Review

Hockey fans sent EA’s NHL series next-gen debut (opens in new tab) to the penalty box when it landed last year. Beloved modes were missing and gameplay was wanting, and the fans’ reaction was predictably cranky. EA Canada took notice, brushed themselves off after blistering fan and critical reactions, and …

My slice of bread teeters on the edge of the kitchen cabinet. I’ve spent a painful half hour sliding across counters, coaxing my bread clumsily over chairs and butter tins, and now one wrong nudge on the control stick will send it into the watery oblivion of the sink below. …

Going back to Gears of War ten years after its original release is an exercise in myth-busting. Rightly iconic, but long since muddied in the public memory by a string of differently focused sequels, not to mention the decade-long cover-shooter boom it inspired, Gears is a game defined now as …

Teen horror has a formula. A very simple formula of gory violence, schlocky dialogue, girls in lip gloss, boys in letterman jackets and plenty of grisly death. Scream clearly explained the rules, Tucker and Dale Vs Evil subverted them and, impeccably, The Cabin in the Woods broke them all. Until …

Golf is a game steeped in tradition, weighted heavily by conservative approaches to just about everything. Rory McIlroy PGA Tour exemplifies that attitude. As EA’s golf debut on new-generation consoles, it could have broken new ground, capitalizing on the inherent power of the social infrastructure and computing prowess that these …

Highway to action heaven… “My name is Max, my world is fire and blood,” rumbles Tom Hardy’s voiceover (think Bane attempting RP) across a fearsome desertscape of blinding yellows and combustible oranges. A lizard scuttles over a boulder, the tippy-tap-tap of its talons amplified to a death-metal snare-solo that forewarns …

You don’t wanna be in their gang… Whichever way you cut it, writer/director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s debut is a tough watch, and not just for the reasons explained by its stark opening caption: it’s set at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf, starring amateur actors speaking only in sign language, …

Cat wears a terrible dress. Some other stuff happens, but it’s hard to remember anything apart from Cat wearing a terrible dress. Then again, presumably Barbara chose it and her brain has been well and truly pickled by gin. So poor old Cat must go to the ball looking like …

You don’t have to be mad to work here… “I’ve always been fascinated with the troubled mind”, says Jim Sturgess’ turn-of-the-century ‘alienist’, Edward Newgate, in Brad Anderson’s florid adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe short story that’s completely bonkers and yet, curiously, not quite bonkers enough. Trainee shrink Newgate certainly …

Odder than a trip to Ikea… Completing one of cinema’s more oblique trilogies, Roy Andersson follows Songs From The Second Floor and You, The Living with this droll third episode “about being a human being”, winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion. Beginning with ‘Three meetings with death’, Pigeon …