Review: Crimson Alliance (XBLA)

Releasing poison gas is almost always a bad idea.

Crimson Alliance is a co-operative dungeon crawler for XBLA. Offered for free if you bought all four of this year's Summer of Arcade titles, is it worth purchasing individually?

Star Wars: The Old Republic Gets A Release Date

Lightsaber duels: sure to be unsatisfying when button-bashed.

If you were hoping to be able to get through your Christmas exams before finding your life wholly devoured by Bioware's new MMO, well, there's no easy way to say this: I have some really bad news for you. 

You beta believe it: Diablo III

And then the Witchdoctor, he told me what to do, he said "Summon arcane death!"

I took some time today to watch footage of the beta test for Blizzard's highly anticipated sequel, Diablo III. The most interesting part of the video, unless you happen to be mad-keen on watching lots of running and gold collecting, was examining how each of the five different character classes play, and of course, as an aside to that, how quickly you can find yourself drawn to one in particular.

Suffering Through Final Fantasy XIII: Part III

This scene looks blooming marvellous. Pity I never made it that far.

My occasion to further experiment with Final Fantasy XIII has come to a close, and to be honest, I'm more than ready to draw the curtain on it. As much as I would have loved to have made it through the requisite 25-hour-long tutorial that opens up the game, in the end I found myself lacking the time and, perhaps most importantly, the willpower to make it through to the slightly less linear second half.

Leedmees (XBLA)

Leed on mee, when you're not strong, etc.

One of few XBLA titles to feature Kinect controls, Leedmees had me immediately interested for that reason, being as it is that Microsoft's motion-capture hardware has suffered and been criticised for a lack of quality software with which to use it. Konami's new puzzle game features impressively accurate Kinect control wrapped in an enjoyable puzzle game.

Quick Review: Techno Kitten Adventure (XBLA/iOS)

Techno Kitten Adventures will surprise your senses.

I heard about this game from the folks over at Super Happy Funtime Show podcast. Available through the Xbox Live Indie Games community, and also the App Store, Techno Kitten Adventure is a veritable epileptic fit of good fun.

Just completed: Deus Ex: Human Revolution (X360)

Adam Jensen: Hater of lightbulb fanatics.

There are a chosen few titles - such as Half Life, Legend of Zelda, or World of Warcraft - which come to secure a place in gaming's collective consciousness, but when Ion Storm's Deus Ex came out in 2000, it quickly scaled the ranks to become not only an instant hall-of-famer but to be regarded by many, including PC Gamer magazine, as 'The Greatest PC Game of All Time'. High praise indeed, if fruitless, for although the sequel, Invisible War, was still considered to be a decent effort, it failed to captivate players to the same degree as its forefather. All of this goes some way to explaining why I had completely missed the PR regarding Eidos Montréal's prequel, Human Revolution. What a mistake I had made, and boy am I glad it was rectified.