Duet

DUET A challenging game that combines fast reactions with graceful movement

A challenge that combines fast reactions with graceful movement

Geometric shapes move towards a coloured ball. You just have to move the ball and dodge the shapes. Easy. Were it not for one tiny detail, Duet might be almost too simple.

Except.. there are two balls. The clue is in the title and the way you beat each level has as much to do with choreography as it does with lightning-fast twitch reactions.

Wayward Souls

A fast-moving RPG with plenty of replay value

Wayward Souls is an action role-playing game in the mould of Nintendo (NES & SNES) classics like Secret of Mana and Legend of Zelda. It also manages to incorporate elements from that most voguish of retro formats, the roguelike.

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.

Minecraft Pocket Edition

MINECRAFT POCKET EDITION The baby version of the hit PC game is now the real deal

The baby version of the hit PC game is now the real deal

Minecraft Pocket Edition has been around on Android and iOS since late 2011 and is still officially an alpha release. After a couple of years of slow development, version 0.9.0 arrived this month and finally turned the portable Minecraft into something worth reviewing - and playing.

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A 'free-to-play' game that satirises its own modus operandi

The videogames industry is changing, and not in a good way. There are fewer and fewer people creating single-player stories of depth and ingenuity in games. The sad truth is fewer and fewer people are willing to pay enough (or anything even) for games that are artistic, slower or deeper. Instead, videogames are increasingly falling into one of two woeful categories.

MouseCraft

Cheesily-named puzzle game mixes Tetris and Lemmings…

A minus mark for this puzzle game for cannily, if cheesily, being named to hitch a ride on the wildly-popular MineCraft phenomenon. And another minus mark for its barely-a-concept-at-all of mashing together two massively enjoyable and enduring puzzle game series into one.

MouseCraft takes the block shapes from Tetris - literally the exact same block shapes: the square one, the S-shaped one, the long-thin one, the L-shaped one – and adds them to a very slightly reworked version of Lemmings.

Fluid SE

A finely tuned test of skill that will draw you back for just one more try

Sometimes, if you get really proficient at a game you might be lucky enough to enter the psychological state known as "flow", where you become so focused and at one with the task in hand that time seems to compress, everything starts to feel just right and the game could almost be said to be playing you. You are in the zone. Some games more than others seem to actively invite players into this special place, and Fluid SE* practically demands that you jump in with both feet if you are to have any chance at all.

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.

Kiwanuka

A simple yet deep puzzle game with frustrating controls

Good puzzle game mechanics are hard to find and Kiwanuka has just the one. Luckily, it is a great one that allows for taxing but elegant levels full of the "Aha!" moments that puzzle fans gobble up like smarties.
 

To the casual (if veteran) gamer, Kiwanuka resembles the Nineties classic Lemmings in how it tasks you with guiding a group of tiny charaters to safety across a screen full of rocky 2D platforms.