—here's this device that once felt like pure magic in my eight-year-old hands, and to him it looks clunky as a house brick.But that got me thinking about…
When I was 40 years old, and spending my time to catch up on every aspect of gaming history that I missed out on during my childhood, I was going to experience something that would completely change my perspective of what can be accomplished in the video game industry. The events surrounding this occurrence occurred approximately 2011, when my daughter continued to encourage me to play more SNES games and specifically encouraged me to play…
From the mind of Carl here (primarily because Timothy insists on ranting about how modern narrative games like Life is Strange invented emotional storytelling whilst Joe quietly mumbles that adventure games died with LucasArts) but both of them are wrong and The Longest Journey is precisely why. This 1999 masterpiece by Ragnar Tørnquist both proved adventure games weren’t dead and that they could be something much deeper than expected. Adventure games were “dead” by 1999.…
I was rummaging through my loft last weekend, dodging cobwebs and trying not to step through the ceiling, when I found it—my old Sega Master System, still wrapped in that tatty towel I'd used to protect it during house moves. The sight of that familiar black plastic shell sent me tumbling back through decades of Sega memories, from those early 8-bit days right through to the Dreamcast's bittersweet finale.You know, Sega's journey through the console…