From unforgettable characters, challenging puzzles, and even that blasted goat: here’s why Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is still so important, even now.
When I was a teenager, I was a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series. I completed Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater about seven times each, and finished both of them on European Extreme difficulty. I knew every nuance of every character, could quote along to the script with the best of them….
Though loads of kids at my school were into video games, nobody except my friend Adam and I had ever heard of Simcopter. In the playground we both laughed and joked about what we’d been up to in its world; the missions we’d run, the criminals we’d caught and the bizarre-looking, purple-haired girl I’d found licking a lollipop,…
The games of today simply don’t feature enough time travel. There, I said it. Maybe it’s a theme just that little bit too retro for modern game devs to pull off correctly in this here 21st century, but it’s a damn shame when games like the all-round fantastic TimeSplitters series did it so well. And while I’m…
On September 20th, I turned 26 years old. That day isn’t necessarily important, and that age isn’t meaningful. But something hit me whilst I was thinking about it:Â on that day, I also celebrated 20 years of being a gamer. It’s been a part of the majority of my life, and I thought, “What has it…
I recall that, for one of my early birthdays, I told my mother that I wanted to rent the original PlayStation console from the local video game rental store. The fact that video game rental stores still existed should put this story’s timeline into perspective for you. She agreed, and so I found myself on…
In 1998 Raven Software released what would be a genre-defining, revolutionary title, one that virtually no one has heard of nowadays except hardcore fanatics and “classic” PC gamers. Heretic II was one of the first games to combine 3D with a third person viewpoint, allowing developers to explore radical new gameplay mechanics such as gymnastics,…
My life revolved around playing games. Nothing could take that love from me – until high school, that was.
The mid-Nineties saw a huge leap in the video-gaming industry as 3D games and the consoles to play them on became available. This put the likes of the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo’s N64 up against the previous generation of the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis or the SNES; a battle which would, of course, reveal only one, true winner. What…
I feel like there comes a point in every gamer’s life where they’ll try out an MMORPG for the first time and it will either show them a magical new world of gaming… or traumatise them for life. I started with the more traditional World of Warcraft in 2012. An obvious starting point, I believed, so I went…
Hidden & Dangerous 2 is probably a game you’ve never heard of. I myself know only a handful of people who are even aware of the game, let alone have ever played it. The fact that this game – a classic in my eyes; a masterpiece of tactical squad-based shooting – is so underrated is…
High above Arkham Asylum, a blackened sky looms behind a shawl of thick, grey clouds; each one lousy with smoke and dirt from Gotham’s factories. Licks of lightening tear apart the sullen sky and the ensuing booms of thunder send an unsettling feeling through the very bones of those caught in the storm. Atop the tallest building sits a buttress and atop that, a shadowy figure stands…
Not read Part One yet? Click here to read that first! A new generation has begun. One where you no longer needed memory cards, multi-taps, wires for your controller or even a real-life friend to play co-op with! With these leaps in hardware, developers were able to craft what became some seriously generation defining games:…
With the first title released in 1997, the Grand Theft Auto series began its (so far) 18-year journey as a top-down, 2D action title and from that point on, both the series and its creator, Rockstar Games (or DMA Design at the time), became powerhouses in the gaming industry. Even since those early days, both have been…
As a young child, I spent my days sneaking into my older brother’s bedroom in the hope of scoring some time on his Amiga 500. After its launch in the late eighties it may have been used by some as a home computer, but to us, in the dawn of the nineties, it was a gaming…
If you needed a mascot for your brand and your competitor had a podgy plumber with a noticeable nose and magnificent moustache, who or what would you choose as yours? It needs to be bright and cheerful with features that will immediately identify them as your property. Probably the last thing I’d think of would be…
Chances are, if you had an Xbox 360 or PS3 back in 2007, you played the very first Bioshock during its prime. It came out in the same year as many other classics including Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Halo 3. So yes, first-person shooters weren’t exactly new, but they were for 13-year-old me, and Bioshock…
Back in 2001, hardly anyone had a mobile phone, the internet connected using uncomfortably loud and ridiculous noises, and hacking had only really been seen in Scanners or WarGames. Despite this low awareness of hacking and the limitations of the technology of the time, Introversion Software, a small and independent British developer, decided to release Uplink to the…
For a series that’s 23 years old, FIFA Football has done incredibly well to stay relevant. Its singular focus means it won’t appeal to many and I suspect some of you reading this are only doing so because of an interest in game history, not in football/soccer. “Association Football” as soccer is properly termed, began…
If you’ve played a video game since the year 2000 then chances are that Deus Ex had an impact on it in some way; its large open-world hubs, encouragement of multiple play styles and an immersive and reactive story-line have left a huge mark on the industry, the benefit of which we are still enjoying…
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