Review - Behind You (PlayStation Mobile) Fun indie stealth game for your Vita!

Some games seem to want to remain anonymous. That's the only conclusion I can come to when faced with titles like Behind You, a small indie title I recently stumbled across on the PlayStation Mobile section of the Vita's Store page. You see, I could not find any information on the whole of the interweb regarding this cute, Japanese stealth action affair. It had a release date on Metacritic, but that's all I could find, hence you will see I have had to resort to taking screenshots of the game using my camera phone (yes really)! Though, the irony of a stealth game being hard to track down is not lost on me.

Review - Nuclear Throne (PC)

Hail to the King!

It's great to be king. At least that's what the mutated denizens of the irradiated wasteland - the setting for Vlambeer's latest shoot-em-up roguelike - believe. To lay claim to the royal seating apparatus they must navigate a set of arena-like stages, filled with a plethora of other radioactive beasties who will stop at nothing to see the heroes fail. The ever-familiar roguelike genre is unleashed again, only this time with the hyperactive, balls-to-the-wall action of a twin stick shooter attached. This is not a new concept, Teknopants' excellent game Shoot First dished up a winning combination of randomly generated stages, levelling up and Robotron 2048 style blasting back in 2010. But this is the first time the genre mashup has met the boombastic style of Vlambeer and the wonderful pixel art of Paul Veer, who also created the visuals for popular platformer, Super Crate Box.

Review - MURI (PC)

C:\
Cd\games\Muri
Muri.exe

For PC gamers of a certain age, the command lines above will instantly bring back memories of a wonderful era of gaming - that of the PC's DOS operating system. Completely command line driven - there were no Windows style icons to click - DOS involved manually typing everything in order to setup or run the game. The DOS period evokes memories of CGA, EGA, and VGA graphics, of Adlib or SoundBlaster audio cards or, if you go back even further, of the hideous bleeps and bloops that would vomit forth from the PC's internal speaker. Some people look back on it as a huge chore, yet back in 1993, when I got my very first desktop system (a 486 DX2/66), it was like opening up a whole new world of possibilities, one that involved more than just inserting a cartridge and pressing the 'on' button.

Retro Review - Shinobi X (Shinobi Legions) (Sega Saturn)

You can't keep a good ninja down

Poor old Shinobi, he doesn't get much love these days. Like many other Sega franchises - Toejam & Earl, Streets of Rage, Alex Kidd etc. - Shinobi peaked in the late 80's and early 90's, before fading away, leaving only lackluster titles on more modern systems in its wake. The original Shinobi, released into arcades way back in 1987, is actually one of my all time favourite coin-ops, with some powerful nostalgia attached. Likewise, Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer and Shinobi III are some of my favourite Mega Drive games, and remain the pinnacle of 16-bit action platform games. 

Indie News - Vindicator : Uprising - Demo released

Welcome to Hell

Welcome you ungodly heathens, please take a seat and wait for your ticket number to be called, upon which point you will be heading straight to Hell. Fire up the BBQ, I'll see you down there. Who doesn't enjoy a bit of casual blasphemy. Apart from, y'know, God, or whichever deity you waste your precious time adoring. Well the guys over at Gamephase have certainly reserved their seats in eternal damnation for this effort - their new game, Vindicator : Uprising. 

Review - Artibeus (PC)

Artibeus is a simple indie game for the PC which tasks you with collecting fruits around a spooky castle. Oh, and you are a bat. A fruit bat maybe? (ho ho). Terrible jokes aside, the game is a 2D game that requires nothing more from you than using the arrow keys to move said bat around the single screen stages, nabbing all the fruit and avoiding the instant death enemies that float randomly around.

Retro Review - Elevator Action Returns (Arcade)

A sequel done right!

The original Elevator Action from 1983 is often hailed as a coin-op classic, up there with the likes of Dig Dug, Galaga, and Donkey Kong, but personally I have never really cared for it. With bland visuals, a slow pace, and incredibly repetitive gameplay, I have always found it a bit, y'know, boring. This is certainly something that I can't level at Taito's 1994 sequel, which took the basic template set in the original and enhanced and improved upon everything to a huge degree. It may have taken over a decade for it to appear, but Elevator Action Returns is bigger, badder and much, much better.

Retro Review - Mopiranger (MSX)

The strangely titled Mopiranger is classic top down, arcade style game clearly based on the exploits of a certain yellow dot-munching circle. Coming out on the slightly obscure MSX system back in 1983, Mopiranger was one of many Konami titles to grace the platform, and contains the developer's usual high level of charm and playability.

Review - Risk of Rain (PC)

In space everyone can hear you scream (in frustration)

Risk of Rain is another new PC indie game that features the ever popular roguelike elements that we are seeing in more and more games of late (hoorah!). Taking the form of a 2D action platformer, you are tasked with the simple goal of escaping a strange and barren alien world via a teleporter located somewhere on the surface. Sounds simple right? Well, no. Hampering your escape are a legion of alien monstrosities, hell bent on your demise (aren't they always?). As with all good games, nothing is quite as simple as it initially appears. After locating your only means of escape from this hostile planet, you are required to activate the teleporter, an action which results in a countdown, during which monsters continuously spawn into existence in order to make your life as difficult as possible. 

Retro Review - Psychic Killer Taromaru (Saturn)

Too rich for my blood

Psychic Killer Taromaru - a rough approximation of its original Japanese title of Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru - is a bit of an oddity, being both an extremely obscure title, yet also well known in Sega Saturn fan circles thanks to its status as one of the rarest and most expensive games for the system. Of course, rarity is no measure of quality - many of the rarest games are ones that did not sell very well upon their original release. So, is it worth paying over £200 for an original copy? Well no, of course it isn't. No game is. But is it worth checking out for those of you with a 'special' Sega Saturn, or a decent Saturn emulator?

Retro Review - Die Hard Trilogy (Playstation)

Yippie-Ki-Yay (obviously!)

People often claim that something can be so bad that it is actually good. I, personally, have never really agreed with this statement, as I usually find that if something is, indeed, bad, then it usually is best avoided. However, I think I may have found the exception to this in the form of Die Hard Trilogy on the original Playstation - a game that constantly makes me laugh out loud (sorry, LOL .. sigh) due to its terrible graphics, completely gratuitous and ridiculous gore, comic voice acting, or liberties taken with the source material. Yet it's a game that I keep coming back to. 

REVIEW - Pac-Man Championship Edition DX + (XBLA)

Wakka Wakka Wakka

Still officially one of the best games on XBLA, as voted by me, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (Phew!) is one the greatest updates to a classic game ever created, as well as being more addictive than the tastiest of crack rocks. I have ploughed many, many hours into the 2010 release, shunning such trivial necessities such as sleep and food in order to spend hour upon hour munching dots and ghosts to a psytrance soundtrack. Now, 3 years later, we have some fresh new DLC to devour like the gluttonous Pac-Man whores we all are. 

Retro Review - Crime City (Arcade)

Do you feel lucky? Punk!

As a huge fan of Taito's arcade games of the 80's and 90's, not to mention the platform run & gun genre in general, I was delighted, yet also surprised, to discover Crime City only recently. Released at the end of the 1980's, Crime City puts you in the non-regulation shoes of a plainclothes detective on a mission to rescue the city's major and put an end to the huge crime spree sweeping the city. A cliched plot devoid of any originality whatsoever, this theme carries over into the game itself, which plagiarises  pretty much every platform action game that came before it, as well as many popular movies of the 1980's, most notably the Lethal Weapon series - the two main characters are a black and white detective named Tony Gibson and Raymond Brody respectively.

Retro Game - Dick Tracy (Mega Drive / Genesis)

Return of the Mac

Dick Tracy has to be one of the shittest names for a comic book hero I have ever heard. Seriously! Not only does he have a shocking name, but he also wears a bright yellow mac and hat. I guess tastes were very different back in the 1930's when Tracy first made it onto comic book stands. His popularity has obviously lasted over many decades however, as he has received video game adaptations on every system you can think of – from the 8-bit home micros, consoles and handhelds, to the 16-bit generation (Mega Drive and Amiga), as well as the PC and even mobile devices. The adaptation I enjoyed the most (I still have nightmares about the heinous NES version) is the Sega Mega Drive version from 1990.