Format: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Release date: 2000 – present day
The Trials franchise is surely the most successful game to ever start out life as a Flash browser game. I remember playing the original game on Miniclip back in the day, and I have played every single iteration since. The game’s core concept is simple – you control a trials bike, and must navigate it across a series of increasingly difficult obstacle courses on a 2D pane. It’s the perfect pick-up-and-play game, because it’s easy to get the basics, but insanely difficult to master.
The series peaked when the game exploded onto the Xbox Live Arcade, first with Trials HD, then Trials Evolution, my personal favourite of them all. Evolution introduced 4-player competitive modes, an excellent level editor and an online marketplace to download and share custom maps. It all worked seamlessly. Itbecame a favourite at the flat in Baldock, where my friends and I wiled away hours, taking turns to complete levels and strive to hoover up as many gold medals as we could. It usually fell to me to get the best scores, as for whatever reason I had spent the longest time playing it and seemed to have a knack for it that my friends didn’t. But I’m no match for some of the online masters. I couldn’t really finish any of the Extreme levels. My favourites are always in the ‘medium’ section. Big swooping ramps and giant leaps that flow smoothly into each other.
My friends created me a level, using the built in editor, to test my skill. I remember it fondly because they had spent an entire weekend building it. It started out with an infuriating bit Robbie nicknamed “Ride the Bomb”, because you spawned directly on top of a falling bomb and had to quickly accelerate and lean in the right way to flick the bomb away from you. Had we ever uploaded that map to the marketplace, people would have downvoted it instantly, because you would die at least 10 times before you figured out the method. But I loved that map, because my mates made it for me.
Also, Trials is one of the few games that I’ve enjoyed playing with my brother, Sam. He doesn’t play games but he is very much into extreme sports and whatnot, so he appreciated Trials, mostly coz of the accurate, if still ‘gamey’ physics. He was a natural at the game, thanks to his real-life understanding of bike physics, and it was fun for me to see him pick it up very quickly.
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.
I was not a fan of Uncharted 3, but this new ad for Nathan Drake’s supposed final adventure is only 30 seconds long and somehow managed to tug my heartstrings… I wish I had a PS4.
Format: PS1 & PC
Release date: 1997
I’m not sure what to tell you about FF7. Simply put, it’s one of my all-time favourite games, and the hordes of fans it has makes me feel like a bit of a cliché to even include it in this feature. But I have to. It changed my life, I think. Before this, I had not played a game with such a deep and engaging story, an epic tale about a host of very likable characters, all unique and fleshed out with interesting back stories. It’s just wonderful.
There’s not a lot I can say about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that hasn’t already been said, but here’s my take anyway. The game deservedly garnered a heap of attention when it came out for being a fantastic example of a JRPG, that happened to be made in France. Technically, ignoring the fact that the team includes a bunch of ex-Ubisoft veterans, it’s the debut title from developers Sandfall. And what a debut game it is.
Copyright © 2010 - 2026
Site designed and hosted by Tekamutt Media