Gaming
Stuart Houghton
It is 2017 and we are still having this conversation: are video games art? We have been using computers to play games for at least 55 years. Arguably the first true computer game, Spacewar!, was developed in 1962 at MIT, although simple games had been played on early mainframe computers as early as the 1950s. The first games with a narrative arrived in the early 1970s.Film critic Roger Ebert famously declared in 2010 that “video games can never be art”, but his perception was based on a limited exposure to anything beyond the simplest arcade games. If film can be considered art – and if Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
In 2013, NetherRealm Studios, the creative force behind the multi-million-selling Mortal Kombat franchise, got their hands on the DC Comics character roster and created a highly polished game where superheroes were at war with each other. Lois Lane lay dead amongst the ruins of a post-nuclear Metropolis, where broken city streets hosted pitched battles between a tyrannical Superman administration and a Batman-led insurgency. Injustice: Gods Among Us was born; the jaw-dropping visuals combined with intuitive controls and surprising gameplay depth made it a big hit with both hardcore and casual Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Gamers have marched up and down more eerie space station corridors than Alien’s Ripley on Ritalin. From System Shock and Dead Space via Alien Isolation, Space Hulk and The Chronicles of Riddick, most of us have done the hard yards anxiously sprinting passed bits of generic futurist interior design, like Zaha Hadid let loose on Deep Space Nine.Prey, the latest run-gun-and-get-hopelessly-lost-in-another-bloody-space-station game is heavily influenced by the aforementioned System Shock and Dead Space titles. You’re a guy or girl who finds themselves outnumbered and often out of ideas after your Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in Covent Garden. There are plenty of private members club in central London, but The Hospital Club is uniquely a creative hub with its own television studio, gallery and performance space, which for certain events are open to non-members.The Hospital Club, which takes its name from the hospital built on the same site in Endell Street in 1749, puts considerable effort into supporting the arts and media. The most tangible evidence of this is its own annual awards for innovative achievements in the creative Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
The latest instalment in this massive open world sci-fi role-playing game joins the 2017 party in full swing, with both Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild raising the bar for the RPG genre. But with the Mass Effect games considered the very cream of the crop, the pressure to perform at a new zenith appears a little too much for a trilogy that looks like it has seen better days.To understand the flaws in this fourth Mass Effect title, you must first take a 600-year commute, from the early 22nd century, aboard an intergalactic pathfinder en route to the Andromeda Galaxy, where humanity Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
When a great game presents itself, all its moving parts sing in harmonious unison. The intriguing and engaging story supports the beautiful visuals, the varied and challenging gameplay sits perfectly within the narrative and the gameworld feels full of promise and potential. Repetition doesn’t repeat itself, there’s no grind - just the experience of exploration and adventure and at its very best you just can’t get enough of it. Welcome to the fantasy world of Horizon Zero Dawn: you won’t be disappointed.With a hype introduction like that you could expect this PS4-exclusive single player Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
A sniper is a thinking man’s soldier. The aloof assassin is always outnumbered but never outgunned, a patient predator and considered killer. It sounds quite glam, doesn’t it? But it’s a soup-for-one profession and ranks high on the dullness detector. There’s all that hanging around to contend with. Checking your kit, waiting for the right conditions. Waiting, waiting, always with the waiting. A bit like fishing, without the desire to boast about the one that got away.Fortunately, Sniper Elite 4 knows that shooter fans have a low patience threshold and has tools in place to counterbalance the Read more ...
theartsdesk
It was the year of Pokémon Go, and it was the year the mainstream offered sequels. There were also some gems on console and mobile platforms. Steve O'Rourke and Steve Houghton look back on the developments in the world of gaming in 2016. CONSOLEThe year 2016 was certainly not a vintage one for mainstream videogames. In a risk-averse industry where it is so much easier, cheaper and commercially safer to roll out another sequel, the release roster would often read more like high-scoring football results: Civilisation VI, Street Fighter V, Gears of War 4, Dark Souls III.The majority of the Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Time Locker takes a simple concept first seen in Piotr Iwanicki’s 3D shooter, Superhot and repurposes it for a top-down 2D endless run & gun game. In most shooters, rapid movement and frantic aiming are the norm but in Superhot time only advances when you move. You can stand still and take in your surroundings, including the trajectory of bullets and enemies frozen in the air, and then move to dodge or intercept them. As soon as you move a millimeter, however, the clock starts ticking and everything starts moving again.Time Locker’s version of Superhot’s 3D gun battles is an endless plain Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
The annual Call of Duty instalment once again steps into future warfare, but this time in a far-flung age where off-world colonies have sprung up, thrived and now threaten the order of things.In the single-player campaign, you play as Captain Reyes, an elite soldier who takes the helm of the Retribution, one of Earth’s last remaining warships. You take to the stars after a Pearl Harbor-style attack on your homeworld that serves up a typically spectacular opening set piece where much of your fleet ends up crashing and burning in the city streets below.Reyes must defend his home against this Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Just as there are only seven different stories for fiction in the world, there are a paltry number of videogame genres. Every year games developers have to not so much reinvent the wheel, but polish the hubcaps or add a few new spokes to try and deliver something fresh to an ever-demanding audience.Arguably the largest gaming genre, first-person shooters or run-and-gun games, has the toughest ask. How can you constantly reimagine an experience that is essentially point and click? Enter the graceful giant that is Titanfall 2, the sequel to the 2014 Xbox One "killer app" that bolstered the Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
The Skylanders titles are at the forefront of the toys-to-life genre. Players place plastic figurines on a physical "portal" connected to the console, with the characters then appearing on screen, in a 3D world filled with loot, upgrade items and battles. Each character has different attributes, with many available to purchase at additional cost.Toys to life brings dollars to life too. The Skylanders franchise is worth a staggering $3 billion, selling more than 250 million toys since debuting with Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure in 2011. And every year since has brought a new Skylanders Read more ...