You know what's funny? I can pinpoint exactly when my relationship with stress changed forever. It wasn't meditation, wasn't therapy, wasn't even that weird breathing app everyone keeps recommending. It was a plastic cartridge shaped like a tiny grey brick, and it taught me that sometimes the best way to solve real-world problems is to plant virtual turnips.Harvest Moon 64 landed in my life during what I'll diplomatically call my "quarter-life crisis before quarter-life crises…
Carl asked David to cover this one because everyone else on the team wanted to talk about the remake. David refused, on the grounds that half our readers still own a working PS3 and deserve to know what they’re actually getting into with the original hardware. That’s the debate that kicked this whole thing off, and honestly, it’s the right call. The 2020 remake is a different beast entirely. This is about the game that…
There's something magical about stumbling across a game that shouldn't work but absolutely does. Picture this: 1995, and Disney's about to unleash their first fully computer-animated film on the world. Pixar's still this scrappy little studio that most people couldn't even pronounce properly, and here comes Toy Story—this revolutionary thing that looked like nothing we'd seen before. Naturally, the suits decided it needed a video game tie-in. What they gave us on the Mega Drive…
Right, let’s get one thing straight from the start – David here and I need to talk about something that has been driving me crazy about our team discussions. Tim has been saying for months now that modern ARPGs like Path of Exile have completely surpassed Diablo II in every way. Absolute nonsense. Yes, they may be more complex; yeah, they probably do look shinier with their flashy graphics; and, sure, they are most likely…
This is the story of how GoldenEye conquered my university experience and why everything that happened was absolutely fantastic. It all started back in October 1997, when I finally got myself an N64 (a ludicrously expensive bit of technology at the time – I had to save up roughly two and half months wages from my part time job). My purchase included the N64 bundle game GoldenEye 007. Honestly I wasn’t that bothered about it.…
Western RPGs have been around since the late 1980s, but there has never been an RPG that matches the scope and depth of Baldur’s Gate II. Released on 21 September 2000 via Wikipedia, Shadows of Amn took the foundations laid by the first game and turned them into a complete and comprehensive RPG experience. Rather than spend time explaining the engine and the basics of D&D, the second game assumes you understand those aspects and…
Saturday afternoons in 1991 had a particular rhythm. Mum would disappear into the kitchen with Radio 4 burbling about something appropriately serious, Dad would commandeer the garage for mysterious DIY projects that usually involved swearing at screws, and I'd have the living room to myself. The Mega Drive sat there like a black plastic altar, and more often than not, I'd find myself sliding that familiar blue cartridge into the slot. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker wasn't…
I’m Sam, and I want to get one thing settled after our team meeting. Tim said that action RPGs with cooperative gameplay are “basically button masher games with stat sheets.” Honestly, that’s a pretty big deal — and I think he’s never actually played Secret of Mana. I get that the genre can seem overwhelming to someone just getting into it, but to dismiss one of the most important cooperative experiences in video game history…
Shhh… don’t tell anyone but I still have my Gateway 2000 mouse pad at my workplace. I’m not sitting here at my desk trying to make some kind of retro gamer statement with it. I simply liked the mouse pad and it was the right dimensions to fit my mouse and well it must have been the right dimensions to withstand moving THREE times and every other mouse pad getting lost along the way. But…
The Curse of Monkey Island Review: Hand-Drawn Visual Style & Perfect Voice Acting Hello, Marcus here, and I want to talk about something that has bothered me in the way people discuss point-and-click adventure games for years. People say The Curse of Monkey Island is nothing more than “a lot of nice looking graphics,” and don’t understand what LucasArts did to advance the technology behind their games. The Curse of Monkey Island was released on…