Recent reviews by - ̗̀ OWLS! ̖́-

How much videogame is too much videogame? THat's the question Volition clearly set out to answer and I think we arrived at "dunno, can we cram a bit more videogame in there, there's a bit of space left just over there".

Within the first half hour you're ridiculously overpowered with super powers, by the end of the game, you're even more ridiculously overpowered with super powers and armed with a jump that can set off a nuclear explosion. No, really. Honest. You are.

Or at least, it would have been within the first half hour if I hadn't spent the first four hours playing the tutorial just because moving around the not-City is so enjoyable.

As no-one ever had the sense to bring Crackdown to the PC (IDIOTS), this is about the closest you can get. It is, and doesn't pretend not to be for a second, Crackdown does Saints Row:As Redefined In Saints Row III. Which is JUST FINE.

Dogs are stupid. Cats wouldn't jump 30 foot onto some spikes. Stupid dogs.

Gone Home is a videogame by humans for humans about humans. Which ridiculous as it sounds, isn't something I get to type very often at all outside of discussing a certain noble subset of freeware. No manly men with a gun, no tit armour, no spaysh marinesh, just humans being very human. One of the best videogame dark and stormy nights you'll spend.

Turns out it's actually fake warfare running on a computer. Man.

So yeah, first run through DYAD on the PS3 and the shopping list design grated a heck of a lot, especially when it asks you to do a thing 100 times. NO NEED. BUT! The light at the end of the tunnel is an incredible thing, EYE OF THE DUCK is everything. All things. Take away the videogame yet leave the videogame, be one with the videogame. It's an astounding achievement. I'd put up with just about anything for a payoff like that, y'know?Get Dyad, stay for EYE OF THE DUCK for it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Oh god, I just out and out love Stealth Bastard. Which is kinda weird because I haven't really gotten on with much in the way of stealth games before or since, much preferring a full on flat out "run at it and hit it with something" approach to videogames.

But, y'know, there's a speed and a precision to Stealth Bastard. It's been said that it's aiming towards being the Super Meat Boy of stealth and that makes a certain kind of sense. It's fast, it's brutal and it has no qualms in killing you over and over and over again. The art of something like this is, of course, is that the deaths feel fair and they're never anything but. It is death as learning experience but not death as rote learning experience. It's teaching you each time to be better equipped against whatever thing that crops up next and then, for good measure, combining it with something else you've come across because that's the art of a tremendously good arcade game.

And I guess that's what Stealth Bastard is, really. It's a full on arcade, in the traditional sense, take on stealth. And I love it. It's got a cheeky sense of humour too. And is called Stealth Bastard. Stealth. Bastard.

Super Crate Box is the second bext kind of box.

It's the future of videogames you all forgot to make, you great big colossal fools. At least Digital Eel eventually got round to making up for all your silly mistakes. All of you. Everone who drifted and made -other- games. It's your fault the future isn't DATA.

I hate you for that. I love Data Jammers though.

Astounding, really. On a technical level it's hard to believe that's Source chugging away under there, on every other level it's quite a thing. Sometimes definitely overwrought but stay for the sights if nothing else appeals. It's *beautiful*.

The did-slightly-♥♥♥♥ of Space Giraffe is one of the biggest crimes against videogames known to man.

Reaching way higher than it has any right to and, give or take the odd OH MY, pretty much getting there, this is the sort of videogame I could only dream of for many years.

Just about everything about it is absolute compressed videogame brilliance. The bastard stepchild of Theurer's Tempest jettisoned into the Doctor Who title sequence. Which Doctor Who title sequence? All of them. At once. At the same time. Except it's not Tempest. Don't play it like Tempest. I mean, you can play it like Tempest but you'll end up with a really, tremendously rubbish score and look a bit silly missing out the clench-everything-hope-for-massive-score of a bullrun, throwing enemies off the web en masse for all the points, all the lives, all the things, the bullet juggling, the flower containment and on.

Progressive, smart, incredible to look at when all manner of hells shuffle forth onto the screen. Webs spin, explosions explode, things scream at you. Your giraffe sneezes into space. How many games feature a flying abstract giraffe that sneezes into space? Just this one? Thought so.

Don't touch the NUXX, take it raw as nature intended and it's a beautiful piece of futurism made game. I Adore My 64 is the stuff of legend and rightly so. You know you've nailed it when you can just shut your eyes and listen, knowing that the game gives you everything you need to survive in sound alone.

Just get it. It's incredible. Minter's masterwork and the sort of vision of videogames that so few have the technical ability to pull off, never mind the sheer gloriousness of the arcade-of-the-future design. Such a thing. Such a beautiful thing.