Review Of The Year 2015: August

August featured Gamescom in Cologne, where Microsoft were free to show games without the worry of competing with Sony, who weren’t in attendance this year. We saw the first footage of Crackdown 3 in action, there was also a new trailer for Quantum Break, the reveal of backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games on Xbox One, and Nolan North replaced Game of Throne’s Peter Dinklage (aka Dinklebot) as the Ghost companion in Destiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezw9CBmbyUM

Halo Wars 2 was announced, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst was described by EA as a reboot rather than a prequel, and Sony still managed to score a coup when it was revealed that all Call of Duty eSports would now be played on PlayStation 4.

Indie game of the month was from the omnipresent Mike Bithell as the long awated Volume hit digital stores, scoring a solid 8/10 in our review. The big boys were represented by the Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (8/10), Devil’s Third crept onto Wii U (5/10), and Jim plunged in to the boobytastic world of Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson on PS Vita, giving it just 4/10.

After many years and many false starts, Until Dawn made it to the shelves and received praise from many quarters. Jim reviewed the game, awarding it a great 8/10, and said, “With its immersive world, branching narrative, and lifelike character work, Until Dawn will have players on the edge of their seats while pounding them with jump scares and a bone-chilling soundtrack.”

Those wacky chaps at Curve sent a PlayStation Vita into space and there were cheers across the globe when Bandai Namco announced release dates for Professional Farmer 2016 and Professional Lumberjack 2016, which are both coming to PS4, Xbox One, PC, and PS3. Apparently they should be out by now, but I can’t find them listed anywhere. What a shame!

Konami and Kojima were in the news of course, but for a change it was positive news as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released, scoring an excellent 9/10 in our review. Meanwhile, Ubisoft made hearts race when they revealed the Darwin and Dickens Conspiracy, a pre-order bonus DLC pack for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate which found the two historical greats investigating, uhm, plants.

In the wider world, Greece continued to flounder and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned, triggering a general election. The Chinese economy, which had been propping up markets across the world, collapsed in spectacular fashion on Black Monday (August 24th), wiping billions of dollars from stocks and shares across the globe. Also, one of the previous year’s biggest mystery’s was solved when debris found on Réunion Island was confirmed to be that of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, which had gone missing in March 2014.

With summer in full swing, the British weather saw temperatures frequently struggled to reach average levels, although we did get to a pleasantly toasty 30°C on 22 August. However, other weather systems brought heavy rain and thundery downpours during the second half of the month and everyone moaned at how rubbish the weather was.