Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängers

Emotions too raw to explore

The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he has just completed. It lasts nearly two hours but is worth the investment since it reveals what the rest of the work tries hard to avoid openly confronting – grief.

First Person: playwright Tom Fowler on allowing room for 'Hope'

The Royal Court playwright discusses the influences on his newly acclaimed play

Recently, having just shared the rehearsal draft of my current Royal Court play Hope has a Happy Meal with two close friends, I found myself slightly offended when one of them said, "you can tell you were playing the Nintendo Switch obsessively when writing this." They then proceeded to talk about the play and its structure in video game terms.

Mark Bould: The Anthropocene Unconscious review - climate anxiety is written everywhere

★★★ MARK BOULD: THE ANTHROPOCENE UNCONSCIOUS Climate anxiety is written everywhere

Foreboding is never far away, even in our trashiest entertainment

Our everyday lives, if we’re fortunate, may be placid, even contented. A rewarding job, for some; good eats; warm home; happy family; entertainment on tap. Yet, even for the privileged, awareness of impending change – probably disaster – intrudes.

Our entertainment is saturated with foreboding. In the Anthropocene, the hard-to-define era when the human collective has planet-wide effects that will endure for aeons, any new fictional world bears traces of the ways our real world is being made, or unmade.

Sonic the Hedgehog review - stuck in first gear

★★ SONIC THE HEDGEHOG Stuck in first gear

Bizarrely slow-motion effort to exploit Sega's speedster

An early trailer for this adaptation of the ‘90s games franchise caused Cats­-like horror at its overly humanoid Hedgehog. Rather than the former film’s risky freak-show, though, this diligently redesigned Sonic is the most safely saccharine family movie imaginable.

FIFA 19 review - the best just got a bit better

It looks and plays great, but what’s new?

Reinventing the wheel is no easy task, yet EA, the powerhouse publisher behind the multi-decade long FIFA series, manages to pull the digital rabbit from the hat year after year. The majority of the on-pitch action hasn’t changed in iterations, and nor does it really need to; it’s a slick, great-looking and responsive playing experience.

Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, V&A review - gaming for all

★★★★ VIDEOGAMES: DESIGN/PLAY/DISRUPT, V&A Broad look at gaming, present & future

A comprehensive look at gaming present and future has surprisingly broad appeal

Design/Play/Disrupt at the V&A covers a wide variety of games that are spearheading the gaming world at the moment. It takes a closer look at eight of the most innovative and different games that have changed the world of gaming in the last five years.

Detroit: Become Human review – a robot story with real heart

A big budget interactive story where your decisions can flip the script

Interactive stories are a tricky proposition. Make the on-screen action too passive and your audience feels like they’re watching a succession of cut-scenes. Tip the balance the other way and it’s just a game with pretensions of cinematic story telling. The idea that every decision you make in-game, whether it’s a dialogue choice or an action, will ultimately affect the outcome of the story is a bold ambition.

A Story About My Uncle

First-person without the shooting in this nonviolent platform game

Most first-person games immediately stick a gun in the bottom part of your screen. Developers seem to believe that the only exciting agency a player has in virtual worlds is to destroy them and kill the people populating them. A Story About My Uncle joins a small, but growing band of first-person games that ditch the shooting, for the better.

Modern Combat 5: Blackout

MODERN COMBAT 5: BLACKOUT A fully-fledged first-person shooter on your phone

A fully-fledged first-person shooter on your phone or tablet

On technical grounds, it's pretty hard as a gamer not to simply be amazed by Modern Combat 5 – it is, pretty much, a fully-functioned, first-person shooter to rival Call Of Duty and Battlefield, only on your phone rather than a dedicated home console.

That's not just talking in terms of visuals – although they're the most immediately impressive thing about the game. As well as the graphics, there's the amount of single-player missions, the multi-player and the plethora of side-quests, weapons upgrades and loadout options available also.

Sniper Elite III

Action, if not morality, in the sights of this sniping action game

Sometimes virtual violence can simply be fun, even morally dubious violence. Sniper Elite III is pretty reprehensible and fairly morally indefensible. It gleefully glamorises violence. Yet throughout, it's fun. Really good fun.