VideoGamer.com Plays April 26, 2013

Tom Orry, Editorial Director – Thomas Was Alone, PS3

This week’s addition to PlayStation Plus in Europe was Thomas Was Alone, the indie favourite from Mike Bithell. After playing for about 40 minutes I’m currently firmly between thinking it’s really good or completely pretentious. It’s either really smart, with great dialogue, or it’s a bit tedious with tiresome puzzles that rely more on managing the characters than out of the box thinking. I’m hoping it’ll become the former, but only time will tell.

Steve Burns, Reviews and Features Editor – Star Trek

A movie licence, that’s out on the same day as the review embargo lifts, that’s not very good. Surprise! In all seriousness though, this is total, total guff, and every copy should be rounded up and incinerated as soon as humanly possible.

David Scammell, Deputy News Editor – Need For Speed: Shift, Xbox 360

I drove a Lamborghini Gallardo last week for no other reason than the idea that it might be fun. And it was. But getting behind the wheel of a car faster than the speed of light and coming away with my no claims bonus still in tact left me convinced that I had what it takes to become the next Damon Hill. So in an attempt prove my theory – as depressingly absurd as it soon turned out to be – I spent much of my week diving into a few different racers.

I went through the usual – the Forzas and the Gran Turismos – but it’s the original Need For Speed: Shift that somehow grabbed me the most. Not because it’s the best or most realistic (it’s about as close to the real thing as Red Faction: Guerrilla must be to the controllers of the Mars Rover), but because I’ve become obsessed with one simple mechanic: mastering corners. 

It’s a basic mechanic – all the game seems to do is measure your ability to stick to the racing line as you glide around a corner – but for reasons I can’t explain, it’s a feature I find hugely compulsive. Rather than replaying tracks to shave seconds off my lap time, I’m going back to dominate bends. I’ve become a madman who gets off on getting one over a piece of virtual tarmac, grinning as I cross each turn off of the game’s checklist. It’s still nowhere near as fun as driving an actual supercar, but for 1/100 of the price of the insurance, sticking to the virtual world perhaps isn’t too bad a shout.

Simon Miller, Editor-In-Chief – Paper Mario: Sticker Star

It’s been a while since I’ve played Sticker Star, which is ridiculous considering I’ve been pretty much 80% of the way through the game since Christmas. After returning to it, I can see why I didn’t finish it entirely.

All the Paper Mario titles have something to offer, and while Sticker Star boasts great writing and some, frankly, ridiculous elements, the decision to eradicate an actual overarching story and RPG elements was a bad move. It’s still a very good 3DS game, but it’s nowhere near as awe-inspiring as The Thousand-Year Door which, if you want to know, remains in my top five all-time game list. Pow.