Treat ‘em mean to keep ‘em keen. It was this philosophy that helped Demon’s Souls emerge as the most unexpected hit of this generation. It’s a brutal game that punishes most mistakes with a quick death, and a short trip to last checkpoint, but a fair one. When you failed, you knew it’s because you weren’t good enough, not because the game cheated you. The above is also true for Dark... more.

Lords of Football probably isn’t what you’re expecting. When it was announced, people could be forgiven for assuming it was a new competitor for the insanely popular Football Manager games. And considering the dominance of that series, it’s difficult for other games to make any real impact. But having seen the game in action, it’s clear that developer Geniaware isn’t attempting to dir... more.

Summer's coming, so what's worse than the horde of flying ants and other various insects that arise to spoil your glorious British summertime? Probably if they tried to take over the world, thank god the EDF are here to stop that from happening! Earth Defense Force 2017 was the cult classic that hit the Xbox 360 in 2007 which featured an elite class of soldiers known as the Earth Defense Force,... more.

A lot of previews of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (certainly the ones written by fans of the original TV series) are likely to say the same thing. The Transformers of the Michael Bay movies are ugly, charmless hunks of metal, and not a patch on the original designs. So let’s acknowledge that, get it out of the way and move on. Whatever your feelings on Bay’s Transformers films, his combin... more.

Batman Arkham Asylum raised the bar for superhero games, but Spider-Man still has the best overall track record. From Neversoft’s PS1 game to Ultimate Spider-Man, Peter Parker’s headlined a lot of great games. But sadly, none of them have been on this generation of consoles. Spider-Man 3 was poor and the promise of Web of Shadows was marred by deeply repetitive design. Perhaps the best of r... more.

Kids these days – they don’t know how good they have it. When I was younger, we didn’t have any of these fancy Star Wars or Batman LEGO sets. No, we just had a choice between two types of LEGO: standard and pirate-themed. Naturally, I picked pirates. Throughout much of my pre-teens, I built blocky schooners, and fed LEGO sailor figures to plastic sharks (they must have been bricking it). ... more.

On the surface, a collaboration between No More Heroes creator Suda51 and Resident Evil’s Shinji Mikami is something to get excited about. As a fan of both franchises, I was very excited to try out their new game, Shadows of the Damned. I have to say – it wasn’t what I was expecting. For one thing, it’s a lot less obviously wacky than you might expect from the creator of No More Heroes.... more.

Over the last thirteen years, leaders of the racing genre, Codemasters have produced an extremely popular amount of rally games, from the original Colin McRae endorsed titles through to the more recent DiRT series. Next month will see the release of the eagerly anticipated DiRT 3 and to celebrate this, the guys at Codemasters put on a nice shindig at Battersea Power Station to showcase many of the... more.

Take a pinch of Portal, a tablespoon of Metal Gear Solid and a dash of ‘Splosion Man, and you get Warp – one of the most interesting downloadable games I’ve seen for a while. Taking the role of a teleporting, alien… erm… thingy, the player must escape from a hi-tech laboratory, while avoiding being shot by patrolling guards. The alien can’t take much abuse, so stealth is the or... more.

I like twin stick shooters a lot, so I was eager to try out Gatling Gears at EA’s recent showcase event. It proved to be a fairly traditional shooter and provided suitably explosive fun. Players control mechanical walkers, and pilot them through six expansive levels, each containing five individually scored sub-areas. It controls much like any other twin stick shooter – tilting the right st... more.