Browsing all articles by Declan Murphy.
Free to Play: Team Fortress 2
Out five years this year, Team Fortress 2 has been played and enjoyed by millions. After a year as a free-to-play game, has Team Fortress 2 retained its unique blend of class-based fun or has the weight of all the items on the Mann Store and all those free-to-play gamers crushed the quality of this much-loved title?
Free to Play: Tribes:Ascend
For the next few weeks as we wait on the launch of Planetside 2, I’ll be taking a look at what the FPS genre has to offer in the Free to Play market culminating in a critical analysis of how each one handles the model and which one offers the most bang for your….uhhh…lint? First up – Tribes: Ascend.
Shameful Gaming Month
Shameless Gaming Month is something a lot of the writers and the folks over on the X-Talk forums are participating in. As many did last year, they’re completing the uncompleted, playing the unplayed, and perhaps getting around to letting go of that one game they didn’t want to finish simply because they didn’t want it to end. I wanted to join in this year.
Hands-On: Wrack
Some time ago, a game under development caught my eye. Strongly influenced by classics such as Wolfenstien 3D and Doom, Wrack brings the player back to a simpler time in FPS history. The demo build I received from the developers, Final Boss Entertainment, may only have contained three levels but it was enough to make me believe that the final product could become a favourite among FPS fans.
Back to Basic: The Indie Surge
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a great resurgence of indie development. Harking back to the era of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, games with no more than a single developer have been making it big on every platform imaginable. In this article we take a look over the history of indie development and cast our eyes towards the future.
My Game of the Year: The Witcher 2
As the year now draws to a close, I’m forced (through the use of whips and canes) to choose my Game of the Year. After much thought and the sacrifice of two hens to the gods of decision-making, I can think of no better game to receive my nomination than The Witcher 2.
Review: Hard Reset
Just two months prior to its release, Polish developer Flying Wild Hog announced their debut game – Hard Reset. Along with the debut trailer, the developer promised an FPS with old-school sensibilities, designed exclusively for the PC. It sounded like a promising first game for the new studio. Did Flying Wild Hog succeed or fail?
A Perfect Fit
Sport (/spɔːt/) 1. an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.
Review: Legend Of Fae
From first sight, Legend of Fae had my interest. It’s a game in the same vein as Bejeweled or Puzzle Quest where you swap orbs around a box to make a column or a row of three matching orbs. So, nothing too revolutionary there then. It does, however, have something extra on top (literally). Is Endless Fluff’s first commercial game worth checking out? Above the box of orbs I mentioned earlier is the protagonist. Claudia is a young girl from the quiet haven of Sea Cross Island. She gets thrown […]
Review: Terraria
Created over the course of a few months, Terraria seemed to be just another cash-in on the Minecraft-mania that has swept over the gaming world in the last year or so….And it is, but it’s an enjoyable cash-in nonetheless. At its core, Terraria is a 2D side-scrolling platformer but beyond that is a thick crust of Minecraft. Like its contemporary, Terraria allows the player to modify their world. You can chop down trees, dig through earth and stone and build structures and items from the materials you collect. Essentially then, […]
Review: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
The Witcher games are dark fantasy games set in a world heavily influenced by European myths and culture and based upon the works of Andrzej Sapkowski who twists classic fairytales into grim, adult stories. Kings rule the land while nobles get fat off the sweat of peasants. To add colour to the world, there are monsters, mages, elves and dwarves. There are also witchers. Witchers are the professional monster hunters of the world. Taken away at a young age, they’re subjected to intense training while their bodies are mutated to […]