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I would just put this in the mobile thread but there's a PC version and I think a few of us might end up playing it. on paper it sounds like Puzzle Quest, it's an rpg based around match-3, where what you match dictates your actions. So if you want to attack you need to match 3 swords or 3 wands, if you need to unlock something you need to match 3 keys (or more). Unlike Puzzle Quest you don't have health, instead you're progressing along the top of the screen, the quicker you beat an enemy or unlock a door the longer you get to play. If you take too long or take damage you get knocked back to the edge of the screen which means ending your run. You need to collect wood and stone to repair rooms back in your home screen, these rooms are where the stat increases are kept, which means you get better, which means you last longer. You need gold to buy stuff, sometimes experience, and eventually you can upgrade the rooms (worth it for the first skills room you open because you'll max that stuff out pretty quick. I've probably explained it pretty badly, but it's Game Dev Story addictive. I think it's about £2 on phones, but there's no in-app purchase bullshit, it's just about doing repeated runs, and harder runs once you've met the bonus requirements

Picked this up on the weekend for 12 quid, because i wanted to get it ages ago but had heard bad things about it. Its alright, itd different to a lot of the FPS games out there at the minute. Its a little bit like if Bioshock had a multiplayer mode. It doesnt look anywhere near as good as bioshock, and to be honest, theres not really a single player game in there anywhere. The songle player is literally learning to use the powers and then playing a match against bots.. I can imagine it being quite a lot of fun against other players, although it takes a while to get used to the powers and you will need to have played for a while before you are anywhere near good. The game is played in a series of rounds and if you die, then you are dead until the next round, unless somebody has the 'resurect' power and then you can be brought back to life once per round, provided the person who brought you back doesnt die(it can be quite complicated, and you really do need to play a few games to get to grips with it). Some of the powers are quite good, theres teleport which moves you 8 metres along in the direction you are traveling, allowing you to move through walls and up or down floors. There are powers like strangle which creates a kind of rocky plant thing which grabs and injures anyone attempting to pass through it. There is a gust power, which is effectively a push, you can turn yourself into smoke which means you take no damage from bullets or falls, but you get seriously hurt if someone uses a gust. There are other powers and a fancy system for using magic, and theres guns too. Its not a terrible game but you need to bare with it and its very much a mulitplayer game, that you need to be good at to enjoy, and much as I enjoyed playing it, I cant recommend picking it up unless you find it cheap.

Either I'm blind or at least 3 of you are lazy bastards. So, it's Hitman through and through and I'm happy not to have found the criticisms accurate at all. The amount of content and replayability is thrown into your face immediately and the controls are introduced in a fine way. The levels so far have been varied and each one looks real pretty. Even when there's 100's of people walking around. I was concerned the pedestrians would resemble a Fifa crowd (100 of them blow their nose, then the other 100 all bend down and tie their laces) but they're mostly unique as far as I can tell. The music is great, as Hitman's usually are and the cinematics are nice to look at. So I really like it.. Oh and there's a lot of Easter Eggs.

Dear Esther came out last night, it's a source engine game and as far as I can tell its selling point is how it looks and its atmosphere. I'm not fully clued up on the story, I think that's deliberate, but you have gone to an island in the Hebrides looking for Esther, whoever or whatever that is. Thoughts are given through a spoken diary (not a selectable diary, more you see something and the guy narrates his wistful memories), and you wander round aimlessly for a while. It's not all that aimless though as like Stanley Parable there's only so many paths, if you're meant to be somewhere you'll end up there. But you do walk in to the first house wondering if you're meant to be doing something. It all looks very cold and windy, it reminds me of a few holidays I went on as a kid, and it is dripping with atmosphere thanks to the howls of wind and seamless way the music starts up. I've no idea what it's going to end up being, but the markings on the walls suggest it's not going to stay as plane as it has been. Feels very arthouse and, with all due respect, pointless so far, but it's clearly telling a story so you cant judge it in the first chapter

I had a quick look to see if there was a thread on this already and couldn't see one. I can understand why, as there's very little to the game itself, but t really deserves on, because that premise is fantastically simple but fiendishly difficult. You rotate an arrow while walls come into the centre and try to carve a path between the gaps for as long as you can, in the meantime the screen pulses and rotates trying to throw you off your stroke. It really is one of those zen games where you start watching yourself play and wonder how the fuck you just did it. Here's my best time in the short time I've spent with it. Those squares really fuck my shit up!

A bit of background, Thirty Flights of Loving is the game you get if you backed the Idle Thumbs kickstarter. I didn't do that, but it's now up on steam for a few quid. I was blind going in to it, I've never even heard of the prequel only that people were looking forward to this, so I didn't know what to expect. It's a first person game with minimal interaction, a bit like Dear Esther. You go where the game leads you, bewildered as it jump cuts from one scene or time to another. At first it feels a bit like you're missing something in the environment, but it soon clicks that it's an interactive story, full of quick cuts and montages, bouncing through its timeline so you don't know what's going on. Which is where I have a bit of a problem with it. The game kept crashing on me, booting up at the wrong resolution, freezing, so I've seen parts of that game 3 or 4 times, but I still had questions when it finished. I read around a bit about the plot and there's some things I completely missed, nothing that I'm going to spoil here, but stuff that should have been more apparent and cost the experience. To be positive about it, the papercraft style graphics are awesome, the sound is brilliant, and it has some really nice, funny touches to it. I'll give it a 2nd play through to see if what I read was right, and it does include the first game as part of the package (Gravity Bone). I do however feel a tad ripped off, it's cheaper than Dear Esther (although a fraction of the length) and I loved that, so I think it is purely down to one having more impact than the other if you got it through kickstarter then it's definitely an interesting play through. If you didn't then it's still interesting, but maybe not so fantastic that you should rush out and buy it

I was checking out Greenlight, which I haven't done in a while, thanks to Floyd's thread, and one of the more recent games is a game called Depression Quest, which is also free to play at www.depressionquest.com It's an awful name so I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but it's a text adventure type thing set very much in the real world. You have depression, a girlfriend you rarely see, you have a job you hate. you get a chunk of text telling you about the days events and then you get to make a decision, depending on how depressed you are some of the options will be unavailable, the music will change, they'll be more static on the page. It's really well done, it's not overly dramatic, which I think makes it more effective. It's uncomfortable though, there were a few gut punches in there, a few things that were very close to home. It's hard to say whether anyone who's suffered from depression should play it or not, it's probably a good way of seeing that you aren't alone, but it's sniper accurate

More or less the same gameplay as the first but I only played the demo of that. Visually, though, it is pretty different as it's gone for a more cel-shaded look which really suits it, seeing as it's come from a comic book graphic novel. It's pretty grim and gory at times and Mike Patton is back on full, deranged extreme metal vocal style. Also, a brilliant way to open the game with a bang.

https://warframe.com/ It's a free-to-play 3rd person online co-op shooter (a F2P3POCS? Could catch on) from Digital Extremes with minor influences from Mass Effect, Borderlands and an art style borrowed from Dark Sector. The art was what drew me to it in the first place and after watching the Giant Bomb Quick Look I thought it looked pretty solid. There's a closed beta going on atm, I've just grabbed a key and will be having a go over the weekend if anyone fancies it. Giant Bomb Quick Look: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UiX-Lp360Ek" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

WARNING: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Rewarding these people for creating this trash is just encouraging them. I managed to play it for about 2 hours before I realised my brain had liquified and was dripping out of my ear. The intro is the best part, it nails the feel of the show, but then it sucker punches you with it's badness. I think the gif from Kotaku's review is perfectly succinct: http://kotaku.com/5991559/the-walking-dead-survival-instinct-is-the-worst-game-ive-played-this-year Worst two hours of my life

Today was a great day. No scratch that today was a most excellent day. Today I joined Ubisoft ManiaPlanet and got my hands on the open beta of Trackmania 2 Stadium. I spend a lot of time with the classic Trackmania games and I can honestly say Trackmania 2 lives up to my expectations in every way. The game runs flawlessly on my Inspiron 5040m. I mean fucken FLAWLESSLY!! This is surprising as the 8-bit wannabe Stealth Bastard Deluxe and beautifully hand drawn Hell Yeah have issues running on the 5040m. I'm planning on buying both Trackmania 2 Stadium when it drops next month and Trackmania 2 Canyon later this week. I’m also quit interested in Questmania, which is an user generated RPG. Sounds a bit like World of WarCrack meets MineCrack. Hopefully they show something off at E3 this year. I was also looking at ShootMania, which I would be interested in trying if enough people here are interested. You can get the ManiaPlanet games and access the ManiaPlanet hub trough the Steam client.

So, who has bought it then? I'm downloading the demo so that I can play it tonight. I have my MS Points at the ready (they arrived today, a sign?), although I'm not that keen on shelling out 1200 on an Arcade game. But, going by Eurogamer's 10/10 review, I think I may have to.

I've spent a few hours playing this now so thought I'd put something up here, because I think it'd appeal to some of you. Miasmata is a first-person adventure/survial game for Windows, available from Steam and GOG.com. When you start a new game, the intro text identifies you as a man called Robert Hughes. You are infected with a plague and are looking for a cure. At the start you wash up on the shore of a lush, green (and rocky) island and head off to search for your cure. As you head inland you find huts, a map and compass and a few notes to get you started. as you go along you find scraps of notes an journals from the scientists who were here trying to find a cure, and build up an idea that something has gone wrong. There's no HUD, and your map is pretty much empty apart from what you find on scraps of paper, and what you fill in yourself. Pretty early on you find a lab, and get instructions on analysing plants and using them to create medicines. This is pretty much essential to keep the fever at bay. The cartography and orienteering is really interesting and satisfying. You find where you currently are by getting out the map and clicking on a known landmark. This will draw a line on the map through the landmark in the direction you're looking. Do the same with another known landmark and where the lines intersect is where you are. You can also triangulate unknown/undiscovered landmarks from 2 different locations to triangulate them and add them to the map. The game is incredibly tense and atmospheric. The mapping is challenging but rewarding. Getting lost in the woods as the sun starts to set, without a visible landmark and just a branch as a makeshift torch is actually quite scary. I did just that the other night, when suddenly something growled. It was a pretty low, menacing growl. I panicked a little bit and span around to see where it came from, and that's when I fell off a cliff into the water and drowned.

Not sure how to embed Giant Bomb videos from their new site so here's a link to how it plays - http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-zeno-clash-ultimate-edition/2300-2338/ It's fucking weird. The gameplay itself is pretty odd as it's a first-person brawler (with the odd bit of shooting) but the art style, setting and characters are just plain off the chart. I think I'm somewhere near the end and it keeps threatening to reveal the major plot point from the beginning of why you killed Father-Mother which is a giant crow-human thing which gives birth to everyone in your village. I got it on the cheap the other week and I'm enjoying it but a couple of sections have proved annoying, where someone chucks bombs at you while you have to shoot him/her/it. Anyone else played it? Couldn't find a thread on it or even a post in the random PC thread.

A proper sequel to Anomaly is coming to Windows, Linux (w00t!!! More Linux support!!) and Mac this summer from 11bit studios. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/02/28/anomaly-2-bringing-more-tower-offense-this-summer.aspx

I've put a couple hours into GRID today, and it's very good indeed. It's graphically the best racer I've played, and it all runs super smooth even with multiple cars and crashes going on at the same time. The handling takes a short while to adjust to, but now I feel very confident in chucking my car into a corner and flooring it out of the bend. The drift events which were my least favourite part of the demo are actually very good. By default the traction control is set to on, turning this off made the car nice and slippy, ideal for drfiting and getting decent multipliers! The presentation is spot on, and everything is laid out nicely. As you progress through the World Tour, you get sponsors. These sponsors can help you get extra points for achieving certain criteria in a race, providing you are wearing their decals on your motor. Earning money allows you to buy more cars and enter events. You also earn reputation for completing events. The three main area's are US, Europe, and Japan, each focusing on a different style of racing. There is also the Le Mans 24hr which instead of taking a whole day to finish (Gran Turismo 4, I'm looking at you and your 24hr Nurbugring race), it takes 24 minutes. It takes you through the day-night cycle throughout. There are even Formula 3000 cars in here, which are super fast and handle brilliantly. If the F3000 part of GRID is a taste of what to expect from the forthcoming Formula One game from Codemasters, then it's going to be something special. From what I have played so far, the racing is intense and action packed, keeping you on your toes. The AI seems excellent, you will see cars ahead of you spinning out after they have misjudged a corner for example, and they generally put up a good fight. It's not a sim, so don't go getting this if you want this to be the next Forza because it isn't, and isn't trying to be. It's more in the vein of PGR4, although it isn't as arcadey as that. Try it with all the assists off though, and you are in for a huge challenge. If you like racers, it's pretty much an essential purchase.

I played a few minutes of Home. Don't know why i naively thought it wouldn't be creepy. Speakers all the way...

I'm such a noob at times. I've never played more than a few minutes of Doom 3 before as it just past me by. No idea why I never got it at the time: I had an Xbox, I was quite into shooters at the time and I like monsters. Can't really figure out why I wasn't there. Maybe it was because it had some negative reception, I dunno. Anyway, I'm playing it now and I'm quite surprised how much I'm enjoying it. All it is is a ghost train with monsters you shoot at and it overuses the 'spawn enemies behind you' trick a bit to often as I've learned to pretty much always check my 6 (maybe that's the point?) but I've3 been yelping and laughing my way through, always being slightly lost, so it's not like it isn't fun. Though I do wish the weapons had more kick to them, like I just wish it felt a bit better killing things. On this collection Doom and Doom 2 are also there, and I've also never played Doom... I got Doom 2 on sale on XBLA and played it a bit. I actually really enjoyed my brief time with it and I'm liking Doom even more. That's a game that's still fun to play. The movement feels like you're coasting and sometimes there are loads of enemies and weaving about while shooting that hellishly satisfying shotgun is some top gaming. I think that's what annoys about Doom 3 a little; I wish the shooting felt as good as that. So yeah, it's 2013 and I think I may have just properly discovered Doom. Dunno if you've heard but it's good.

Been playing this for a bit. Playing using the same 3 characters as the Giant Bomb video - the knight, twins and monk. I'm not sure as the usefulness of the twins as yet but the knight's shield is good and the monk's telekinesis seems invaluable. I'm not convinced with the control feel - it just feels a bit sticky, a bit too heavy. It looks fantastic and it's Ron Gilbert and Double Fine so the writing is top notch. The trial is pretty short, then I unlocked the full game and got some kind of almost game-breaking bug where the camera wouldn't follow my character but I also couldn't change my character. I'm not sure how I got out of it but I ended up saving and quitting a few times. I'm currently stuck on a puzzle that is most likely staring me in the face but I have a minecart to deliver and no sign of what should go in it.

I believe this is a series that has run for years in America on PC, got a new version on current consoles a year or two ago. This is the new freemium game. You can play direct on Facebook on your PC (Mac, etc) or on phone or tablet via the app. http://youtu.be/RGbm2AAxEDs You can spam friends to get them in your games (it doesn't really run in real-time with friends, you just see their answers and score along with yours) but I don't like doing that. I tried to get a couple of friends interested but so far I'm just playing with strangers. It's very funny and well worth a go. Games cost 200 coins a time or you can play once a day for free so I'm mostly just doing that, playing once a day with the other half helping, until I get enough coins that I can play again.

I'm not too sure what to say about Binary Domain, despite everything it's actually pretty standard stuff. Once the game gets going properly you spend most of your time with a team of 3 people from a choice of 5 (6 later on), and because of the trust mechanic it seems like it's always worth picking the same people. You start the game with Big Bo (big brash black guy, not to be confused with sarky english bloke and serious chinese girl) and through conversations and actions (like destroying lots and lots of robots) I've got really high trust with him, so it was then a case of picking 1 other person who seemed to have the attributes I wanted (I picked the english girl because she's got a shotgun) and developed the trust there. I've got to say though I've not found a massive amount of use for the trust yet. I've been downed a couple of times and they've revived me, that probably wouldn't have happened is they hated me, but in terms of the main voice commands (cover me, retreat, form up, fire) I've barely had to use them to need their trust. Apparently if you have a mic plugged in it'll respond to your mutterings, more so that just the default sayings, stuff like swearing will get them to respond. I might test it at some point but I've really not needed it so far. The trust thing can get a bit annoying, the A.I. aren't quite smart enough not to walk in to your line of fire, you if you've unloading with a machine gun and they decide the safest place for them is right in front of your muzzle then you're going to get moaned at and lose trust. Early on before you know the characters you'll get a lot of questions 'wrong', but eventually you learn to answer in a way they'll want to hear. The problem with that though is that both you and the characters you're talking to understand the subtlety of language, however the game doesn't cater for it. As an example a young girl asked me out at one point, I said yes because saying no seemed harsh, and I thought the game wouldn't let me anyway, but instead everyone disapproved. The other problem with it is that sometimes you miss what you've been asked and annoy everyone by not doing it, or their instructions aren't clear enough ("cover left" when there's no set way to be facing) This all sounds a bit negative so far but I've actually been quite enjoying things. It does mix things up but generally it's cover based shooting, and it works fine, better when you level up your gun a bit. I was a bit indifferent to it, but pretty much since I met the yakuza I've been really enjoying it. You also eventually meet a french cyborg who is easily the best character in the game, probably the best character in any game this year. What's killing me is the plot, I know I've seen an anime with the exact same story but I can't place it. There's cyborgs living amongst humans, only they dont know they aren't humans, you have to hunt down the guy who's probably responsible for making them. I know it shares a lot of similarities with Bladerunner, but beyond that all I can think is Appleseed, but I know there's some other late 80s/90s anime

well i got it and played through the story mode, it looks amazing, controls well with the analogue stick (apparently not so well with digital input), it plays ok, story mode is too long but apparently arcade mode is shorter so that's good although arcade starts on hard mode and i can't get past the first boss on one life. there's some good ideas in there and some good bullet patterns, fun to be had. but also some odd stuff that doesn't work too well, the wobbly bullets, being hidden behind smoke, lots of instant death stuff. not sure i like it or not - need to play more. the time running out thing didn't seem to come into play in story mode much, except one bit in a sort of maze near the end, took loads of continues to get past that, not sure if i was dying or running out of time as they're sort of the same thing, most stuff if you get hit just takes off some time but some stuff takes off all of it - death. the 3d-ness of the obstacles makes it hard to navigate the maze too. did you get to play it illdog? my score was alone on the friends leaderboard.

Its one of those point and click adventure games for your personal computer and it looks a little like this. It looks exactly like that, pretty ain't it. I know very little about this sort of think but it is different in the way its story is told, there is no dialogue are even words in this game, its all told with short animated scenes, crunches and bleeps from the characters and enviromental stuff, it all tells the tale perfectly, it almost makes me want to stop using language myself. The puzzles, I don't know how to guage these. You have logical puzzles like moving shapes and all that Layton type stuff and you also have your classic inventory item stuff too, this is where I get stuck. At the moment the last thing I managed to get hold of is a dead/stunned robot cat... I know a dude needs some sunflower oil... WTF is all my console raised brain can manage. I was doing okay at it actually, the game starts out as a single puzzle per screen, you solve it and then moved on. I liked that. Later it does open up and all the inventory items build up with a series of characters that want different items and the little robot man shakes his head at everything I try the items on then I go running back to Halo. In all seriousness though it is a good game and one I hope to see to the end, I think I will because it does have a hint system which is pretty much an ingame Gamefaqs, I won't use it too much though....

got a free copy of anomaly warzone earth on xbox the other week, never would have bought it, but turns out it's great, like a backwards tower defence game, you pick your path and tank types/formation, you get money to buy upgrades/new tanks, and you control a little dude who can pickup abilities from fallen enemies, it can get quite tactical picking your path/tank formation/power usage, and frantic when things kick off. there's some enemies that do stuff you wouldn't expect later on that keep it interesting. single player story is quite short but there's quite a few extra missions and 3 difficulties for everything. i found easy difficulty to be well judged for me. so yeah really enjoyed it.

I know at least me and Chin are dying for a sequel to this, without giving anything away, the ending makes you go "Aaaaaaargghhh! Tell me more!" Not in a bad way, just that the story has only just begun, shame it didn't sell that well. I bone this game and I fell in love with the whole atmosphere, it's great just wandering round looking at stuff. It's very much a Zelda clone but when it's done this well with a pretty good and fairly original storyline (plus, female lead, pretty but not Lara Croft phwoar, etc and non-violent too) you have to tip your hat. For some reason the story and setting reminded me of the first Oddworld game. I need to play this again, but haven't been able to since I completed it as I lent it to a mate (that I don't see often) along with the Twin Snakes.