Games

Fifa is an incredibly popular football simulation game that is played by many gamers in the UK. For people who enjoy football in real life too, it is a great opportunity to play as their favourite clubs in very realistic scenarios, even making use of the real kit and badges to make everything feel more familiar. You can choose your teams and decide on the length of time you would like the match to last and then, it is onto the pitch.

You make the decisions as the players once gameplay begins. Whether you are looking for the opportunity to shoot or you need to block the ball from that other team’s defender, you will be able to control everything. This is where the success of Fif lies – it is the most realistic football game out there. People who enjoy playing football will enjoy the sense of control they have and the ability to make critical match decisions.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the latest game in the Legend of Zelda series, which now consists of 19 titles. Its release way delayed a number of times but it was eventually made available in March and can be played on Nintendo Wii U and Switch consoles.

The game is in the action-adventure genre and users play as Link. This latest addition to the Zelda series is pretty new in terms of gameplay as it uses an open-world format, 12 times bigger than in other games. This gives players far more freedom and there is actually very little instruction or guidance for players. This makes the game visual and immersive but it can also take a long time to complete.

Critics have been singing the praises of this game and love how it stays very much within the Zelda framework whilst expanding the world out.

Gravity Rush for PlayStation 4 was a popular and successful game on many levels. It left gamers wanting more and now, the sequel has been released.

The narrative continues on from the first game, with the hero Kat making a return alongside her friend Raven. There are familiar locations like the city of Hekseville, as well as new locations on top.

There are two new gaming styles available in Gravity Rush 2, called Lunar and Jupiter. This gives gamers the opportunity to play more flexibly, giving them different ways to control the character and how she is moving.

The game is already proving a success and is receiving many positive reviews from gamers. It was released in the UK on the 20^th January. There has been much anticipation leading up to its release and up until now, things are looking positive, with some reviewers describing the PS4 game as one of their favourite recent sequels.

Games consoles have long provided a popular way for people to escape reality, but you can only ever do this to a certain extent whilst looking at a television screen. Virtual reality is a new way for people to enjoy gaming, in a way that is completely immersive. Many leading experts are now beginning to predict that virtual reality will see gaming enter a whole new era and it will take off massively over the next few years.

Virtual reality gaming usually involves wearing a headset of some description, which will alter the way in which you perceive what is happening around you. This makes for a much more realistic gameplay experience for users. People can play games alone or with others, and can interact with both real and virtual characters within the game.

Many big names are now beginning to release VR devices and accessories, with some of the most popular being the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. Some will work with existing non-VR devices, for example, the PlayStation VR works with the PlayStation 4.

There are lots of different games that can be played using VR devices. Some will use traditional consoles and some will require other movements and actions from the player. Whatever game you choose to play, it is a completely different experience that draws you into the game itself in ways that have never been possible before.

Virtual reality has actually been around for a while, however it has not really taken off in a big way until now. This is in part due to the technology becoming more affordable, allowing everyday gamers to purchase headsets. Experts are predicting big things for VR’s future, including the possibility of mapping people’s entire bodies into a game.

Many games have a short shelf life. You’ll see a game with pre-release hype, then a big marketing push around launch and then maybe DLC fairly regularly for about 6 months until the next game in the series is announced and the whole cycle starts again. It’s less true for smaller, indie release but even they have a moment in the spotlight before something else comes along. Terraria is 2D game with mechanics similar to Minecraft; you build and collect.
Yet here we are, some 2 years after the game’s original release, and months since the game last saw any attention from players or the developers. And yet here is Terraria 1.3 which has brought about massive changes, additions and seen players flooding back to the game, making it the third most played game on Steam right now.

Occasionally I might write a title that is a little… misleading just to get your interest and, yes, I might have done it this time. Minimum shares some similarities to Valve’s all-conquering opus, but it’s very much its own game, albeit less popular by an order of magnitude. The game is played from a third-person perspective, much like Gears of War or Max Payne, as teams of 6 compete on a map with one main highway through it. That highway houses your Titan. As you run around the map killing each other and “creeps” you power up that Titan.
After the time period expires your Titan is released, walking down that central highway smashing all its path. The team that accumulated the most points during the previous phase will see their Titan gain the upper hand. It’s a nice tactical twist to the standard run and gun nonsense we’re used to. Plus it’s not very expensive!

Football Manager is a game series that I have written about a couple of times previously but one aspect that I have never discussed is people’s obsession with wunderkinds. Wonderkids are newly generated players with the potential to go on to become world beaters. The hunt is always on for these players and they can often be very difficult to discover. You need scouts everywhere, you need to be able to trust that the judgement of your scouts is good enough to identify these players and not just lame ducks who show flashes of potential.
There is, thankfully, a third party program that allows players to scour the database looking for players with high levels of potential and signing them in their games. It’s a cheat, maybe, or maybe a little way to dodge the systems. These players, though, still need signing, still need training and still need the right guidance and coaching to make them the best players they can be.

There have been very few games over the years that have transcended their given media. Games like Minecraft have amassed a huge following; having toys and memorabilia made in its name, not to mention countless books and other such objects. Characters like Mario remain recognisable to many people who aren’t, themselves, gamers. There is one other game, though, that has drawn hours from hundreds of millions of people; earned money like nothing before it and still remains the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the entire world. That game is World of Warcraft.

 World of Warcraft (WoW for short) is now over a decade old. With numerous expansions and retoolings over the years, WoW reinvented the MMO genre. It built on the basics laid out by previous titles and made them approachable to new players, but still deep enough to veterans. That mix, combined with a great art style and low system requirements, meant the WoW juggernaut was mobilising.

There are, unsurprisingly, a number of video game series about shooting, killing and war. Before this became the absolute norm, though, there was one series that stood head and shoulders above every other attempt because of its evocative and personal take on the tragedies of war. That series was Medal of Honour. Or Medal of Honor since it was made in America. The series features innumerable games across a multitude of systems but one of the more experimental, and one of the best, entries came on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360: Medal of Honour: Airborne.

The game allowed players to choose their own insertion points into a level by being dropped in via a plane and a parachute. It sounds simple, but given that FPS levels are usually linear in nature this change up was revolutionary, and not something that’s been attempted since. It meant players could tackle the level and the objectives in any order that they wanted. This freedom of choice needs to come back to FPS games.

Free to play is a dangerous and ugly moniker that people have used to slander any game that releases without a price point. It is a stereotypical view and one that, often, means gamers with such narrow-minded views are robbing themselves of some of the most fun, and diverse, games that the industry is offering at the moment. Some of the most popular games in the world, not just in certain spaces, are free to play. Across mobile phones, consoles, PCs and other avenues; free to play is happening and there is no stopping it.

War Thunder is one of the most popular free to play games in the world right now. It’s a game predominantly focused on the European theatres in World War II. The game sees you piloting various aircraft from the time from all sides, and competing against other players. You fight over capture zones, over areas and over who can destroy the most ground units. The benefits of it being free to play are, obviously, that the game costs you absolutely nothing to play. You can spend money, of course, but there’s no need to.