Liam Maguren talks to the Mukpuddy team about season two of The Barefoot Bandits, Māori MacGyver in space and getting adults excited about cartoons again. Ryan Cooper, Tim Evans and Alex Leighton are a triforce that take the form of New Zealand animation studio Mukpuddy. I burned my shoes for them when I celebrated their history and the … Read more
Cuphead is one of the most difficult games of the year. In lieu of participating in Movember, Liam Maguren decided to stream the game instead. Misery ensued. I’ve always wanted to participate in Movember without doing the actual mo’ part (the world needn’t be cursed with a mouth resembling a sweaty armpit with teeth). I’ve … Read more
Liam Maguren talks to the Mukpuddy team about the return of The Barefoot Bandits, Māori MacGyver in space and getting adults excited about cartoons again. Ryan Cooper, Tim Evans and Alex Leighton are a triforce that take the form of New Zealand animation studio Mukpuddy. I burned my shoes for them when I celebrated their … Read more
Two grown men sit down to battle, guided only by the cards and fate. Liam Maguren and his board game svengali Douglas Moore test each other in a battle of card stacking with Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game. Marvel is close to world domination. Over the last decade, the comic book colossus has successfully become … Read more
The Nintendo Switch is the latest piece of gaming gear everyone’s got to have. But spare a thought for what the Switch replaces: the underappreciated WiiU. Liam Maguren takes to the pulpit to share some stories and plead for the maligned console’s legacy. How does one kick off a funeral? Is it insensitive to crack … Read more
Has there ever been a more video gamey genre than the beat ’em up? Liam Maguren doesn’t think so, and here he explains why he loves them so. Bare-knuckled violence seemed a lot more innocent when I was a child. I remember having to wedge myself in a corner and stand on my toes just … Read more
The games industry here in NZ is taking off and there’s now all manner of small indie teams putting out fun wee titles for your pleasure. Liam Maugren was recently in a room with a whole bunch of them and here’s what he reckons your next purchase should be. Last weekend, Auckland played host to … Read more
Tasked with reviewing the hotly anticipated new Zelda game, Liam Maguren proves himself to be inadequate; both as a critic and as a functioning human being. It’s been a month since the new Zelda came out and I still can’t review this fucking game. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out a … Read more
Rubbish knock-off licensing seems to hound every mega popular entertainment property out there. (Exhibit A). Among the most questionable products are boardgames based on video games – but the DOOM boardgame might just be an honourable exception, as Liam Maguren discovers. I’ve written about DOOM three bloody times for The Spinoff. I thought I had … Read more
Sick of seeing women portrayed as squeaky clean and virtuous, Jaya Beach-Robertson created PSUSY to prove they can be anything but. Liam Maguren sat down with her to talk through the ups and downs of creating a worldly web series. If you haven’t come across the New Zealand web series PSUSY yet, I’m not sure how … Read more
The latest installment of the Doom series finally finds its way into Liam Maguren’s trembling hands. What he finds within is something on a biblical scale. I’ve written previously about the legacy of 1993’s Doom and my experience with the new Doom’s multiplayer BETA. I have a tender fondness for the trail-blazing original and while the … Read more
Back in the days before 30gb download files and region-locked downloadable content, video games were delivered on floppy disk with a physical tome of instructions. Liam Maguren explains why Doom had the best of them all. Modern games pour a lot into their prologues. It’s very tricky to balance a well-rounded gameplay tutorial with a story … Read more
The latest installment in the Doom franchise is just around the corner. Over the weekend Liam Maguren tried out the open BETA and found it great fun to play, but disappointingly ordinary. The first trailer for the new Doom punched its way onto the scene with a fuck-you-flavoured fist through the zombified jawbone of E3. That’s an … Read more
The latest thing to carry the Tom Clancy cattle brand is The Division. It’s a much hyped online multiplayer game set in a dystopian New York. While it’s all a bit bloody grim, Liam Maguren chronicles the off-game diversions one can create for oneself in the crumbling aftermath of a societal meltdown. Ubisoft are fan-bloody-tastic … Read more
Liam Maguren celebrates the heroic journey of local animation studio Mukpuddy to primetime TV, ahead of the premiere of their new cartoon The Barefoot Bandits (Sunday, 6.30pm on TV2). If you ever wanted to see Buzz Lightyear as a chilled-out bro, you find him in the form of Tumeke Space, a galaxy-hopping television hero worshipped … Read more
It’s one of the biggest threats the world faces, but can video gaming make fighting climate change exciting? Inspired by Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Liam Maguren plays A New Beginning on Steam. A decade ago, climate change prevention didn’t get ears perking at EA, Activision or any of the other AAA gaming companies … Read more
In Undertale, monsters aren’t bad, they’re just misunderstood – but that doesn’t mean you can’t slay them anyway. Liam Maguren holds the power of life and death in a game that straddles the line between hilarious and ridiculous. Standing alongside the beautiful brutality of Bloodborne, the social life-crumbling world of The Witcher 3, and the skin-itching addiction … Read more
Beating Playstation’s notoriously difficult Super Meat Boy was one of the biggest achievements of Liam Maguren’s young life. So why didn’t anyone care? In 2010 a nasty lil’ bastard of a platformer called Super Meat Boy was released. Made, impressively, by only two dudes, the addictive indie game quickly gained a reputation for its incredibly … Read more
Beating Playstation’s notoriously difficult Super Meat Boy was one of the biggest achievements of Liam Maguren’s young life. So why didn’t anyone care? In 2010 a nasty lil’ bastard of a platformer called Super Meat Boy was released. Made, impressively, by only two dudes, the addictive indie game quickly gained a reputation for its incredibly … Read more