Life is Strange 2 repeats the sins of its predecessor – for good and for bad. Sam Brooks reviews. Video games are, as an artform, not known for their subtlety. If you’re not a gamer, your video game references are likely Mario, Grand Theft Auto, Fortnite, maybe Final Fantasy. These are the technicolour dreamcoats of games, known less for their … Read more
It’s taken three games to get there – but Valkyria Chronicles 4 finally recaptures the addictive and bizarrely positive magic of the first game. Sam Brooks reviews. When Valkyria Chronicles debuted on the Playstation 3 nearly ten years ago, it was a different time. Marion Cotillard was reigning Best Actress, George Bush was President, and the PS3 was … Read more
Multiplayer gaming has moved from the lounge to the headset – and it’s not necessarily a good thing. Jesse Dekel writes about where multiplayer gaming is now, and why she’s never really enjoyed it. For me, it really comes down to this simple assessment: developers and publishers have apparently decided they’d rather not integrate multiplayer … Read more
You’ve seen the YouTube ads, you’ve seen the ads on your phone. But what the hell is World of Tanks? Adam Goodall went on an adventure to find out. For the last twelve months, my friend Tim has been bugging me to join him on an adventure. To travel with him around the world, from the … Read more
Is New Zealand missing out on the chance to cash in on the gaming boom? And would more government support make a difference? This piece was originally published on Newshub. Video games are a multibillion-dollar global entertainment industry, and experts say New Zealand should be doing more to seize the opportunity. Gaming is worth $524m … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Defence Force outlines what they say are complex and emerging threats, cochlear implant funding effectively cut, and there’s a public service strike today. The Defence Force is warning about increasingly complex threats, including from Russia and China, in their strategic policy statement released on Friday. Newshub reports that both those … Read more
Adam Goodall talks to the developers of Kiwi game Grabity about soccer cars, flailing swords and big honking machines. I’m playing Grabity online and I’m getting absolutely caned by this person named Chinnaru. They’re showing up in every other game and wrecking my shop, boosting over to my side of the map and firing off … Read more
It’s the second episode of our new comedy Dungeons and Dragons podcast! Welcome back to Waterdeep Mountain High, a below average school in the mystical land of Faerun. “It’s like Hugh Grant vs Colin Firth” In the second episode of Waterdeep Mountain High our heroes Forrest Rivers, Kate Shepherd, Hillardo Morrison, and Peng the Goblin … Read more
The recipients of the Play By Play International Games Festival’s Te Maunga Kai Kapua Awards Mario Wynands and Niamh Fitzgerald, talk with Adam Goodall about Final Fantasy VII and the future of game development in New Zealand. In 1997 – “20 years, 11 months and one week ago, but who’s counting” – Mario Wynands co-founded … Read more
It’s a new Dungeons and Dragons podcast set in the most fantastical setting of all…a crappy high school. Welcome to Waterdeep Mountain High, a below average school in the mystical land of Faerun. In this first episode, plucky teens Forrest Rivers and Kate Shepperd, their plucky teacher Hillardo Morrison, and plucky (psychotic) exchange student-goblin Peng, … 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
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Vodafone Xone. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Maru Nihoniho, founder of game studio Metia Interactive. … 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
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
Eugenia Woo reviews HAMLET: The Video Game, a brave attempt to bring together the disparate worlds of gaming and theatre. HAMLET: The Video Game – A Shakespearean Stage Show is a mouthful. It’s also got all the earnestness of a high school production, with none of the good-natured missteps or overbearing parents being idiots in the … Read more
Don Rowe dives back into the borderline-narcotic world of Total War: Warhammer, reviewing the second of three games in the series. Ah McCain, they’ve done it again! Just when you were getting bored of the stupidly huge and successful Total War: Warhammer, strategy game powerhouse Creative Arts has only gone and dropped the second instalment … Read more
The much anticipated Cuphead has finally been released. It’s a tremendously hard and beautiful indie run-and-gun game and Sam Brooks, despite being notoriously bad at video games, gave it a brave hoon. I am very bad at video games. I feel like I need to preface this review, and any opinion I have on video games with … Read more
Next up in Sam’s Celebrity Game Reviews, Sam Brooks plays an incredibly strange Kevin Hart game that is unfortunately aimed at families, maybe. How fortuitous to be reviewing a celebrity mobile game that is mildly relevant to the news of today. Last week, we found out that Kevin Hart cheated on his pregnant wife, and … Read more
Originally a mod of the military sim ARMA 2, Dayz and its creator, New Zealander Dean Hall, are responsible for the survival zombie horror genre we all know and are somewhat bored by now. José Barbosa loved the mod and initially started playing the full-on commercial standalone version in 2012. He now returns to the forests … Read more
Like a rugby dad whose kids have quit the code, Don Rowe’s passion for video games these days is muted, overweight and plain old sad. Why? And what now? The thing about Nioh: Defiant Honour is that…it’s all getting a bit too bloody much eh. I mused when reviewing Dragon of the North that these … Read more
Sam Brooks dives into the new Uncharted game, The Lost Legacy, with two progressively awesome protagonists and the classic cinematic gameplay pioneered by the series. I spent some time being an Uncharted sceptic, mostly out of a fierce loyalty to Tomb Raider, the proud predecessor of the series. I wanted more puzzles! More women punching things! I wanted … Read more
Next up in Sam’s Celebrity Game Reviews is Shady Wars, a game in which Sam has to reconcile his feelings for Eminem while throwing chainsaws at drones. I have a limited familiarity with Eminem. I am aware that Kathy Griffin was in a video he did, he has said lots of homophobic things in songs, … Read more
Welcome to Top of the Pile, a gaming series in which the participants are forced to play a game at the top of the ‘just released’ list. This ep, watch as a cuddly Portuguese man singlehandedly takes down his hapless co-host in a contest of skill and grit: the classic just re-released football game Super … Read more
Superhot, an innovative critique on the dangers of hype culture and gamer identity, has been ported to virtual reality. But something critical is lost in translation, writes Matthew Codd. Superhot was one of the most inventive games of 2016. I don’t just mean in terms of its clever twist on first-person shooter mechanics – time … Read more
Though the virtual mini-golf market is crowded, there’s at least one game coming in well under-par. Matt Codd reviews Infinite Minigolf, the putt-simulator for the discerning golfer. When I was 10 or 11 years old, my family went on a trip around New Zealand. Though most details of that holiday are hazy (it was a … Read more
Next up in Sam’s Celebrity Game Reviews is Sniper X with Jason Statham, in which Jason Statham problematically gets people to shoot other people with their phones. It would be an understatement to say that first person shooters are popular games. Your Calls of Duty, your Battlefield 1s, your Halos are the cultural behemoths among videogames. … Read more
Year on year, board games are selling at historical rates – and one Waikanae dad is cashing in. Douglas Moore speaks with Shem Phillips, full-time board game designer and director of Garphill Games. * So Shem, could you tell me a little about yourself and how you came to be a designer? I’m 33, married with two … 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 first of three planned DLC expansions for the critically-acclaimed Nioh has been released, but does it address the game’s noticeable faults? Don Rowe reviews Dragon of the North. In the immediate aftermath of the Nioh – aka Japanese Dark Souls – release in February, it was already being acclaimed as the game of the … Read more