Games, Books and Films

Happy New Year! And now for a new feature – GBF’s monthly top ten. As the name suggests, it’s the ten most visited reviews/features of the past month (not including news or the ‘about’ page), in this case December 2008 - it’s just like the charts, only considerably more interesting. This is based on the… Read More

The Eternal Night proves to be a most prophetic name for what is undoubtedly Spyro’s darkest gaming hour. Fans accept the series hasn’t hit the same highs in recent years as the original trilogy managed on the PSOne, but Spyro’s fall, even since 2004’s decent A Hero’s Tail, is simply cosmic. A New Beginning (the… Read More

Off the back of three progressively more excellent PSOne releases, Syphon Filter unexpectedly took nose-dive of epic proportions in 2002 with its disastrous PS2 debut, The Omega Strain. Few series have suffered such a sharp decline in fortunes from one instalment to the next, but the good news is, Dark Mirror reverses the trend in… Read More

When it comes to console gaming, Star Wars has had a decidedly chequered past, with a very high turnout of mediocre titles offset by only a modest selection of good ones. However, its quirky union with LEGO has lead to one of the series most memorable instalments for some time.
LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game… Read More

Ah, if I’m not mistaken, this is one for the connoisseurs. XII Stag was never a game Joe Public was going to rush out and buy on-mass – one look at the reverse side of the games case reveals that much – instead, it’s targeted at those who wished the days of hardcore shoot ‘em… Read More

It’s hard to shake the feeling that Dead To Rights 2 was conceived a generation or so too late. Little of Namco’s usual style, flair and assured quality are in evidence, meaning the player is left to battle with dated gameplay mechanics and a half-baked story that’s defined by its anonymous cast. When mixed with… Read More

As you may already have deduced, Warriors Orochi 2 is rather similar to the fifteen other ‘Warriors’ themed hack ‘n’ slash ‘em ups that have invaded the PS2 over the last few years and the target audience thus remains much the same; those who find its gameplay unchallenging and repetitive will find plenty to dislike,… Read More

To celebrate the festive season, GBF have a quintet of new PlayStation 2 reviews coming your way over the next few weeks, where we pass judgement on KOEI’s mass-slaughter fest Warriors Orochi 2 and Namco’s shoot ‘em up Dead To Rights 2. Elsewhere, retro shoot ‘em up fans will get their fill with the unheralded… Read More

The process of translating a Japanese RPG must be quite a task – even the most modestly sized of role-playing games contain thousands of words of dialogue, and then there’s the question of whether a joke in one language will still be seen as funny in another. Many games contain genuine humour, whilst others highlight… Read More

Having been largely ignored upon its 1993 Mega-CD release and also the subsequent reimaginings that appeared on the Saturn and PlayStation, Lunar: The Silver Star has gradually amassed something of a cult-status. Developed by GameArts, it acts not only as a precursor to the brilliant Grandia, but in its own right, Lunar’s simple but effective… Read More