During this weird and crappy Christmas, staying in touch with friends and family is vital, and one of the best ways to do that is through games. Whether you’re tending the homestead together in Stardew Valley or beating the living crap out of gangsters in Streets of Rage 4, you’ll need a Nintendo Online Membership […]
Technology
2020’s best games saw adventures go wrong
Every list and review of 2020 you’re going to read will begin with the usual, expected and deserved rant about the complete shittiness we’ve all had to deal with, individually and collectively. And many of them, like this one, will tell you how grateful all of us should be for being able to enjoy the […]
Games gave me the variety 2020 could not
Looking down at my games of the year list, I quickly realised that finding an overarching theme was going to be a challenge. Everything I enjoyed had been so remarkably different, on a real range of platforms. It was then I realised that perhaps the theme was the variety. Having spent most of the year […]
2020s best games reimagined old ideas in new worlds
I never thought I’d be talking about Grounded as one of my games of the year. I thought it would be a fun-for-one-evening kind of game. But it’s still there, still rigidly imprinted on my mind. And do you know what the memory looks like? It looks like a gigantic hairy spider. I was obsessed […]
Microsoft Flight Sim’s virtual reality update hits home
Taking to the skies in the all-encompassing VR update. It’s already been quite a remarkable year for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the technically dazzling, gorgeously detailed celebration of all things aviation taking the sim mainstream, but the best has been left until the very last. The much-awaited VR update which dropped earlier this week does everything […]
A Christmas platter of some of our finest articles this year
Despite everything, 2020 has been a big year for games. We’ve got two (three, technically) new consoles, and more people are spending more time playing games than ever before. Remember everyone going wild for Animal Crossing? Yeah, that happened. Elijah Wood even popped into someone’s village for a turnip. Though, like, I’m sure someone grows […]
2020’s best games were all play and no work
The lines between work and play are always blurred with this job, which is often more a privilege than a problem. Playing things for a job is still a treat, of course, but this year the lines have blurred just a little more than usual, for obvious reasons – and so above all my favourite […]