By Jamie Kennett

I can assure you it is simply a coincidence that the majority of the games I’ve chosen have been produced by Rockstar Games in one way or another. The reason I’ve chosen them is because of the bond they all share in great writing, and those of you who have played and appreciate L.A. Noire will understand why it’s my next choice.

The game received a lot of bad press amid the critical acclaim it was also subject to. A lot of people were unhappy with the lack of mystery the supposed detective thriller had about it and a lot of the same people criticised it for the occasionally lazy storytelling, but I believe that was only a problem because of the retrospectively misguided way that the people at Team Bondi went about presenting said story.

By Jamie Kennett

There have been plenty of video games in recent years that have only come into existence because they’re (more often than not) the lovechild of a massive gaming corporation and a strategically chosen high-grossing film. By-and-large, the majority of them have been quite successful; The Godfather and Scarface: The World is Yours come to mind as two examples of open-world action games that were great in their own right. Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and its sequel proved themselves as great pieces of strategy gaming and Star Wars: Battlefront (including the second instalment) made for some memorable playing in its innovative combination of shooter and strategy. In review, it would seem that films and video games go hand-in-hand. It is, however, a strictly one-way relationship. It’s rare thing to find a successful film that’s been adapted from a video game; the results are often not as pretty as one might think, and they’re best left forgotten. That being said, however, I think the fault lies in the choice of game, and not the end result that lies in the film it’s adapted into.

By Christopher Money

February 2013 has been a quiet month for Steam releases; it’s been a meagre selection of indie games and a mere couple of big names, one of which has turned out to be objectively abysmal, at least going on Metacritic scores.  Unfortunately, massively negative review scores do tend to sway my opinion of whether to buy a game, though I don’t read many reviews, preferring to try most games first-hand.