A new game from Mountains Studio aims to tell an authentic, full-bodied love story – and it’s all on your phone. Sam Brooks reviews Florence. Video games don’t have a great track record of showing people falling in love, historically. When you think of how video games represent love, you think of Mario rescuing Peach … Read more
The Darwin Project, the first game from Montreal studio Scavengers, brings a player-generated narrative experience to the saturated battle royale genre, and it has an open beta out this weekend. Uther Dean talks to the people behind it. With Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds coming seemingly out of nowhere to dominate 2017, the age of the battle royale … Read more
The latest addition to the Metal Gear series, the non-canon zombie game Metal Gear Survive, is out tomorrow. The series has been around for an incredible 31 years – and oh boy, the things we’ve seen. The Metal Gear series is one of the most famous video game series for a reason. Mainly that the games are really … Read more
Samsara is a kicky, inventive platformer from Auckland game studio Marker Games that harks back to the not-so-long-ago likes of Limbo and Braid. Adam Goodall reviews. On the top of the screen is a tropical beach. There’s a crab hiding in one corner and on the horizon a city skyline catches the last of the … Read more
An overly faithful reproduction of the tacky aesthetics of modern mixed martial arts holds back what is easily the best UFC game yet, writes Don Rowe. Few sports change as much year-on-year as mixed martial arts, and thus the release schedule of the bi-annual EA UFC video game reflects the current state of the sport … Read more
With the advent of trophies – and online gaming – we’ve also seen the decline of cheats. Sam Brooks remembers a time in gaming when cheats were seen as nothing more than a bit of fun, and why that’s changed. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Even if you’ve never played … Read more
The World Health Organisation added gaming disorder to their classification guide last year, bringing the psychological issues around gaming back into the limelight. Baz Macdonald explains what the disorder is, and how to recognise if you have it. When the World Health Organisation announced the addition of gaming disorder to its classification guide last year … Read more
Motion sickness can seriously mess up your ability to play video games, and first person shooters are especially bad for this. James Roque shares his advice on how to play them – minus the nausea. Motion sickness sucks. A lot. As someone who’s had an extreme case of it his whole life, it’s caused me … Read more
Uther Dean reminisces about how kids’ games were used to trick him into enjoying his education – and how those games still hold up today. Do you remember the days of the old school yard? We used to laugh a lot. Well, people used to laugh a lot. I don’t know about you but I … Read more
Deconstructerteam’s new point-and-click adventure game is a progressive riff on an old genre. Sam Brooks goes into what’s special about The Red Strings Club and why more games need to be like it. The Red Strings Club starts by cribbing one of the most famous film noir openings ever: Joe Gillis’ corpse floating in a pool on … Read more
Two grown men who have never done a hard day’s work in their life try to start a farm together the only way they know how: In a video game. Watch gaming editor Sam Brooks and Adam Goodall try (and fail) to start a farm in popular-in-Europe game Farming Simulator 17, as part of new … Read more
On Friday little known developer Supremacy released a mobile game named Mongrel Mob Defence and the media, predictably, went nuts. Sam Brooks says this kind of controversy not only allows these kinds of developers to thrive – it’s what they need to survive. Thousands of games come out every year. As each year passes, more … Read more
Tim Nixon, the founder and creative director of Runaway Play – creators of successful mobile games Flutter and Splash – is heading to LA to join ThatGameCompany, one of the most critically lauded game developers in the world. He talks to Baz Macdonald about his career in games, and the upcoming NZ launch of ThatGameCompany’s … Read more
Little Red Lie is the misanthropic, dark-as-tar game from indie developer Will O’Neill. Gaming editor Sam Brooks played it – and was disturbed by what he found. Video games can get away with a lot that other media can’t. The interactivity and engagement with the content is unparalleled, and it creates an emotional investment that … Read more
Turkish developer 2645turqoise has released a game that purports to be a vast survivalist adventure across New Zealand. Adam Goodall finds out how well Ka Mate captures true blue bear-free Aotearoa. “An adventurous TV presenter goes to New Zealand. The adventurer who encounters with unexpected events will have to struggle for life against wildlife.” That’s … Read more
This week, Creative Assembly announced another spinoff to the Total War series, this time based around the Three Kingdoms War in China. Sam Brooks investigates why this period is a bizarrely popular one for video games. Dynasty Warriors. Dynasty Tactics. Dynasty Wars. Destiny of an Emperor. And now, Total War: Three Kingdoms. Some of these … Read more
Video games get a bad rep, mostly from people who don’t even play them. Uther Dean suggests some games to bridge the gap between video games and the people who just CANNOT with them. Everyone plays video games these days. From Candy Crush on up, people are wittling away their one special life torturing pixels. … Read more
2018 is set to be another big year in gaming. Sam Brooks sets down his most anticipated games of the year, including one game he hopes to a higher power actually comes out this year. It’s the start of a new year, and time to put aside the games we spent too many hours on … Read more
It’s a mystery that deserves an answer. Alice, the protagonist of all six Resident Evil films, has not once made an appearance in the video games. This could not be by accident. To get to the bottom of this enduring riddle, Uther Dean interviewed* some of the key players in both the films and the video … Read more
Just how hard is it to win an election and successfully lead a government? Seems easy enough, but there’s only one way to find out for sure: simulate it in a computer game. This was originally published on September 1. No actual politics game measures up to the ideal politics game for which I yearn. … Read more
Back by lukewarm demand On The ‘Reg is The Spinoff’s regular gaming session streamed live every Wednesday at 7pm on Facebook and Twitch. This highlights package sees José Barbosa and Madeleine Chapman playing Crash Bandicoot: the N.sane trilogy. First published on 7 November 2017. Now the new 2017 cleaned up version of the Crash Bandicoot trilogy is out, … Read more
Sony is making a grab for everyone who isn’t already on the PlayStation train with PlayLink, a series of party games that are played by linking smartphones with the PS4. The Spinoff team had a good blat with two of the games currently available, That’s You! and Knowledge Is Power. If you plonk yourself in … Read more
The Spinoff’s Blighty correspondent Hayden Donnell meets some UK game developers to find out why the US gaming industry might be better off shifting operations to the Motherland. Silicon Valley has given us a few good things. Windows 95. The time Bill Gates drank poo water. Atari. The TV show Silicon Valley. It’s not all … Read more
2017 has been a banner year for gaming. With massive hits like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds stealing a lot of the spotlight, there are many equally great games that players may have completely missed. Jessica Alouette and Ashe Yee highlight some of those games, just in time for the … Read more
Lootboxes have embedded themselves in the gaming industry – and audiences are not happy about it. Adam Goodall talks to a free-to-play developer and a public health expert about why lootboxes were inevitable, and how we can change the direction they’re taking the industry. I’ve been playing Dungeon. Inc for ten minutes when my assistant, … Read more
There have been 15 numbered titles, it has sold 130 million copies worldwide, and it’s spawned countless spinoffs. On its 30th birthday, Sam Brooks reflects on Final Fantasy and what the series means to him. The series that made me realise that video games were more than just a silly pastime was the Final Fantasy series. The … Read more
The video games industry could be New Zealand’s next creative industry boom, but a lack of government support is holding it back. Baz Macdonald reports. For a small country, New Zealand has had a large effect on global creative industries. Our film industry is an obvious example of this, generating over $3 billion in revenue … 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
Back by lukewarm demand, On The Reg is The Spinoff’s regular gaming session streamed live every Wednesday at 7pm on Facebook and Twitch. This highlights package sees Sam Brooks and Geordie walk through the uncanny valley of death in collaborative noir crime drama Hidden Agenda. This post, like all our gaming content, comes to your peepers only with … Read more