Category: Reviews

Platform: PC, PS4
Developer: Zombie Studios
Website: www.playdaylight.com
Australian rating: M

For the first 15 minutes Daylight had me hooked. Waking up in a dark, abandoned hospital with only a handful of flares, glow-sticks, and a smartphone for light, a spooky voice on the other end of that phone, and no weapons to protect myself from things scurrying around in the shadows? That’s a fine setup for a horror game, immersive and eerie. But Daylight revealed its rules too quickly, and once you’ve seen behind the curtain and know how a game works the intrigue drains right out of it – especially if it’s content to just repeat those rules until it’s done.

Here’s how it goes: each dark location is a series of rooms dead-ending at a mystical lock that can only be opened by a sigil, which is an item imbued with personal significance – perhaps a doll, or a Bible. The sigil won’t appear until you find six clues (called ‘remnants’ by the game and your friend on the phone), which are scattered notes that might be hospital administration papers, newspaper articles, or diary fragments, all slowly contributing to a convoluted backstory.

Once you’ve collected the remnants, revealed the sigil, and opened the lock you move on to a slightly different set of darkened rooms to do the whole thing again. And again. That’s the entire game.

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Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Developer: Warner Bros. Games Montréal
Website: www.batmanarkhamorigins.com
Australian rating: M

‘Cold, Cold Heart’ is an expansion for Batman: Arkham Origins that introduces the wintry villain Mr. Freeze. Tragically, at no point in this add-on does Mr. Freeze say “Stay cool” or “Let’s kick some ice!” or even “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” It’s as if he doesn’t realise the entire point of being a cold-themed bad guy is the incredible variety of puns available to him.

Instead, he teams up with the Penguin to kidnap a philanthropist during a Gotham City charity event. This is why Bruce Wayne doesn’t use his fortune to fight crime at its source by stamping out poverty – every time he tries, a bunch of goons in masks arrive and wave guns in the air before taking hostages so their boss can threaten them. Which Mr. Freeze does, while completely missing the perfect opportunity to say, “This seems like an ice party.”

Sigh.

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Platform: PC
Developer: Fatshark
Website: www.warofthevikings.com
Australian classification: Unrated

The Viking swings his axe and you backpedal furiously, swapping your bow for your sword in time to parry his next swing. The blow after that bites into your arm, but you’ve delayed the warrior long enough for one of your Saxon brethren to arrive. He stabs your enemy in the back and the Viking falls to his knees. You raise your sword for the finishing blow.

Unfortunately it takes three tries to get your aim right because your sword keeps bouncing off the rocks beside the fallen Viking, and in the meantime an arrow from someone you never see – possibly another Saxon who hasn’t realised you’re on the same side – takes you down.

Then you respawn in the middle of a group of enemies who decapitate you instantly. Then you respawn again, in time for the server to collapse and boot you back to the menu.

You have been playing War Of The Vikings.

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Platform: 3DS
Developer: Azrest
Website: www.yoshisnewisland.nintendo.com
Australian classification: G

It’s not hard to immediately dismiss Yoshi’s New Island as a thoughtless kid’s game. The chalk-inspired art style looks like the wall of a nursery, the soundtrack sounds like a toddler’s nightly lullaby and the introductory cut-scene starts out by telling you babies come from storks. The short journey does contain some of the more alluring platforming elements from the 1995 original, but you’re probably better off just pulling out the SNES and playing that one over again instead.

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Platform: PC
Developer: Coffee Stain
Website: www.goat-simulator.com
Australian classification: Unrated

There are people who play open-world games to wreck them: to knock people over, smash stuff, and blow up everything that can be blown up. Some go further than wrecking stuff that’s put there for you to wreck and aim for the edges of the map or the physics engine, trying to glitch past the limits of where you’re supposed to be or how high things should fly.

Goat Simulator is made for those people.

You play an indestructible goat on a rampage in a small town. You can make cars explode by headbutting them, drag objects around by licking them, and hurtle into the sky with even a slight push from a fan, a treadmill, or a fireball that used to be a petrol station. It’s the mayhem part of Grand Theft Auto minus the plot, plus a likeable protagonist.

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Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Website: http://southpark.ubi.com/stickoftruth/en-AU/home/index.aspx
Australian classification: R18+

First and Foremost, South Park: the Stick of Truth is the perfect fan service. Right down to the walls of bodily fluids and shattered cue-balls you’ll find jammed inside Mr. Slave’s anus, it’s true to the show – disgusting, vulgar and consistently hilarious. Unfortunately, it’s a whole lot less effective as a turn-based RPG.

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Platform: Android, iOS
Developer: Kung Fu Factory
Website: www.kungfufactory.com
Australian classification: Unrated

‘Card Wars’ was originally an episode of the Adventure Time cartoon parodying collectable card games like Magic: The Gathering. In that episode Jake the Dog perfectly summed up Magic: “It’s a fantasy card game that’s super-complicated and awesome but, well, it’s kind of stupid.”

Now there’s an app that lets you play the actual game as seen in the show, which is an idea that’s simultaneously dumb and brilliant. Thanks to the popularity of video games like Hearthstone, those mechanics are everywhere – it seems like every fantasy setting has its own virtual card game where you summon monsters that crawl off the cards and onto a digital tabletop – and ripe for making fun of.

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Platform: Android, iOS
Developer: Mi-Clos Studio
Website: outtheregame.com
Australian classification: Unrated

A game like FTL: Faster Than Light gives you basically the full Captain Kirk Star Trek fantasy. Your own spaceship, your own crew to boss around, and an endless supply of enemy craft to hail over the intercom and bargain with or blow out of the sky. Out There is an undeniably similar game of crossing the galaxy in your own spaceship, but it’s a very different fantasy: you’re alone, your ship has no weapons, and your greatest enemy is an empty fuel tank. It’s not Star Trek; it’s a bleak Polish novel about the vastness of space.

The first time I played Out There I realised I was running low on fuel, so I set the course for a gas giant I could probe to harvest hydrogen. Flying to that planet cost fuel, getting into orbit around it cost more fuel, and when I pressed the button to send the probe I discovered that also cost fuel, which I no longer had enough of. I didn’t have enough fuel to refuel. In Out There you don’t get to reload if you goof like this, it’s game over. You press the “give up” button and start again.

I press the “give up” button a lot.

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Platform: PC, Mac, iPad, Android (tablet)
Developer: Harebrained Schemes
Website: http://harebrained-schemes.com/shadowrun/dragonfall
Australian classification: Unrated

Between missions my crew of data thieves and mercenaries stay in a hideout in Berlin’s Kreuzbasar. As well as hackers and killers, one of them’s a shaman – Shadowrun mixes magic with its near-future technology – and he used to front a punk band. When was the last time you met an actual punk in a cyberpunk game? So I ask him, “You can sing?”

“I was the front man for a punk band, boss,” he replies, as if I’m an idiot. “Fuck no, I can’t sing.”

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Platform: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Developer: Eidos Montreal
Website: www.thiefgame.com
Australian classification: MA15+

In a good stealth game a level ends in one of two ways: either you’re sneaking out, job complete, and nobody knows you were even there, or you’re piss-bolting for the exit while the alarm rings, chased by every single guard. Either one is satisfying. Quiet or noisy, it’s your actions that created the situation; a story you own.

That was how the original Thief games worked, but this reboot of the series has less faith in you. Missions frequently build to a cutscene in which you watch this new version of master thief Garrett do something exciting, and then get thrown into a contrived, artificial climax. You might be trapped in a small, dark area with guards on high alert like a predator sequence from the Batman: Arkham games, or chased across rooftops by dogs, or dumped into a boss fight. It’s as if Thief doesn’t trust you to enjoy yourself unless it’s showing off.

Those are how Thief’s story chapters play out, but there are also optional missions to discover and that’s where it’s at its best. Away from all the cutscenes, bland dialogue, and a plot that wastes its most interesting ideas a better stealth game is hiding in the shadows.

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