Imagine strange cars and weird people hanging around your house. This is the shocking reality for some in this post-Pokémon world. In part two of the Pokémon GO Orgy Week, Jess McAllen interviews a number of unassuming Americans who’ve had uninvited Pokémon hunters turning up on their doorstep. Catch up on Pokémon GO Orgy Week … Read more
Pokémon Go has turned the world upside down. It’s led players into armed ambushes. It’s got them stumbling across washed up corpses. And after something of a online outcry to his first review, it’s even forced Joseph Harper to get his feet wet again. Last week I tried playing Pokémon Go and it pissed me off. … Read more
After months of anticipation, the biggest mixed martial arts event ever is finally upon us. Don Rowe attempts to prophesise the event on EA Sports UFC 2 for the Playstation 4, but finds his efforts hindered by the notoriously chaotic landscape of the UFC. Like a truck in the side mirror, UFC 200 is all of … Read more
Dyed-in-the-wool Pocket Monster fan Joseph Harper joined the burgeoning Pokémon GO craze this week and found it overwhelmingly pointless and bad. When the Pokémon GO trailer was hurled onto the internet last year, it seemed too good to be true. Playing Pokémon in the real world seemed fricking awesome. When I played Pokémon as a … Read more
The King of the Cosmos intends to build a planet. Joseph Harper answers his call and discovers and terrifying yet thrilling cosmic techno nightmare. Finally the pure, unfiltered joy and weirdness of the Katamari franchise has returned to my iPhone. It’s the first Katamari game since the 2012 PS Vita game, Touch My Katamari (which I … Read more
In the final installment of our E3 coverage Kermath spends some time on the showroom floor. He surveys the maze of booths offering punters face time with the video game industry’s games and hardware and asks: is this expo in danger of dying? The Electronic Entertainment Expo, held again this year at the LA Convention … Read more
Josh Drummond re-enacts Game of Thrones’ Battle of the Bastards in Total War: Warhammer, and it makes much more sense than it did on TV. The television world went barking mad for the ‘Battle of the Bastards’ episode of Game of Thrones last week, with viewers howling at their TV screens at the sheer drama as … Read more
Orcs are troublesome beings; they get in the linen cupboard and rough up the pillow cases something horrid. However, as Joseph Harper found, they’re also part of the enduring legacy of Warcraft. It seemed necessary to play this old game, given the release of the year’s biggest and most critically acclaimed mega-film (Warcraft: The Beginning). … Read more
In part two of The Spinoff’s coverage of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) Kermath examines on the important bit: the parties. This is where the video game industry cuts loose after shilling their wares. Kermath braves Blink 182, spirit ladies and malnutrition to bring you this report. Attending an E3 party is something close … Read more
Many of us find ourselves reaching the heights of endorphin released excitement while playing our favourite video games. However, for a small portion of the population tapping away at their screen provides no joy, only resentment and self-loathing. Bronwyn Bent is one of these players. This is her story. I am a anthropomorphised pea pod, … Read more
This week Joseph Harper doesn’t even get near a joystick or touchscreen. Instead he salivates over some very welcome news from E3. I didn’t go to E3 because I’m not rich and cool etc but by god did I get a lot of breaking news on my Facebook feed. It’s definitely cool that everyone will … Read more
Kermath, The Spinoff’s man at E3, has delivered his thoughts on this week’s briefings offered by some of the main players in the video game industry. Sony, EA, Bethesda, Microsoft, Ubisoft: all have spent serious cash announcing release dates for their forthcoming games and gear. This is how the individual extravaganzas break down. Every year … Read more
E3 is the video game industry’s juggernaut trade show. 95bFM’s Kermath has attended the OTT jamboree 4 times over the years. This year he’ll be filing dispatches for The Spinoff chronicling the personalities and cultural forces that coalesce around E3. As a prelude he outlines why this year’s convention will be different and the real reason … Read more
Each week Joseph Harper plays a different game that’s somewhat out of the ordinary. This week he gets his mitts on locally made Mini Metro. My friend and local indie game aficionado Alice Gatland told me about Mini Metro. She basically implied it was the coup of the local indie game scene. So I obviously … Read more
Don Rowe lives out his childhood dreams on the battlefields of Total War Warhammer, the best thing to happen to strategy games since priests went ‘wololo’. The far shores of Lake Rotoma in the central North Island seem a strange place to find a small child painting warhorses, but I was always a strange child. Sadly, … Read more
Bears, bears, bears; Joseph Harper’s phone hosts a fight to death between two games based on and around the terrifying caniforms. Weirdly, I happened to download two games for my phone last week that feature murderous bear-type characters. The first is Killer Panda. It’s an infinite scrolling thing where you jump over very small concrete … 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
It’s gotten so developers can’t seem to help put chuck in the occasional mini-game to give red-eyed gamers a respite from the main action. A cabal of Spinoff writers have come together to provide a ranking of their favourite wee games nested within bigger games. 1) Gwent from The Witcher 3 Gwent! It’s blackjack meets … Read more
It sounds like a bureaucratic bore, but Auckland’s Tripartite Economic Summit, with guests including a British YouTube superstar and an American political “rock star”, is the hottest ticket in town. Tim Murphy reports from day one. YouTuber Tom Cassell – who is globally famous as Syndicate Tom – has been walking and talking around Auckland, … Read more
Joseph Harper reviews the three new starter Pokémon characters, using cutting-edge scientific methods to determine which one is the cutest. Great news for children, and fully grown Nintendo tragics: while Pokémon Sun and Moon are still a wee way off, we’ve just been gifted the first offering of real game footage – including names and pictures … 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
In honor of the New Zealand Comedy Festival Joseph Harper dives deep into a few comedy games. But it turns out that games based on comedy aren’t actually that funny. The Comedy Fest is happening at the moment and nobody loves to laugh as much as me. So this week I decided to highlight some … Read more
As the franchise splutters to a halt, Katie Parker examines why The Sims 2 remains the gleaming jewel in the Maxis simulation game crown. I would love to say I have nostalgia for The Sims 2, but the truth is that since I first received it on pre-order at 14 in 2004 I have kept … Read more
The latest installment of the Mars based Doom series is nearly upon us. But a Mars expert claims the depiction of the red planet as a portal to the underworld is a grossly exaggerated one. José Barbosa presents this explosive and challenging interview. Admittedly the original Doom took place on the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, but … Read more
If the chore of cobbling together and interacting with real people for a roleplaying session is too much, Joseph Harper has the mobile game for you. We all know Dungeons and Dragons and the Call of Cthulu etc are cool. There is almost nothing as good as putting on a bonnie wee Scotty boy accent … Read more
After 14 years, Ratchet and Clank are back! Don Rowe delves deep into Ratchet and Clank 2016 to see how, after all this time, the game stacks up. Amoeboids! O’ green bastards, chlorophyllic Matryoshka’s of slime! Knock one down and two take its place, shambling and leering and grasping. From all angles they slither, loitering in the … Read more
Jack Joyce is given time powers while at ground zero at a time travel experiment accident caused by his bestie Paul Serene. It’s only the bloody end of time, innit? The Spinoff wraps up its Quantum Break coverage with a musing on the AAA game’s most interesting element: the story. The ubiquitous visual motif of … Read more
Joseph Harper lives among the quietude of Stardew Valley and finds a place where even those with the darkest of hearts can find a place to be. I love almost everything about the Steam gaming platform. I love feeling part of a community in the wake of a big, bolshie blockbuster release. I love the … 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