Player Freedom, Trolls, And VRChat
I finally purchased a HTC Vive over the holidays. Starting it for the first time and standing on the edge of a crevasse is something that needs to be experienced. It is astounding that we have reached this point when only 5 years ago, Grand Theft Auto V came out and was seen as the pinnacle of gaming. VR has opened up an entirely new world for developers to explore. From Valves The Lab, a Portal t...
Monster of the Week: An RPG of Frights and Fights
When I was younger, I enjoyed sitting down each week like the nerd I am waiting for the newest Supernatural episode. It was always enjoyable and refreshing seeing the Winchesters fighting a different monster or cosmic entity week to week. Of course, there was still an overarching plot usually involving the destruction of a powerful demon. This demon usually had ties to the monsters that showed up ...
Game Jamming: the Sweet and the Sour
About a month ago, I went on down to North Sydney Institute (NSI) to attend their Global Game Jam event (organised with help from the International Game Developers Association). I went undercover to bring you the skinny on what it’s like to experience one of these marathon development events. Although I wasn’t able to participate in the jam as much as I would have liked, I think I got enough of an...
State of the EB Expo
Too often the gaming public in Australia get shafted when it comes to games and gaming more often than not when it comes to attention from the big publishers. For a country which spans a continent, we don’t really have that large a population and it follows that as a gaming market we are small potatoes when it comes to the Asia-Pacific region. What we lack in numbers, however, we make up for in sh...
The Art of the Thriller
So at the request of some of the delightful peeps over at Paramount Pictures to celebrate the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane, and with the go-ahead of the glorious senior editors, I am going to be talking about one of the best directors within the thriller genre; Alfred Hitchcock. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a spiritual successor to the original 2008 Cloverfield movie but rather than focusing upon the ...
What the EB Games Expo Means to Australia
Over the past two decades, video games have grown from those cool little machines in the corner of your local pub, to a nerdy pastime, to part of mainstream culture, and no where is that more true than the sun-baked sands of Australia. With new consoles selling out at prerelease, and game sales making their way into news bulletins and morning talk shows, there is no denying that the digital medium...
Amiibo – A Journey to Collect Them All
CHAPTER 1 – A JOURNEY TO COLLECT THEM ALL When Nintendo announced their line of figures that were set to rival Activision’s Skylanders, or Disney’s Disney Infinity, the internet exploded. Originally made for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, it was clear from the get-go that these figures were going to be HUGE. All over the web, people were talking about how they wanted to col...
Pen Meets Paper Looks at Eidolon: The Electrodyne Opera
It’s been a while since I’ve done an article on good ol’ pen and paper role-playing games and, since the last one appeared to be quite popular, I jumped at the chance to provide an opinion on a friend’s sourcebook. I have personally met the author, Angelus Morningstar (yes, that is his name), and he has personally kicked my ass in a variety of tabletop and roleplaying games. The copy of Eidolon: T...
Amiibo Wave 3 Sold Out Across the Country Within Hours
The hype is real! Due to extremely limited stocks, Nintendo has managed to create an insane amount of unprecedented demand for it’s NFC enabled Amiibo figures. I had not secured a pre-order for myself for the newest wave of Amiibo which were released today in Australia. The following paragraph tells my experience trying to get my hands on some of these collectible commodities on launch day. ...
Cyberpunk Games to Scope Out in 2015
“Cyberpunk is what happens when you have a society that has the technology level of Star Trek… and is led by the likes of Gordon Gekko” The above is a simple definition of generic cyberpunk settings by a friend of mine. It’s short. It’s sweet. It’s full of references to pop culture. What’s not to love? Continuing on from this succinct explanation, one could easily suggest that the ‘high-tech, low-...
The Rise and Dangers of DLC
Video games are one of the wonders of our age. They bring storytelling into a new form, taking a passive form of entertainment like reading or a watching film and make it active. Players become the story; they are the center and focus. But like all things, games have an end, the plot ties up, the world is saved, the hero goes back to their farm. For many games, this leads to finishing up sidequest...
Looking Ahead: Microsoft’s Most Anticipated Games of 2015
2014 has been a rollercoaster ride for gamers, with some incredible highs and lows. Games like Dark Souls II, Watch_Dogs, Titanfall, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, Far Cry 4 and Dragon: Age Inquisition have for better or worse been entertaining us through the past 12 months. Well with the year winding down, we thought we would take a look at the next year of gami...