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
Amy Potter always had trouble finding friends to play videogames with – which led her to co-found Kiwi gaming startup Leaping Tiger, a matchmaking app for video games. She talks about life as a girl gamer and what it’s like to find her way in the hyper-masculine world of technology startups. In early 2014, when … Read more
Joseph Harper takes a long, taxing, circuitous and satisfying walk through the world of The Witness, a 3D puzzle game set on a pastel-colored island with a mysterious secret. The Witness, the latest game from Braid creator Jonathan Blow, has been in the works since 2008. It’s a 3D puzzle adventure game vaguely in the mode of … Read more
The smartphone game/cat simulator Neko Atsume (“kitty collector”) has become an obsession for many around the world. We’ve raved about its charm and relaxing backyard vibe. However for one man the constant bombardment of cats and the never-ending pressure to keep them fed was too much. Over the course of a few months the twitter … Read more
Once a thriving center of commerce and industry, tourists have largely avoided Fallout 4‘s Commonwealth since it was decimated by a devastating nuclear holocaust 210 years ago. But with the rebuild effort well underway, there has never been a better time for adventurous travelers to visit this diverse and vibrant region. Eat: Street food aficionados … Read more
That Dragon, Cancer is less of a game and more a series of interactive abstractions, writes Joseph Harper, but that only makes it all the more effective. I don’t know if morons who hold the view that video games aren’t art still exist. But if so they should play That Dragon, Cancer. An autobiographical game, created … Read more
From How Bizarre to The Lord of the Rings, the New Zealand entertainment industry has performed well internationally across a variety of mediums. But, Path of Exile aside, these small islands are yet to birth any significant gaming classics. Don Rowe speaks with John O’Reilly about the challenges and triumphs of designing games in New Zealand … Read more
The galaxy is awash with shitty indie games, but in Flightless’ Element Don Rowe discovers a New Zealand made, space-themed strategy game that’s thoroughly worth your time. In a market saturated with derivative big-box franchises and cookie-cutter annual releases, experimental game design has been left in most part to dorito-crusted indie designers and smelly bedroom coders. The results … Read more
Joseph Harper was so inspired by the agony of Blair Walsh’s choke against the Seahawks on Monday that he spent two days creating an extraordinary game in tribute. My Dad loves the NFL. When I visit him in Christchurch he’s almost always glued to the family computer, watching emo New England Patriots retrospectives or cracking … Read more
After the final of X Factor NZ, Joseph Harper creates an interactive game that promises to be more challenging, fun and have higher production values than the competition itself. It’s been a long season of losing judges, murderers and clear winners as X Factor NZ slowly disintegrated week to week. But finally – here’s something … 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
Joseph Harper reviews a different game every week in a brand new column. First up: Neko Atsume. I started playing a new smartphone game this week. I’m probably the target market for these kind of things via vaguely addictive personality and enjoying the patronising simplicity of the kind of games that exist on this platform. I’ve … Read more
Josh Drummond of Bigpipe, our new Gaming section sponsor, on the fiendishly addictive and deceptively simple soccer/driving mashup, Rocket League. It goes like this: I’m in my second week at my new job at Bigpipe. Our product team – just three of us – are working on probably our most important project, and at the … Read more
Suspended above the sun I witnessed the creation and destruction of the stars. An astral dust condensed and formed a molten core, pulling smaller fragments of space rock into its enhanced and growing gravitational field. From behind a distant moon, an asteroid streaked through deep space, hurtling into the burgeoning planet and smashing it into … Read more
Joseph Harper uses his Playstation 2 version of The Sims to decide the final outcome of The Bachelor NZ. Speculation is rife going into the final week of The Bachelor NZ. All three remaining bachelorettes seem to have a crack at the title of Art Green’s girlfriend. Alysha has the nice accent. Matilda has a nice … Read more
Only a few weeks ago, I was looking forward to playing Star Wars: Battlefront for the first time. The trailers showed something special: a game that looked and sounded exactly like Star Wars. Previews for the game were mostly positive, and couldn’t wait to play it. I wasn’t expecting that actually getting to play the game would become something of a … Read more
Sick of having his hand held by games made for toddlers, Don Rowe gets masochistic in FromSoftware’s Bloodborne. One need only switch on their headset while playing online to realise that a significant portion of the gaming community are shrill, prepubescent children. Accordingly, game designers have gravitated in recent times to more simplistic, user-friendly games. … Read more
Helldivers By Arrowhead Game Studios, on PS4, PS3, PS Vita & PC It’s a top-down shooter that isn’t so much a homage to Starship Troopers as it is Starship Troopers. Which is awesome. You and some friends from a hilariously fascist far-future Super-Earth (or just the United States under Trump several years from now) are shot into space to … Read more
To celebrate 20 years of Sony’s PlayStation console, Don Rowe attends a PlayStation party complete with DJ and breakdancers. I’ve loved PlayStation since I first heard an old, secondhand PS1 come to life. It starts with a heavy synth pad, like the intro to some demonic Kraftwerk song. Then mystical chimes and a techno flute, fading … Read more
Joseph Harper joins a gang, goes marauding and gets surprisingly emo playing the tabletop fantasy role-player Dungeons & Dragons 4e. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons about six months ago. Our group are all beginners apart from our Dungeon Master, who is an old hand and is German. I play as a 160-year-old gnome named … Read more
Gamer and Leaping Tiger founder Amy Potter explores the wonderful wastelands of Fallout for the very first time To be totally honest, I was not immediately aboard the Fallout hype train as it left the station following Bethesda’s E3 presentation earlier this year. I was left standing on the platform, wondering what everyone was so … 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
Joseph Harper faces the ghosts of a childhood past, and the difficulties of touch-screen gaming, in an iPhone port of Oddworld staple Munch’s Oddysee. Ah, another week of sneaking into the toilet at work so I can play a game on my iPhone. This week I played Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee. To be honest, it’s kind of … Read more
Don Rowe slept through high school history. Now he’s a quasi-scholar of the ancient world thanks to a series of videos from an anonymous American gamer. Anyone who’s taken a high school history class knows how quickly the stories of humanity’s most horrific, bloody and grueling armed conflicts can turn into potent sedatives when relayed … Read more
Don Rowe is joined by Bigpipe‘s Josh Drummond and Gameplanet editor Matt Maguire to discuss another helping of Spinoff gaming content. Don shares the kaleidoscope of cosplay and consumerism experienced at his first Armageddon Expo, while Josh explores the difficulties he faces in getting to game at all. The group take on Fallout 4 as a … Read more
Joseph Harper reviews a different game every week in a brand new column. First up: Neko Atsume. I started playing a new smartphone game this week. I’m probably the target market for these kind of things via vaguely addictive personality and enjoying the patronising simplicity of the kind of games that exist on this platform. I’ve … Read more
On a rainy Saturday in October, Don Rowe headed to Armageddon with 20,000 sodden gamers, cosplayers and consumers. A forlorn pikachu trudged along Great South Road under a grey curtain of rain. Water ran from its drooping ears and down into a rapidly disintegrating paper loot-bag. The sagging and ragged hem of its yellow onesie legs … Read more
Call of Duty Black Ops III comes out today amidst a general feeling of despair at what hath become of a once-great franchise. Daniel Rutledge is a solitary voice to the contrary. There’s a specific look of shock I know all too well. Sometimes it’s not shock, but rather disgust, or bemusement; but it’s always … Read more
Having acquired the grand old age of 32, a lovely wife and a penchant for cooking aspirational middle-class dinners, Josh Drummond examines the nagging question of where to find time for games. My name is Josh Drummond, I’m 32 years old, and I play videogames. Just not very much, apparently. With this videogame writing gig came a … Read more