Kurtis Diston

A lot of us have taken part in an ages long struggle between two feuding powers, the Assassins and the Templars. Until now, its been all Assassin, with the Templars wearing the black hat, pulling the strings behind sinister acts through the ages, but is it really that cut and dried?  Time to find out. As a young Assassin with potential begins to wonder how altruistic the motives of his clan.  After being left for dead, shot in the back by his best friend, there’s not much else to do but cross the lines and go rogue, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

The newest member of the GTA family, Grand Theft Auto 5 is a crazy smash hit.  So much to see and do, compelling characters, an online experience that, after some initial bumps, has critics praising its virtues… What’s left?  New hardware, that’s what!  Now for the PC, PS4, and XBox One, it’s no mere port, there’s a lot of new content, exclusive to the new release.

It’s Call of Duty, not like I’m talking about some unknown quantity… but that started working against this juggernaut of a franchise by the time the heralds of a new hardware generation started sounding.  We were done with Modern Warfare, and we’d had our share of Black Ops, what’s next?  Well Activision and Sledgehammer Games had an answer, it was ‘advanced’ warfare, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

The stalwart, quiet protagonist of videogames as we understood them in the new millenium, since 2001 Master Chief has been taking the fight to alien powers that threaten the lives of mankind.  Across 4 main titles, the lone Spartan and his AI companion Cortana entered the modern psyche, instantly recognizable all around the world.  That is a lot of campaigning, and a LOT of multiplayer in that amount of time, and now they’ve compacted it even further, fitting it all in one neat little package, with Halo:The Master Chief Collection.

If you’ve ever had a computer in your house, you probably had a copy of Sid Meier’s Civilization on it. The Turn-Based Strategy that brought the genre into our homes and lives, chances are you’ve experienced epic campaigns of Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, or some other dynasty of your choice. Spanning the globe on a campaign for a unified world, or getting smashed to pieces by some other power that takes exception. Hopelessly addictive, undeniably well crafted, and hugely successful, it seems Civilization has achieved all it can on this lonesome blue rock. Good thing there’s more out there somewhere, just waiting to be subjugated, I mean… civilized, with Civilization: Beyond Earth.

It’s that time of year when things take a turn for the spooky. Whether you find yourself in the mood for some shivers, love the genre, or just well made games, this covers all the bases. Survival Horror the way it was intended (by the guy who started the whole thing in the first place) as a game it’s everything good about the genre. Tension, atmosphere and never enough health or bullets, I guess it’s a good thing there are closets and lockers in which to cower fearfully.  Inhabited by monsters straight out of a modern horror buffs handbook, prepare to run and hide from, The Evil Within.

It’s Lord of the Rings meets Assassin’s Creed with a healthy dose of Arkham Asylum, and if that sounds like it might be a winning combination, you’d be right.  A huge step in video game technology, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor brings to the table enemy programming unlike anything we’ve seen to date.  Oh, and there’s like, an unlimited amount of Uruk warriors that need to be taken care of (and it never, ever get’s boring)

Loved by critics, Sleeping Dogs was very much Grand Theft Auto, but in the streets of Hong Kong. An Open-world action title, it pits the player against some pretty mean streets, putting them in the shoes of an undercover cop who has got to go deep into the belly of the beast.  Now with a visual upres and all previous DLC packs, this modern Hong Kong detective story makes the jump to the big boy hardware with Sleep Dogs: Definitive Edition.

You know what Borderlands is all about, if you haven’t played it… well, I’m not sure what’s wrong with you. But you’ve at least  seen it, or heard about just how awesome it is (because it is) and why. Now picture that, but in low gravity on the surface of the moon, and Bob’s your Uncle. Sound Fun? Of course it does. It’s Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

If you ask most sci-fi buffs, or movie lovers ‘what’s the most horrifying creature / threat found in the vastness of space’ most people would say ‘Xenomorph’.  With that eyeless face, and prehensile tongue/ second mouth… not to mention the whole, ‘creepy hand spider putting a chest burster in your tummy’ thing. Feel like running scared, hiding from place to place relentlessly pursued by a horrifying monster from outer space? Survival horror meets the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation.