Score! Classic Goals
iGamer Score draw something
Saturday, 6 October 2001 at Old Trafford. It's the nintey-third minute and England are staring into the abyss. Following a typically nervy performance, we're 2-1 down to Greece, facing the ignominy of gifting automatic qualification to Germany and the prospect of a tricky two-leg play-off against Ukraine to reach the 2002 World …
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
Review Gun lickers
As with any dominant genre, the question keeps arising: is the military-shooter nearing the end of its hegemony? Well, on the evidence of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier this question appears to have an answer.
Ghost Recon Future Soldier Wading for war
It has everything you'd expect from a modern Triple-A shooter. There's the …
Lost Winds 2: Winter of the Melodias
iGamer Blow job?
With his Chibi proportions and boyish looks, Toku cuts an extremely familiar figure, as do most of the things around him: talking animals, impish sprites and elemental deities. So pervasive is Nintendo's influence throughout Winter of the Melodias, in fact, that neither the land of Mistralis nor its diminutive hero would seem …
Total War Battles: Shogun
iGamer Play it again, Samurai
For fans of the PC series, the first hour of Total War Battles: Shogun - on iOS but coming soon to Android - will be defined purely by what's missing.
The RTS gameplay was never going to squeeze onto fondleslabs without hefty distillation, of course. But in early forays The Creative Assembly's first handheld stab at its popular …
Hunters 2
iGamer Stand-up fight - or another bug hunt?
Turn-based tactical role-playing games seem ideally suited to touchscreens. Their top-down or isometric graphics go easy on mobile processors, their measured, methodical gameplay never asks too much of limited control inputs and, perhaps most importantly, their short challenge and reward cycles provide instant dopamine …
Angry Birds Space
iGamer High jinks in low gee
Such was the original's stellar success it's no wonder resisting the pull of Angry Birds Space is proving more difficult than escaping an event horizon. Ask the ten million or so folk who've apparently downloaded it since last Friday, and they'll tell you. You simply can't mess with universal laws - you're going to get sucked in …
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
Review Dead again
At the core of zombie fiction lies a deep-seated sense of hopelessness and inevitability. That no matter how hard you fight, no matter how many lucky escapes you pull off, and no matter where you flee to, your eventual, grisly demise is assured by the indomitable Pepé Le Pews of horror.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Is …
Waking Mars
iGamer Cerebral sci-fi gaming
An exquisitely mature and thought-provoking iOS adventure, Waking Mars is a love letter to late-1970s and early-1980s sci-fi films such as Silent Running, Solaris and Alien.
Just as those movies contrasted the space opera of Star Trek and Star Wars with more believable, melancholic depictions of man's cosmological insignificance …
Mobile gaming: battle of the gadgets
Feature One thing to rule them all?
Reg Hardware Mobile Week
Gamers are everywhere nowadays. Often gamers who don't even consider themselves gamers. Take the woman beside me on the Sardine Express to London last week. Late-30s, attractive, suited and well-manicured – far removed from the stereotypical gamer. But there she was, 7:30 in the morning on a packed …
Beat Sneak Bandit
iGamer Clock rock
Tap your finger to the beat. On the face of it, Beat Sneak Bandit's mechanic doesn't promise compulsive gaming. But developer Simogo squeezes more innovation from this single-finger iOS puzzler than many console and computer games manage by tying your hands in knots.
Beat Sneak Bandit iPhone game screenshot
Drawn in a …
Syndicate
Review Bullfrog classic revived
Cyberpunk's lasting appeal is often attributed to its familiar tropes: dystopian near-future settings, rapid technological advancements, massive societal upheaval and, of course, alienated loners living off-the-grid. But it's not the conventions that sustain the genre, but its allegories.
Syndicate Rooftop rampage
They warn …
The Darkness II
Review Shadow people
On paper, there's very little to like about The Darkness II. Take your character Jackie Estacado, for starters. Even before taking into account the unspeakable evil to which he is host, few gaming protagonists are as monstrously unsympathetic as the contract killer turned mob boss.
The Darkness II Hit the fairground
Then …
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Review Hit and myth
Like a mage's potion, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is based on a tried and tested formula: the essence of Fable II, a dash of Oblivion, the gizzards of God of War. And let's not forget the vital binding agent, of course: a liberal dose of Tolkien's legendarium.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Circle of strife
That's not to say …
2012 Games Preview
What to put on your play list
What are you most looking forward to next year? Euro 2012 and the Olympics? Quad-core fondleslabs? The extra bank holiday? Ridley Scott's Prometheus? Sequoia blitzing 20 petaflops? Something entirely different, perhaps? Or maybe you're just too busy cramming your underground bunker full of bottled water and dried fruit ahead of …
2011's Best... Games
Xmas Gift Guide Line up your holiday entertainment
With the likes of Bulletstorm, Gears of War 3 and Frozen Synapse narrowly missing out on my annual list of top ten games, it would seem 2011 has been a pretty decent year for videogames.
The vulture-eyed Reg reader will, however, notice the list is dominated by sequels and franchises – for which I make no apologies. It's simply …
Epoch
iGamer Robot wars
With its heavy arsenal and cover-to-cover, pop-and-shoot gunplay, Epoch looks every inch the Gears of War clone. But look a little closer and you'll discover Uppercut Games' shooter has a great deal more in common with Infinity Blade than Epic's testicular trilogy.
Epoch iOS game screenshot Warbots
Thanks to the Unreal Engine …
Need for Speed: The Run
Review Step on it
Releasing a driving game into an already congested market is a risky endeavour for any developer. So it follows that releasing two within six months could be considered careless. But to release three within a year, as EA has now done, seems at best illogical and, at worst, pure cannibalistic folly.
Need for Speed: The Run …
Saints Row: The Third
Review Extreme - and then some
You shouldn't laugh at Saints Row: The Third. I mean, what's funny about bludgeoning an old lady to death with a three-foot-long purple dildo? Or kidnapping a gimp-wearing BDSM fetishist and forcing him to to pull your chariot in gladiatorial Pony Play?
Saints Row The Third Hand over the Carats
That's the crux of the Saints …
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition
Review Bark of the Covenant
Love it or hate it, it's impossible to ignore Halo's legacy. With the exception of Super Mario, no other videogame series has been as critical to the success of its target platform - or as influential on the videogames industry as a whole.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition Urban jungle
Arguably the most important …
Goldeneye 007: Reloaded
Review Yesterday never dies
Here we go again. Back to bungie jumping from the dam at Arkhangelsk. Back to sneaking across the snowy fields around the Severnaya satellite installation. And back to dodging fierce crossfire on the gantries of an antenna cradle.
Goldeneye 007 Reloaded The sound of silencer
After almost 15 years, these sequences remain some …
Batman: Arkham City
Review The best superhero game. Ever.
Hung upside down over a vat of acid or strapped to a conveyor belt inching towards a blast furnace, Batman could always rely on technology to help him pull off an unlikely escape. That is if he... could... just... reach... his... utility belt, of course.
Batman: Arkham City 'If this is a consular ship, then where is the …
Another World 20th Anniversary Edition
iGamer Poly gone?
It's one of gaming's longest enduring and most profound existential questions. Twenty years and as many platforms later, Another World - aka Out of this World in the US -remains as enigmatic as ever, surviving even creator Eric Chahi's own fascinating personal deconstruction of his work at this year's Game Developers Conference …
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon
Review Wings and roundabouts
“For good or for ill, air mastery is the supreme expression of military power,” said Churchill, “and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.”
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Taken under the wing
That may be true in the real world, but when it comes to videogames air combat has long accepted …
Dark Souls
Review Death awaits
Plunging from a treacherous rampart, slowly succumbing to the poisonous bite or bludgeoned by a monstrous ice giant – Dark Souls wants you dead. And it doesn't care how.
Dark Souls Shanking of the colossus
That should come as no surprise, of course. Anyone who dared play last year's Demon's Souls knows all too well that death …
Rise of Nightmares
Review Kinect's first frightfest?
A spine-tingling unease, an oppressive sense of dread, an irrepressible fear – dusting off and firing up the Kinect sensor can fill any self respecting gamer with a profound foreboding. Since its release almost a year ago, Child of Eden stands as the only hardcore game to shine its - admittedly brilliant - light through the …
Gears of War 3
Review Get the rounds in
When it comes to goodbyes, Gears of War 3 proves that parting truly is the sweetest of sorrows. A swansong of bewildering scope and ambition, it's a near-flawless conclusion to Epic's highly acclaimed series.
Gears of War 3 Fire in the hole
With only a handful of games able to rival it for intensity, action and drama, and …
Resistance 3
Review Hostile virus
It's hard to know whether to blame its own over-bearing derivation or the over-saturation of FPS games in general: either way, Resistance 3 is an anticlimatic end to a series that has struggled to rise above mediocrity.
Resistance 3 Holey smoke
That's hardly surprising. The greatest achievement of the first two Resistance …
appToyz appBlaster
iGamer Gunning for control
Gaming peripherals have a bad reputation, and not without good reason. From the sublime Steel Battalion controller to every ridiculous Wii peripheral, these plastic appendages have one thing in common: they make gamers look sublimely ridiculous.
appToyz appBlaster Point and shoot: appToyz appBlaster
Even those which actually …
Dell Alienware M18x 18.4in gaming notebook
Review Playing away from home
Last year, Dell added to its Alienware laptop family and simultaneously expanded the definition of ultra-portables with the tiny-beefcake M11x. This year's new addition, the flagship M18x, now expands the other end of the spectrum.
Dell Alienware M18x Big player: Dell's Alienware M18x
Labelling this colossus a desktop …
appToyz appWheel
iGamer Bum steer?
“For fuck's sake, Mum. I asked for the appBlaster; not the fucking appWheel. You've totally fucked Christmas. No wonder dad's shacked up with that 26-year-old stunner. I fucking hate you!”
I can picture it now. Christmas morning 2011 – surly, ungrateful teenager versus distraught, nonplussed mum. Not that I've even tried the …
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Review Augmented realty
Forget the lacklustre sequel Invisible War, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the true, worthy successor to Deus Ex, a breathtaking paragon of the genre the original helped define.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Bringing more to the table
Yes, there's little novelty in its genre conceits. Hacking and circumvention, augmentations, …
Five... freshly picked iOS gaming apps
iGamer The latest from Apple's amusement arcade
If you've survived the sink estate uprising and still have a job after Global Financial Meltdown II, you might just enjoy one of the recent crop of iOS games on your commute to work.
Cut the Rope: Experiments
RH Numbers
Cut rope, free candy, feed Om Nom. Like all the best casual titles, Cut the Rope's simple premise and …
Call of Juarez: The Cartel
Review Drugs, thugs and automobiles
In theory, The Cartel's contemporary setting is a wise move for the Call of Juarez series. The moderate success of the first two Western-themed games was instantly undone when Red Dead Redemption moseyed into the overlooked genre, rounded up the pretenders and rode them out of town. By relocating to the present day, developer …
Oi, Android, get gaming sorted out NOW
iGamer Reg Hardware's resident gamer vents spleen
On Christmas Day 2011 I'll pass a significant milestone. This year's baby-Jesus-knees-up will mark the thirtieth anniversary of my love affair with gaming. That's thirty trips around the Sun since I unwrapped, unboxed and played my first videogame - Fire on Game & Watch, if you're interested.
Or some 10,957 sunsets and sunrises …
Air Conflicts: Secret Wars
Review Wing men
In recent years aerial combat games have been in free fall. The genre stalled after the seminal Il-2 Sturmovick and has struggled to pull out of a seemingly irrecoverable nosedive. But, contrary to their dubious quality, the continuing popularity of the Ace Combat and Hawx series proves interest remains sky high for the genre. …
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Review Robotic behaviour
Last year's War for Cybertron salvaged Transformers from gaming's scrapyard. While still not fully realising the potential of the IP, High Moon Studios' game combined reverential treatment of the fiction with solid controls and decent gameplay to mark a high point for the franchise.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon Step on it, or …
Shadows of the Damned
Review Resident devil
The old saying goes that if you go to hell, you'll be far too busy shaking hands with friends to care. Well, not in Shadows of the Damned's hell, you won't. Your finger's never off the trigger long enough to shake with fear, let alone shake hands with anyone.
Shadows of the Damned Lighten up, mate
Developed under the banner …
Infamous 2
Review Mutant ninja circles
When it comes to superhero videogame sequels, it pays to be honest about your expectations. With the most compelling elements exhausted in the original – namely the collection and mastering of superpowers – all you can realistically hope from a sequel is one of two clichés. Will it go for the cheap shot and rob you of your …
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Android tablet
Review Tabtop computing at its best?
Billed as the year of the fondleslab, 2011 has so far failed to deliver on the hype. With sales of Motorola's Xoom sluggish at best, the BlackBerry Playbook too idiosyncratic for most and the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tantalisingly conspicuous by its absence, Asus looks to steal a march on the competition with its Eee Pad Transformer …
Duke Nukem Forever
Review What were we waiting for, Christmas?
In a game bursting with 1980s macho-movie quotes and in-jokes, one line resonates far beyond Duke Nukem Forever’s puerile script. Besieged by an alien invasion, the President of the United States ignores calls to beg the eponymous meathead to save the planet, lamenting, “Duke, you’re a relic from a different era.”
Duke Nukem …
Hunted: The Demon's Forge
Review Take a bow
Let's get one thing straight, Hunted: The Demon's Forge is not an RPG.
Hunted: The Demon's Forge Hanging in the green room before a shoot
Sure, you fight through enough besieged villages, possessed forests and dank and gloomy dungeons to fill Middle Earth twice over. Your standard enemies, the Wargar, bear an uncanny …
Ball games: the latest sports releases
Review Action for the armchair athlete
Here at Vulture Central, we love a challenge. And they don't come more challenging than reviewing three sports games in three days. So all warmed up and ready to play, with club, racket and cue in hand, I head onto the course and court and into the Crucible to give you the lowdown on Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2012 Masters, Virtua …
LA Noire
Review Looking for clues
If you were expecting Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption dressed in police uniform, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. LA Noire is far removed from its Rockstar stablemates. Sure, it bears all the hallmarks of gaming's master craftsman: the peerless synergy of narrative, art direction and game design, the unabashed depiction …
iControlPad Bluetooth controller for mobile devices
iGamer Finger clickin' good
Ever tried a bout of Quake III on your Android tablet or a few laps of Super Mario Kart on your iPhone? Chances are, you spent the first few seconds smiling with nostalgia and the rest of the time hurling expletives at the poor controls. Even simple platformers, such as Super Mario World, although translating well onto …
Operation Flashpoint 2: Red River
Review Strategic manœuvres
Hightailing it across the vast, open countryside in the middle of the night. Fighting a desperate rearguard action against an indomitable force. Squinting through the claustrophobic green murk of nightvision for enemies hidden among trees and rocky outcrops.
Operation Flashpoint: Red River Gun runners
Fearing the lethality of …
SOCOM 4
Review Another banger?
If the murder-sim genre has taught us anything, it’s that gamers require little pretext to kill. It helps, of course, when justification is provided through exposition, or by that simplest casus belli of all, an enemy pulling the trigger first. But occasionally, along comes a game like SOCOM 4 to prove all we really need to know …
Portal 2
Review No peace to the puzzles
“The best solution to a problem,” says GLaDOS, “is usually the easiest one.” She's right, of course. But then she always is. Portal players know all too well how inadvisable it is to disagree with Aperture Science's sociopathic AI caretaker, but it's surprising how often her maxim proves true during the sequel to Valve's much- …
Minotron: 2112 on iOS 4
iGamer Blast from the past
A psychedelic 8-bit arena shooter featuring amorous ungulates and minotaurs in rainbow-coloured jumpers. The more you try to explain a Jeff Minter game, the more ridiculous it sounds.
Llamasoft Minotron 2112 No need to dust down your Amiga or Atari thanks to the Minotaur Project
For over 20 years, his company Llamasoft has …
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Android smartphone
Review The Playstation phone in all but name
The evolution of smartphones has introduced a divide between gaming capability and gaming playability. Powerful processors and operating systems allow increasingly complex gaming. But complex games demand complex controls. Finger swishing and prodding might suffice when flinging belligerent avians around the screen, but virtual …
Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed
Review Geared up for action
Just how can a new racing game carve out a niche in a saturated genre? How can you improve on the intensity of Race Driver Grid, the visuals of F1 2010, or the driving physics of Gran Turismo 5 and Forza 3?
Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Pretty straight forward
Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed seeks to answer those …
