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 - Gun Godz (PC)

Hip-Hop Wolfenstein 3D, Y'all

We all love a bit of good old fashioned first person shooter action, don't we? Id Software's pioneering Wolfenstein 3D was not only an impressive tech-demo for the PC, but also a damn good game, thanks to the speedy pace, and no-nonsense, shoot-em-up action. It was released over 20 years ago, yet is still just as fun today as it ever was. Are we really going to say the same about the ever-tedious plethora of military shooters we are inundated with today? The fact that user made mods and levels are still being made for Wolf3D (as I always affectionately remember it thanks to the DOS commands needed to run it) shows that many gamers enjoy a back-to-basics murder-fest, that does away with all the story-heavy, Q.T.E. and linear hand-holding of modern FPS titles.