Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

More like have you survived> SkiFree? More like: have you felt the cold rush of wind and terror that is SkiFree? Have you sensed the unstoppable, inescapable presence of SkiFree as it catches up behind you, bringing with it all the excesses and nightmares of the 1990s with it? Oh god, you have. I can see it in your eyes. You have, haven’t you?

… [visit site to read more]

Capcom have removed the mysterious “anti-crack solution” they added to Street Fighter V [official site] in this week’s update. We knew the September update would add Urien, the Illuminati VP returning from earlier games, and he’s quite welcome. What was more of a surprise is the anti-crack tech that left some unable to play, triggered anti-virus and Windows warnings, and was generally unpleasant. That’s no good. But hey, at least they did remove it fairly swiftly.

… [visit site to read more]

Have you ever wanted to visit Alaska? Well, now Yukon!>

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Here is a game about freezing to death.

… [visit site to read more]

Shhhh shhh shh. This mug is still shaking off a day-old hangover so go easy on your Auntie Alice, who thinks she’s still so young and wild and cool. Come come, little one – pull your chair close and tell your favourite aunt what you’re playing this weekend.

… [visit site to read more]

While folks have been getting excited for a certain racing game that’s out next week, a racer of a different, furry-footed nature has crept out of Early Access to properly launch. Rather than the latest sports cars, Dog Sled Saga [official site] sees you building and racing a team of loyal pups, much like famed musher (that’s dog sled speak for driver, mind you), Cuba Gooding Jr.

… [visit site to read more]

This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, colourful procedural climbing game Grow Home [official site].>

Put simply, BUD is a box suspended over legs and is held together by springs. In practice, BUD is an ungainly robot child, staggering and tripping his way around a low-poly world. BUD is the star of Ubisoft Reflections Grow Home and Grow Up, all grinning face-grille and gangly limbs. He s a kind of super-ambulant WALL-E, able to run, scale walls, leap and fly, in a stumbling and toppling off things kind of way.

It s hard to begrudge BUD for his drunken awkwardnesses, though, because as you attempt to control him they form a sense of a delightfully clumsy personality: BUD s drunken awkwardnesses are> BUD. But he s not carefully hand-animated. BUD is a bunch of maths, or more precisely:

THE MECHANIC: Procedural animation

… [visit site to read more]

Venturing onto an unexplored foreign planet is a bit like emigrating, but instead of immediately setting up a bank account, renting a flat, and/or hiring a car your primary is concern is, well, staying alive. In interstellar sandbox adventure Starbound [official site] there are plenty of moon-bound monsters out to get you from the off – be that of the biome, procedurally-generated or unique variety – so it s absolutely essential your house/ship/pithy gathering of dirt and mud is in order quick snap.

Luckily, Starbound packs quite the selection of mods to help that along. The following should give you an extra leg-up before the extra-terrestrials get you.

… [visit site to read more]

I’ve had my hands on a brief demo build of a game called The Signal From T lva [official site], from maverick and bohemian developers, Big Robot – yes, they of Sir, You Are Being Hunted. Oh, and I guess owned and run by Jim Rossignol, one of the directors and owners of this site. (There’s not going to be a conflict of interest issue here, is there? I mean, I can barely stand him.) Below you can read my very early and quite remarkably impartial first impressions.

… [visit site to read more]

While at EGX I had a few minutes of hands-on time with Yooka-Laylee [official site], Playtonic’s love letter to older 3D platformers like Banjo-Kazooie. It even shares team members with those older games. It was a strange experience, if I’m honest. Bright and daft and instantly evoking those hundreds of hours of play as a child in Rare’s worlds. But at the same time I found myself not really playing so much as constantly drawing the parallels with the older games – oh, that’s this game’s version of a Jinjo, oh, that’s this game’s version of a Mumbo Jumbo transformation, oh, that’s what Banjo and Kazooie would look like if you had to use a chameleon and a bat instead of a bird and a bear…

… [visit site to read more]

A driving game about conversations. It sounds perfect, like the hitchhiker American Truck Simulator mod that I wish somebody would make. When Graham wrote about Wheels of Aurelia [official site] late last year, I added it to the long list of games that I absolutely had to play. I hoped that I’d be able to see past the elements that he criticised, but now that I’ve seen most (if not all) of what Aurelia has to offer, I feel more like a passenger than a driver.>

… [visit site to read more]