The best PC games ever Best PC games of 2018 Best graphics card 2019 Best free games 100 Apex Legends tips Fortnite Season 9 challenges
Feature: Spandau Ballet b-side
This is a bit of a cheat because I didn’t really play this one. For a period until I was about 12 the only PC in the house was in my big brother’s room, which meant I was not allowed to play it or go in there unless he was in a good mood. On those occasions, me and my younger brother would each carry…
Archivists and collectors of strange and obscure old PC games can rejoice a little today. Last night, Classics Digital released another 8 emulated DOS games onto Steam. It's an especially oddball collection from the early days of French publisher Infogrames, long before the company devoured and took on the name of Atari. Being from the early, experimental days of PC game design, expect some strange adventures…
Feature: Is it a bird? No, it's a spider tank.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. I’d love to play a modern version of Battle Engine Aquila, and I’d be eternally grateful if anyone can tell me if such a thing exists. Each level tasks you with either obliterating or protecting a futuristic army base, which you do from the skies in…
Feature: Trot along
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. A long time ago, deep in the cyberyear 2000, came a turn-based multiplayer war game called Hogs of War [Steam page]. It was essentially Worms in 3D, with pigs. But whereas Worms spawned an undying horde of sequels, to the extent that the franchise is now…
Sweet, sweet nostalgia. I only have vague memories of playing the RPG Silver [Steam page] as a ten-year-old (I'm wondering now what the age rating was...) but I remember really liking it. Its swordplay was its standout feature, and the direction of your strikes depended on which way you moved your mouse. It seems rudimentary now, but at the time it blew my little mind.…
Feature: Despite the very real flaws
Games are either good or the worst thing to ever happen. That's just how it works. Oh, sure, there are divisive games, but once the consensus has been reached that a game is bad, that's it. Cast it away into the pit of 1 star reviews, the lair of the Thumbdown, to be spoken of only with frothing hatred and contempt. Never to be touched.…
The Collected Call Of Cthulhu: Prisoner Of Ice And Shadow Of The Comet On GOG
Prisoner of Ice, judging by the screenshot above, has not aged well. The pert buttocks of lead character Lieutenant Ryan have aged beautifully though. The Lovecraftian point and click horror of Prisoner of Ice is now available via GOG, as is Infogrames stablemate Shadow of the Comet. I loved these games back in the day and will be replaying them as soon as possible.
...and aims to be reborn, again again again. It's been a long time since Atari has been a force to be reckoned with, and longer still since it wasn't secretly Infogrames in disguise. Atari has been a transferable name for long years now, rather than truly representing the Nolan Bushnell-founded firm behind invaluable proto-videogames such as Pong, Asteroids, Lula: The Sexy Empire and Centipede. It…
This is very, very, very old. That doesn't make it any less beautiful, or any less worth posting now. Infogrames: that's our world. Well, was our world. Consider this official promotional song from way back when a perfect eulogy for the artist later known as Atari. Altogether now: "Unreal Tournament / Test Drive / Survivor / Civilization / Superman saaaaaaaaves the nation..." And that's not…