Buried is the most claustrophobic film I’ve ever seen. It’s almost unbearable at times, and judging by the squirms and noises coming from several people sitting around me in the cinema, I was not the only person who felt genuine pity for Ryan Reynolds: a kidnapped man trapped in a wooden coffin, 6 feet underground in the Iraqi desert, with nothing but a mobile phone and a zippo for company.
As painful as it is to watch, Buried is an excellently crafted film with a solid performance from its sole star. Reynolds nails the panic, anger and sadness his character experiences as he desperately tries to figure his horrific situation out. Considering the film is set entirely within the confines of a cramped wooden box, its surprisingly exciting and relentlessly tense, with the director implementing neat camera angles and clever use of lighting to keep the movie as varied as possible, and with the exception of the moments of total blackness (when Ryan turns his phone off/puts the zippo away, etc), you are completely there in the coffin with him. It’s very unnerving. This was emphasied even more seeing it at the cinema on such a vast screen, and I could see numerous people around me shifting uncomfortably in their seats. If you know you already want to see this movie, then I strongly recommend seeing it on the big screen.
It’s by no means perfect, and a few niggles for me included the fact that Ryan constantly has his lighter lit, thus burning away his precious oxygen, and I’m also quite dubious as to whether you’d get any signal at all for your mobile phone if you are buried underground, but I don’t really want to find out that one first hand. Nonetheless, I’m am inclined to ignore these gripes and its really not that hard because the film is so damn immersive at all other times. To describe anything else of the film would be to ruin the suspense and tension gained from watching it yourself, so I’ll not say any more. You probably already know if you want to see it or not.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
The following took place in 2012, in the beta version of the DayZ mod for ARMA 2. It recounts the story of how I survived the zombie apocalypse by eating 87 cans of baked beans.
Chernarus is not a welcoming place any more. The lush green fields are now infested with hordes of shambling undead. And if the zombies don’t kill you, other wanderers surely will. Being alone is risky, but trusting the wrong person could cost you your life. In this harsh new world, you won’t get far without friends.
Format: PC
Year: 2001 – present day
If Return to Castle Wolfenstein was my first date with PC gaming, Battlefield 1942 was when she invited me to meet her parents, and the relationship went to the next level. My god, did I really just write that analogy?
One of my all-time favourite gaming memories is playing Haunting Ground with my mates at the flat in Baldock for 16 hours straight. It was me holding the controller for almost all of those 16 hours. It’s a bit obscure, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a survival horror game by Capcom, in which you play as a pretty little fragile girl called Fiona, who must escape from a huge labyrinthine castle. Oh, and you can’t fight. Your only option is to run away and hide from the nasty people that are out to get you. You do have a companion throughout though, the best dog in gaming, a white German Shepherd called Hewie.
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