It’s been almost a year since my move from New Zealand to Australia and honestly say that my feet have hardly touched the ground. It all a blur; a whirlwind of games, events and previews. I’ve never written as much as I’ve done in the past year and things show on signs of abating.

On the review pile at the moment I’ve the DC Comics inspired beat ’em up Injustice: God Among Us, Namco Bandai’s Star Trek and Techland’s Dead Island: Riptide.

I’ve also a few bits of DLC that I need to talk about at some point, namely The Tyranny of King Washington DLC for Assassin’s Creed 3 and all those lovely bits of DLC for the most excellent Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I also need to drop some words about the Fuse and Grid 2 hands-on previews that I attended last week.

So that’s what I need to do, but what have I been doing? Continue reading Week in Review: Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel, Defiance and Metro: Last Light →

I’ve been flat out playing the last knockings of the Q4 games releases and nutting out reviews for the last few weeks, leaving no time to write any sort of missives on this here website.

I held back on my SimCity review for a while, as I didn’t want to give the game a bad review score only for EA to suddenly pull their finger out and sort the bloody thing out. Well I waited, and I waited. You can read the review on Shanethegamer.com here. Continue reading Week in Review: review round-up featuring SimCity, Walking Dead, Crysis 3, Sniper 2 and Bioshock Infinite plus Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and Defiance →

Every now and again I get a game that I find difficult to review. Now I’m not talking about  the time I reviewed that Xbox 360 Lips karaoke game, I’m talking about game the I find so annoying I just want to spout venom all over it.

Well, I had one recently. It’s taken me a month to review Aliens: Colonial Marines. Why? Because I initially found the game so horrible I wasn’t able write a proper review, only a whiny rant.

You see, basically, Sega and Gearbox have managed to screw up what should have been a game right up there with the likes of Killzone 3 and the possible even Halo. Instead of that level of greatness we have a game that, despite six years in development, looks god-awful and plays as just a slightly above average FPS. Continue reading Week in review: Aliens: Colonial Marines, Crysis 3 and Sniper: Ghost Warror 2 →

A few days away in central Australia meant that I missed the Sim City launch day excitement. As it turns out I missed very little and, at the same time,  it was all waiting for me when I got back.

This week hasn’t been a good week for EA. What should have been the glorious launch of the first proper SimCity in the best part of a decade turned into a technical and PR shit-storm. Continue reading Week in review: SimCity launch and Dead Space 3 →

Holy shit, I’ve been biting my tongue all week. I got an email last week from Square Enix’s Australian reps telling me that I could pick up a copy of the new Tomb Raider game as long as I don’t speak a word about it to anyone until 26th February.

I’ve finish the game and the verdict is… well…check out my review either here on the pages of State of Play or over at Shane the Gamer, here. Continue reading Vic B’Stard’s week in review: Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Rising Revengence and SimCity →

Welcome to a massive “week in review”, which should really be called “the year so far”. A mixture of recovering after the pre-Christmas period and tidying up other writing jobs has left me with little time to shoot the shit on VicBStard.com (formerly known as stateofplay.co.nz). So, my apologies all round.*

One of the great things about building a new PC is deciding what to re-install on it. Continue reading Vic B’Stard’s week in review: more on the new PC, SimCity, Arma 2, Planetside 2 and Hitman: Absolution (again)! **UPDATED** →