I recently finished Horizon Chase Turbo. Short review: it’s really good!

A number of retro-themed arcade racers have caught my attention in recent years, and it seems (albeit from a position of almost total ignorance of modern gaming trends) as if the increasing focus of mainstream racers on a serious, simulation-focused experience has opened up some space for smaller developers at the more arcadey end of the market.

It’s one thing to say that you’re attempting to recapture the spirit of 80s or 90s racers in a new game, but quite another to actually achieve it successfully. Eagerly presenting a trailer showcasing sprite-based or stripped-back polygon graphics and chiptune soundtrack is arguably the easy bit.

Horizon Chase Turbo not only ticks those two boxes – it looks and sounds great – but has plenty going on under the bonnet too. Its career mode, the World Tour, offers refreshingly gimmick-free gameplay and uncomplicated structures of progression, particularly for single-minded gamers (such as yours truly) who refuse to move onto the next races until perfection has been achieved in those already available.

Start at the back, do laps, finish first and collect all the coins: that’s how you get top billing on each track. As you do so, you’ll unlock more vehicles, which can be upgraded through a top-3 finish (or first, and only first, if you’re an obsessive – see above) in a special race in each territory. Consideration of your vehicles’ attributes – again, kept relatively simple, just like in the old days – then becomes a matter for some consideration prior to each race.

The length of the World Tour and number of races is one of the few concessions to the expectations of the modern gamer, and possibly leads to occasional autopiloting through stages without necessarily mastering them. However, dotted throughout are some truly nefarious tracks that simply will not be beaten without you getting everything – vehicle selection, the location of on-track pickups, not crashing, using nitro at exactly the right time – absolutely spot on.

These are the moments that, in my opinion, make for a great arcade racer. And while there may be a few too many filler races overall, things do build to a crescendo, difficulty-wise, and the finale is appropriately climactic. It’s a game that pretty much achieves everything it sets out to do, which is a rare thing indeed.

For those, like me, with fond memories of the original Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (or the Top Gear games that followed on the SNES), this is the perfect modern successor. Having been hooked on achieving World Tour perfection for quite a few months, I’m not sure if I’ll dive into the various other modes available straight away, or at all, but even if I don’t, Horizon Chase Turbo has provided more than its fair share of thrilling moments already.

Hi there.

Depending on how generous you want to be, we’re either a week or a month late with this one.

If you’re English, the post-Euros hangover will be over by now, at least.

Personally, I made my headache slightly worse by returning to Actua Soccer and playing its first sequel: Euro 96.

And, don’t forget, if you like your coverage of mainly terrible old football games in some kind of list-based format, you can find this here.

Hello!

Right… how to make this update vaguely topical…?

As you know, we’ve just had an election here in the UK.

[Leans into microphone] I tell you what, I’ve not seen such a unanimously negative verdict since Daikatana was released!

Will that do? Does that, er, you know, work? Hello?

Hi there.

Today’s game is our first Tomb Raider review.

(Not a review of the first Tomb Raider, though: that would be far too logical).

Here’s a look at Tomb Raider: Legend, from Crystal Dynamics.

Hi all.

Just a quick note to say we’re aware of some strange issues with our menu pages on the desktop site.

The reviews themselves appear to be unaffected, but something seems to have gone wrong with the genre categories. And it all seems to be ok on mobile at the moment.

Anyway, we’re looking into it! (Or Stoo is, at least).

Update – The menus should now be working as normal. – Stoo

Some good news: Alpha Protocol is back, after a few years in digital purgatory, thanks to GOG.

While I’ve spent a good chunk of the last few years catching up with Bioware RPGs of a certain vintage, Alpha Protocol was probably the game that kicked that whole process off. (It’s somehow very on-brand for me to be inspired to play 00s Bioware games by something that was neither developed by them or even released in the 00s).

Although in some ways, the parameters of your quest are quite narrow by RPG standards – you act alone, and have to be a male spy called Mike who behaves like a knob regardless of your choices – it otherwise packs a surprising number of alternative story permutations into its fairly compact running time.

The dialogue system, which requires each decision to be made quite quickly, and the relative lack of heavy-handed signposting about the right or wrong thing to do in each case, both contribute to a more thrilling ride than your typical ‘choices matter’ type tale.

There are, of course, plenty of bugs and glitches and signs of general clumsiness, too, but it’s an interesting game and one well worth checking out now it’s available again. (My own last playthrough was the beginning of the pandemic, at which point I wrote a less than coherent review. The two facts are possibly linked).

Having seen AP retail for a couple of quid for many years, as part of the general and possibly unrealistic expectation that the price of older games should start to plummet after a while and then remain at rock bottom for an indefinite period, it is a bit of an adjustment to see it come back at 16 quid, although this no doubt reflects the effort involved in exhuming the proper rights and clearances, all of which is part of the generally nightmarish scenario that dictates that digital games of a particular period are suddenly made unavailable in the first place.

(I should also say that, despite having no such problems myself, some have reported issues in getting the game working on modern PCs, which this new version claims to resolve).

And, while Mike Thorton might be back in action, there’s still no sign of a return for Solid Snake (and Raiden) as Metal Gear Solid 2 remains unavailable on GOG, despite vague promises that its withdrawal was only temporary.

Perhaps Konami considers these promises now fulfilled via the remastered MGS collection on Steam, although if they were really committing to that being the ‘definitive’ version of the games, the fact that you can still buy the first game on GOG with no issues seems a bit odd.

Anyway, enough grumbling: let us relish in the mildly positive news that a whole new generation of gamers can enjoy the charmless ramblings of Agent Mike!

Hi there.

If reviews have been in short supply recently, even by our standards, then underestimating the size of the task before me when I took on today’s game is probably one of the reasons why.

Still, we got there in the end, and a pretty good time was had along the way. Here’s our review of Dragon Age: Origins.

Hi there.

It’s been a little while since we brought you a review of an old game, so here’s an EGA football title from the late 1980s: Microprose Soccer.

I’m duty-bound to also remind you that like all old footy titles we discuss here, this one goes into the FFG Football League, which now has a full 40 teams/games!

(Almost two full divisions, although if we’re following the English league structure, there’s still room at the bottom of the FFG Championship for a handful of other titles. But to go beyond that and have three divisions would be complete madness, wouldn’t it? Or would it? [Yes – Ed.])

Hello and welcome again to Discussion: [indie game] (spoilers!), a semi-regular series with a title so ingenious it needs absolutely no further explanation.

Today’s game is Afterparty, an adventure game developed by Night School Studio and released in 2019. Our protagonists are Milo and Lola, two recent college graduates who unexpectedly find themselves detained in Hell, and set about trying to return to the land of the living by challenging Satan to a drinking contest.

Here’s a trailer:

Normally at this point we like to make broadly positive but non-committal noises about the game in question and encourage you to play before reading on. However, as you’ll soon see, we were more than a little disappointed by this one, having already played and enjoyed Night School’s previous effort, Oxenfree.

Afterparty has had some good reviews, however, and the forthcoming discussion will spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t played it, so the usual caveats apply – if you plan on picking it up in the future, you should probably avoid reading further.

Ok? Here’s our ***FINAL SPOILER WARNING*** for this discussion!
 
Discussion: Afterparty (spoilers!) continued »

Moments in Gaming is where we look back on gaming experiences that have left a particularly strong impression on us over the years: mainly for good reasons, but sometimes for bad ones.

Our ancient review of Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels probably belongs in a different series: the Vault of Regret, our chamber of assorted gaming shame.

Written on the basis of not much effort and an – incorrect – assumption that everyone, and not just the reviewer, found the game impossibly hard, its continued preservation (with caveats) on the site is occasionally discussed under ‘AOB’ at FFG Executive Board meetings, the minutes of which show no evidence of a genuinely held belief that these ancient scrawlings hold up as any kind of useful and insightful critique.

[Oh, hey, do you remember that film, Aliens? It’s kind of like that!]

However, while I wouldn’t now claim to know Vengeance of the Blood Angels very well, I do retain strong memories of it. Inevitably, they’re from the very beginning of the game, the only section that I really remember playing or am able to recall with any confidence.

After a recent spot of site tinkering saw me firing up the game again to get a few screenshots, I experienced them all over again. (I also wondered if I could give it another go and make much more significant progress – answer: no).

Whatever its flaws and merits, and however they may have sharpened or faded with time, the unsettling atmosphere VOTBA managed to create back then is still present and correct. Even the very first training mission, Purge and Retrieve, which essentially involves a couple of guys flaming some rooms, then picking up an object and taking it to the exit, can still cause the heart to skip a beat, if you’re of a nervous disposition.

I’ve played the game before: I’m sure there are no enemies on this level. Well, pretty sure, anyway. However, spooky noises persist, along with cries of “What was that?” from your supposedly battle-hardened squad mate. Let’s just get the hell out of here.

(Your correspondent remembers bodging about for ages with this level, and deriving some childish amusement from the soldier whose delivery of his own name (BETHOR!) made it sound less like that of an Olympian spirit and more like the surname of a teenage schoolmate of ours who, despite being 17 at the time, looked, sounded and acted like a middle-aged partner at a large firm of solicitors. Which he probably is by now.)

Once you jump into the first mission proper, Incision, everything ramps up. Even though you’re only in charge of a single marine and at this point spared the intricacies of tactical planning and squad control, it’s still a rude awakening.

You’re presented with as simple a task as in the training mission, except this time the dreaded Genestealer, which the game has spent the majority of its introduction hyping up, does make an appearance, and in significant numbers, which means you have to add ‘not dying’ to your list of objectives.

As your ears fill with panicked shouts from your squad, you proceed through bloody carnage to the mission at hand. Don’t let them get close, warned the introduction: it’s easier said than done. With the less than nimble character movement and corridor based levels, you’d have to be pretty nifty to avoid those iconic up-close encounters with these snarling purple enemies and hammering the fire button to get rid of them. Doing the same, from further away, whenever you see another, is more likely to bring positive results.

And, to return to one of the few relevant points we made all those years ago, for those of us raised on the likes of Aliens and the genuine fear conjured by having to keep waves of terrifying enemies at bay, this was – the spooky appeal of Electric Dreams’ CPC effort aside – the first time a game seemed to have brought it to life. Indeed, screaming out loud, Hudson style (our unhelpful walkthrough was appropriately named), while blasting away furiously was the only way I ever got through it (unlike in Aliens vs. Predator, you don’t, fortunately, have to keep your cool on the trigger and master controlled bursts of fire).

As the game opens up, and the Genestealers become ubiquitous (as well as more frequently viewed from afar while mincing about in the middle distance, rather than just in mildly terrifying face-offs) their impact diminishes somewhat. Unfortunately, you also then get into the territory of having to lead a squad through each level, requiring you to plan and think, as well as shoot and be scared, which brings any progress, for me at least, to a swift halt.

Still, to the extent that I feel qualified to talk about Vengeance of the Blood Angels, the fact that these opening moments have lingered long in the memory is sufficient to earn them a brief supplementary note on our humble website, if not quite the full re-evaluation of the game that it perhaps deserves.