By Thistle, on August 20th, 2010
Design games set out to help players to go beyond following the rules and gameplay presented by game designers. Most games can offer some level of design gaming in terms of making it easy to adjust or adapt the basic format of a game, e.g. minor changes to the rules when playing a [...]
By Thistle, on June 14th, 2010
The annual hi-tech gaming festival of choice ‘kicks off’ this week with the usual showcasing of half-ready, half-baked and, occasionally, brilliant games and gaming technology.
Nintendo’s plans to show the 3D Nintendo 3DS and the ‘eve of conference’ appearance of video footage for a handful of 3D games on the PS3 can’t [...]
By Thistle, on May 31st, 2010
Spies, saboteurs and secret agents slot straight into most game formats and settings with ease. They do so by drawing play away from direct confrontation and by asking players to try out new challenges.
Whether taking the part of spies, or simply up against some spies, players of tabletop and videogame [...]
By Thistle, on May 20th, 2010
Self-styled ‘psychological action thriller’ Alan Wake has finally appeared on the XBox after several years in development hell. The mystery adventure format recently received a boost when Heavy Rain was released, but it needs more successes to continue the current shift towards more varied gameplay.
Fortunately, Alan Wake goes a long way [...]
By Thistle, on April 11th, 2010
Just come upon some good deals on videogames while preparing a post about games and activities for World Cup 2010. The World Cup post will follow shortly but some of the offers at Amazon US and Amazon UK might be time limited, so we’ll go with that first.
As with our last [...]
By Thistle, on April 5th, 2010
Nintendo’s 3DS 3D upgrade to the DS range is just the kind of development we expected in reply to the arrival of touch tablets. As with the Wii, Nintendo are using novelty and innovation to tap straight into the interest stirred up by 3D movies and the prospect of watching the World Cup [...]
By Thistle, on March 27th, 2010
The recently released Dragon Age: Origins – Awakenings pack for the enjoyable, if slightly predictable, Dragon Age: Origins franchise is surprisingly good value if you’re a PC owner. The original game impressed on many levels and the first major add-on brings another 25 or so hours of equally intense gameplay.
Our Darkspawn [...]
By Thistle, on March 17th, 2010
The Move system is Sony’s new handheld motion-sensing device for the Playstation 3. It will be autumn 2010 before either the Move or any Move-ready games are available but Sony have set out their plans for the PS3 well in advance of the 2010 E3 [...]
By Thistle, on March 10th, 2010
The Final Fantasy series has managed to retain the videogame RPG crown for several years. Early sales of Final Fantasy XIII already suggest that the now familiar mix of glossy graphics and extended RPG gameplay will be another huge success for Square Enix.
Existing fans of the series are likely to be [...]
By Thistle, on February 18th, 2010
Amazon UK has posted some excellent ‘Half-Term Deals’. The offers include a few of the best videogames we’ve looked at in recent months. If you live in the UK, or nearby, Sims 3, Darksiders and Dragon Age: Origins are among the most heavily discounted titles.
We also noticed the first signs of [...]