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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Platform: Android, iOS, PC, Mac (via Steam and Desura but since Desura doesn’t have a Mac client yet expect hassle there) Developer: Stirfire Studios Website:www.freedomfall.com Australian classification: Unrated
Most 2D platformers are about jumping across the screen from left to right; falling down a hole is a Very Bad Thing. In Freedom Fall you’re escaping from a prison at the top of a tower so you spend a lot of time doing the thing you’re not supposed to: leaping blindly downwards. Then you steer yourself past spikes, swinging blades, electrical arcs, and fires by bouncing off the walls (there’s no falling damage so at least you don’t have to worry about that).
In the archetype of typical left-to-right platformers there’s also a princess to rescue at the end, but in another cute inversion Freedom Fall has the Princess as the villain. She’s a brat so spoilt her father let her fill a tower with traps for fun, a deadly dollhouse where you’re one of her toys, only instead of marrying Barbie you’ll get eaten by a giant robotic shark. The Princess taunts you with notes written on the walls in pink chalk, explaining how far previous escapees got with cheery arrows pointing at rusty blood on the spikes. It’s a little like the way GladOS humiliates you in Portal only with pictures of lovehearts and flowers to go with each threatening insult.
Set in rapture, BioShock Infinite’s Burial At Sea DLC (Part 1) is absolutely beautiful. The underwater setting is complimented by enormous glass windows, showing off the glowing city that spans across the depths of the sea. The interior is set prior to the fall of Rapture, which is seen in BioShock 1 and 2, and is a 1920’s socialite’s heaven. The floor glistens, the staircases arch elegantly between the saturation of remarkably pretentious stores, and the shop keepers are unnaturally delighted to see you. It all feels very false, but that foreign, unnatural aura makes Rapture all the more enticing.
