Adventure

They Can’t All Be Winners The irony of Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes is that I’d recently written a piece about how adventure games had gotten a new lease on life by abandoning the trappings of convention that defined them in the 90s. Then along comes this game that unpleasantly proves my point. Don’t get me wrong, Harvey’s New Eyes isn’t a terrible adventure. But it...

The Quirky Part Of Art Unfinished Swan is another one of those games that falls into the ambiguous but completely appropriate “Unique Games” category on the Playstation Network. It joins the ranks of Flower, Journey and less successful attempts like Datura to walk an untried path, do something a little less conventional and see whether there’s an audience for it. I still don’t know whether there is...

Turning The Corner Well, this is it, the second to last episode of one of the best games Telltale has produce thus far, and a sterling example of what the adventure genre as whole can do when all cylinders are firing. With the 4th episode of The Walking Dead we get a continued sense of momentum although there are some sputters here and there that keep it...

With the sheer variety of fantastic adventure games released in 2012, it's looking like the genre is making a comeback, and in a big way. Point-and-click tales have seen a huge resurgence with both indie and mainstream releases that have gone "back to basics," so to say as far as both inventive stories and characters go with the excellent Book of Unwritten Tales and Telltale Games' recent storytelling exploits....

Outrunning The Walkers So, here we are at the third episode of the Telltale take on Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead series. For anyone that is jumping into the series now, I have some absolutely essential advice; don’t do it unless you’re willing to play through the previous two episodes. This is a “serial” episodic game in that what you play now has all of its meaning and...

Point-and-click adventure games aren't dead, not by a long shot. We've just been looking for them in the wrong places, expecting them to conform to current-gen demands, while still catering to old-school conventions. In reality, there's a whole world of fantastic adventures to unearth, starting with The Book of Unwritten Tales, a gem from German developer King Art that hails back to the genre's heyday, conjuring the familiar mechanics,...

The Zombie Apocalypse Continues Telltale is blazing new ground in the genre of adventure games with their wildly dark, intense and horrific take on the iconic Robert Kirkman comic series. This second instalment, Starved For Help, continues the odyssey of Lee Everett, a new character created for the series with the blessing of Kirkman himself. It’s got to keep walking on some fairly high ground that the...

Do You Believe In Magic Sorcery is finally here. The game that was initially heralded as the perfect ambassador for arguing Move’s relevance to hardcore gaming has had an uneven journey on its road to retail. It first surfaced at E3 2010 where it showed off some unique interface mechanics, and then promptly disappeared from the radar as a slew of Wii knock-off games waggled their way...

Downloadable LSD The Datura is a flower native to California, revered by the native tribes of the area as a tool for communicating with the gods. Like Peyote, it was used a psychotropic drug to induce a trance-like, hallucinogenic state for spiritual questing. Now Plastic, the Polish demo group responsible for the 2008 PSN “game” Linger in Shadows has taken the plant and its symbolism, and used...

Robert Kirkman Is A Proud ManWhen it comes to translating a comic into a game, most properties have had a bad time of it. In recent years, there have been only two IPs that have made the transition with great success. Rocksteady’s Batman series, and The Darkness as stewarded by first Starbreeze, and now Digital Extremes. We can now add a third name to that list, as Robert Kirkman’s...

Hack, Slash, Loot is a new Roguelike game on the market by David Williamson. It’s an attempt to give players a throwback to the classic days of gaming with an old school graphical feel to it. Unfortunately, while the graphics may be charming, the game itself is rather terrible.I’ve been playing Roguelikes, well, since the original Rogue some hundred plus years ago. I’ve tried countless games out there. Naturally,...

It’s very difficult to review Dear Esther using the kind of standards that would apply to the average videogame or, for that matter, even the average film or book. That’s because it doesn’t really belong to any of these forms of traditional media. It isn’t interactive enough to be a game and too much so to fit into either of the other categories. Since the plot and...

The Name Says It AllReviewing something like Journey is a tough call. Those that are informed enough to have followed its progress already know that this is something special, that it is probably going to win a lot of awards this year. But those same people already know that those awards will likely not be game of the year. While Journey is an amazing experience that everyone should try,...

Nintendo has long branded itself as the Disney of the videogame world. While Sony and Microsoft are constantly discovering new ways for players to machine gun and chop up fresh characters, Nintendo prides itself on simple, fluffy, family-friendly entertainment. When you’re talking about games like Mario Galaxy or the latest Zelda epic, the company cranks out stunningly-crafted and all-inclusive experiences guaranteed to make any player feel like a giddy...

It isn’t really possible to start off a review of The Binding of Isaac without mentioning two things: the pedigree of its developer and its setting. The game comes from one half of Team Meat, Edmund McMillen, and, like his studio’s breakthrough, Super Meat Boy, Isaac is a throwback to old-school game design mixed with irreverent humour and a stomach-turning (but ultimately charming) visual style. So, then,...

An Adventure Detective GameWith other titles like Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton and even Telltale’s Puzzle Agent, it’s become pretty obvious that when you want to present the audience with a mystery of some kind, an adventure or puzzle game is the best way to do it. Until recently, the best bet for PS3 owners to get their fix in this area was The Blue Toad Murder Files. Puzzle Agent...

Just The Facts, Ma’am.If there’s one thing that games haven’t done a whole lot of, it’s a good old fashioned murder mystery. In recent times, there have been titles like Heavy Rain and even the Phoenix Wright series on portables that have tackled the question “whodunit” but the genre is greatly outnumbered by games that prefer straight up shooting rather than bringing a criminal to justice. Now Team Bondi...

In late 2009, Capybara Games released Critter Crunch, a much talked about gem of puzzle gem games, which not only showed an imaginative force in the small studio but also that the old genre still had a lot of kick for the imaginative. Within the same gasp of time they also gave us Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, which altogether signed off that perhaps Capy had a secret...

Touchtronic Neuroses And Other TalesThere is a moment in Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP where you finally understand that what is being asked of you is nothing at all. It is when you complete one of the early main objectives in the game and are told “We got the Gold Trigon. We are so awesome,” that it becomes clear S&S EP doesn’t want you to be smart, skilled or...