What’s the best way to look at the biggest show on television at the moment? Through a 20 year old video game, of course, writes Sam Brooks. This post contains spoilers for Suikoden II, which you absolutely don’t care about. This post contains no spoilers for Game of Thrones, which you absolutely do care about. The … Read more
Apex Legends is the big new challenger for Fortnite’s crown, and it appeared almost entirely out of thin air. Oskar Howell plays the new battle royale game everyone is talking about. Fortnite has spent two long years dominating the gaming scene, and no other game has really managed to come close. Its zany, cartoon style … Read more
How time flies – Final Fantasy 6 was released 25 years ago this month. Sam Brooks remembers its brilliant antagonist, an evil clown who actually succeeded in destroying the world. The internet was once a simpler place. Rather than people digging into their trenches on video game difficulty or whatever issue is threatening to burn … Read more
With every new FromSoftware game comes the same debate – how hard is too hard, and why does it matter? Matthew Codd examines this age-old argument and its bogus foundations. Any new release by FromSoftware – famed creators of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and now Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – is inevitably followed with a refreshed … Read more
After a recent replay of the original trilogy, Sam Brooks writes on the unfairly maligned legacy of the Mass Effect trilogy. Spoilers for a trilogy that finished over half a decade again (be honest: if you wanted to play these games by now, you would’ve). If you’re even a casual gamer, the thing you probably remember most … Read more
Metroidvanias are some of the most notoriously difficult, directionless games in existence, but for Jesse Dekel, they were a rock during a rough time at sea. The very first Game Boy Advance I destroyed was one of those clear-blue ones. I smacked my 8-year-old head into the thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display screen with the force of … Read more
Before Fortnite, there was Runescape. And well before Runescape, there was an eternal class struggle. Emilie Rākete writes about the moment the two collided in the most unexpected way. RuneScape was once declared the world’s largest multiplayer online game. Millions of people were entranced by its blocky graphics and repetitive gameplay. Like many young people in the early … Read more
Cocktails and video games – just like peanut butter and jelly, right? Sam Brooks interviews Jack Stone-Slater, the man behind the locally-made webseries Experience Bar which combines the dual pleasures of gaming and cocktails. Gaming and cocktails are two things that probably shouldn’t go together. Other than both needing a semblance of precision and timing, there’s not … Read more
The latest game by FromSoftware is out, and it’s as difficult as you’d expect. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Way back 30 years ago in 2015 I wrote a piece on The Spinoff about Bloodborne, a Lovecraftian horror game created by Japanese developers FromSoftware. Bloodborne, modelled after FromSoftware’s award-winning Dark Souls trilogy, is fiendishly … Read more
As it stands only ten games are currently banned from sale in New Zealand but should we be looking at how we censor games with more scrutiny? Oskar Howell writes. Content warning: Depictions of violence are alluded to in the piece. One of the first games I seriously played was Grand Theft Auto III. It was one of … Read more
Twenty years ago – before Instagram – a game about documenting your every move was released. That game was Pokémon Snap. The year was 1999. Hilary Swank was playing Brandon Teena, something that would now absolutely not be allowed. Troye Sivan was basically a fetus, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were at the top of the world, and people … Read more
The internet is a place where the darkest seeds of the world take root – but there’s light there too. Sam Brooks talks to the person behind one of those lights, the Can You Pet the Dog twitter account which documents dogs you can pet in video games. When I see a dog, there’s one question … Read more
Hitman 2 has plundered from our shores before, but this time, has it taken the story and likeness of our most notorious South Auckland MP, Judith ‘Crusher’ Collins? Adam Goodall goes down the rabbit hole. I’m a Hitman fan. A Hitfan, if you will. But more than that, I’m a fan of New Zealand. I’m a … Read more
Left Alive has been released this past week to harsh reviews and studio backpedalling, signalling another failure in the rare people-in-robots genre of game. Sam Brooks back at the storied history of these games. It’s not a good sign when a studio forbids a game from being streamed mere days after its release. It’s the gaming equivalent … Read more
This morning, Nintendo announced the eighth generation of Pokémon: Sword and Shield, and along with it came three starters. Sam Brooks ranks these starters – and all of the rest of them. Another generation of Pokémon, another one hundred new creatures to remember the names of and eventually forget. Like, who remembers the sentient ice-cream? … Read more
Less than a week out from release, Sam Brooks dips back into the breast physics controversy that has enveloped Dead or Alive 6. If there’s one thing on the internet that I can strongly endorse you don’t investigate, it is the debate around breast physics in video games. It’s a fast way to stop believing that there is … Read more
BioWare’s new online multiplayer Anthem has stumbled out of the starting block, with decidedly mixed reviews. So is this it for BioWare? “… you never quite shake that feeling of disappointment – of knowing, throughout the good parts of Anthem, that you’ll inevitably come crashing back down.” – Gamespot “Anthem’s campaign is a collision of competing … Read more
Last week, the Tetris battle royale game Tetris 99 dropped with no announcement. Adam Goodall spent three days with the game. This is his diary. FRIDAY 15 FEBRUARY About an hour after Tetris 99’s release and I know this much: I suck at the game, so much. Tetris 99 was surprise-announced this morning, like Lemonade but for … Read more
The Spinoff’s gaming journalist morbid_angel_69 still can’t tear himself away from RDR2. In this video he goes on a not-at-all stressful fishing trip into the hills to hunt for the Legendary Rock Bass. (NB: This video contains end story SPOILERS) morbid_angel_69 plays Red Dead Redemption 2: Watch more The Red Dead Redemption 2 hat shooting … Read more
It’s one of the most controversial entries in the long-running series, but on its 20th anniversary Sam Brooks is standing behind Final Fantasy 8 as the best one of them all. I have two lingering memories of Final Fantasy 8. The first is being stuck right at the end of the first disc. I’d just … Read more
She’s hidden it from her friends and her family – but she’s ready to come clean. Auckland councillor Cathy Casey is a Scrabble addict. This is her story. After thinking long and hard about it over the summer break, I have finally decided to come clean about a very secret part of my life. In … Read more
It’s been a few months since Spider-Man came out, and its follow-up DLC, The City That Never Sleeps, has ended its run. Sam Brooks looks back at the game, and how well the DLC fares compared to the original. Spider-Man was the game I enjoyed most in 2018 and it wasn’t something that I was expecting. Rather than … Read more
Crackdown 3 is one of the most notoriously delayed games of all time, but it’s finally out next week. Lee Henaghan caught up with the game’s top creative talent to find out if it’s going to be worth the wait. With the possible exception of Hollywood, there is no industry more obsessed and fixated on … Read more
The series had a quiet end, but that doesn’t change how impactful Silent Hill was on its debut. Sam Brooks looks back at Silent Hill and its impact on video games today. “The fear of blood tends to creat [sic as all hell] fear for the flesh.” There are two iconic horror franchises in video games. One of these is … Read more
What started as a simple Disney and Final Fantasy crossover 17 years ago is now a labyrinthine juggernaut. Sam Brooks reviews the one, the only, Kingdom Hearts 3. At Kotaku, Tim Rogers called Kingdom Hearts 3 an unreviewable game. Brian David Gilbert tried to apply the hero’s journey to the series and instead twisted a simple 12-point … Read more
Weta Workshop has just released Dr Grordbort’s Invaders, a game for Magic Leap, one of the most ground-breaking pieces of mixed-reality technology on the market. So what’s it like to play it? Imagine putting on a headset in your living room and seeing a portal open on your wall, bringing you into an incredible other-worldly … Read more
The Rainbow Arcade is an exhibition of LGBTQI* representation is video games currently taking place at the Schwules Museum in Berlin. New Zealander in Berlin Joel Thomas went along. There’s a perpetual greyness to the Berlin winter; everything’s desaturated and everyone’s a bit on edge. I’m walking through the rain in Berlin’s famously queer district … Read more
People have flocked to the Just Cause series drawn by its OTT action mayhem. But how long can mindless fun keep people engaged? The new instalment answers that question, says José Barbosa – and it’s not good. The last spurt of 2018 saw the market slammed with a phalanx of voluminous open world games: Red Dead … Read more
It’s sold over 25 million copies across the world – but damned if anybody can make sense of it. Sam Brooks brings you the exhaustive, definitive guide to the world of Kingdom Hearts. History was made one day in the late 90s when Shinji Hashimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi decided they wanted to make a game … Read more