So... what the hell is Miitomo? When Nintendo announced it was moving into mobile apps, the smart money seemed to be on iOS and/or Android ports of choice titles from the company’s deeply-stacked library of classic games. Maybe a mobile Super Mario Bros conversion, a phone-sized dose of Super Metroid or the chance to re-live The Legend Of Zelda on your iPhone.
The Dark Souls series is a franchise based on steep learning curves, uncompromising enemies, frustration, repetition and reward. It doesn’t suffer fools, it has an unwelcoming personality, and it’s neither funny nor always fun to play.
Sleeper cells get a bad press. The undercover units that seamlessly weave themselves into the fabric of society are normally associated with espionage and terrorism. But what if the sleepers were actually guardians of all that we hold dear? What if they represented the very last defence when order dissolves into chaos and anarchy replaces law?
There is a glut of Match-4 games on every app store and gaming platform worth anything, and a few besides. Just what could this game add to a genre already packed to the rafters with identikit puzzlers and dominated by the all-conquering behemoth of Candy Crush Saga?
Far Cry Primal (★★★)
Far Cry, one of the best-loved and longest running shoot’em-up games has taken a step back in time, a 10,000-year moonwalk to be exact. Forget about automatic weapons and fancy explosives, instead, get to grips with spears, bows and bumble bee bombs in this caveman "shooter" with a difference.
How difficult should a game be? How fine should the line be between frustration and reward? Crashlands is a game designed to err on the more comfortable side of that line, steadfastly refusing to punish you too severely for making mistakes while still attempting to offer a challenge.
The ties that bind, the mystery of the human condition and the emotional connections that keep us trussed to our nearest and dearest. Visualise love and what do you see? In the eyes of the Unravel development team it’s a little red thread, the same thread that lies at the heart of this endearing puzzle platform game.
The Room 3 is the latest in Fireproof Games' series of tactile puzzle games that invite you to twist, prod and rotate on-screen objects to reveal hidden secrets and activate devious mechanisms. It presents you with intriguing objects and devices that have concealed switches, hidden panels and features that you must find and manipulate in order to progress. Think a Fabergé egg, but with a superhuman level of detail and cunning in its construction.
Good interactive stories have to walk a game design tightrope. Too little hands-on action and you’re just watching an animated movie. Too much "gaming" and there’s not enough room for the narrative to reach out and grab you. That job is made all the harder when the story is drip-fed over the course of a year. Will the fan base stay loyal? Will newcomers be put off by joining the party late? Gamers can be a fickle bunch. Both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones pulled it off, but the heavyweight Hollywood duo had massively popular licenses to bolster the offering.
When a discussion about ‘What was the best game of 2015?" stretches through a whole evening in the pub you know that: (a) you need to stop socialising with games journalists, and (b) 2015 has been a corker of a year in videogames.