I can’t get off Starfield. I constantly having my ass handed to me by pirates in space, and there are a million task symbols all over the screen. Luckily, the year is 2023. Grabbing my smartphone, I find myself staring at a page from Eurogamer’s fantastic guide to the Bethesda space epic in a matter of seconds. Ah, I see. After pressing that button, the only symbol visible is for my active assignment. Additionally, I must update my spacecraft. or get a superior one. These are the top ones, along with their prices and locations. Task completed.

Go back almost 40 years. Pentagram, the most recent isometric epic from Ultimate, stumps me. As usual with Ultimate, the instructions are elegant but not very helpful. I am aimlessly meandering around the two-color landscape, sometimes vaulting over blocks and dodging the occasional unpleasant. For its originator, Eurogamer is little more than a passing fancy, and anyhow, how would I get access to it? Though the idea of computer networking was starting to gain traction, it would take a while for common people like me to get access to the modern internet.

As a result, we made old-fashioned connections and shared advice on the playground. However, it wasn’t always effective, particularly in more difficult games like Pentagram. Only one path remained. Our network of Spectrum lovers, ready to interact with the experts and one another via our online and gaming publications.

How To Master Video Games, written by Tom Hirschfeld, was one of the earliest how-to books published in 1981. According to Julian “Jaz” Rignall, one of the first gaming advice writers in the UK, “I remember reading that and thinking, ‘holy shit, you can write about these video games and do tips for them.” “So when I came home from winning the arcade championship in 1983 and having this legitimacy of being a good player, I thought, well, I’ll start writing hints and tips.” At the time, Computer & Video gaming, or C&VG, was the leading gaming magazine in the UK. “The first thing I wrote was a guide to playing the Atari arcade game Pole Position,” Rignall says. “I developed this comprehensive tutorial after becoming an expert player of the game over the summer. It was basically instructions on how to drive around the course with some particular pointers; there was no template.”

As soon as the concept gained traction, Rignall started writing advice for Personal Computer Games, one of the first British publications to provide a regular tips section. By the time Newsfield launched its renowned Commodore 64 bible, ZZAP! 64, in the spring of 1985, the value of a consistent portion devoted to gamer assistance was well recognized. According to Rignall, “it was a very important part of the magazine.” “Market research showed that the tips were, along with reviews, the most popular parts of the magazine – but we had a gut feeling it was anyway, and it meant a lot of interaction with the readers.”

There were four to six pages of tricks, hints, cheats, and POKEs in every issue of ZZAP! 64, almost all of which were reader-submitted. The latter was crucial; it was a brief type-in program that granted the player limitless lives or some other kind of advantage. Rignall remembers, “The turnaround on POKEs was quick.” “Those guys had their routine, and I literally called them up and would ask for some POKEs for as soon as a game came out.”
The magazine would sometimes even give games to hackers in an attempt to publish the POKEs as soon as possible.

The early editions of Crash, the sibling publication of ZZAP! 64, had been noticeably tip-free. The editorial staff quickly realized this. Nick Roberts, who put up the advice section of Crash a few years later, says, “I remember as a reader, the big deal of the Atic Atac map.” “They ran a competition for readers, then Oli Frey turned these lined paper and pencil sketches into a map of beauty, with the prize of a cool ACG trophy!” Newsfield co-founder Oli Frey did more than just provide the covers and occasional comic strip and other graphic pieces; he also analyzed readers’ maps and turned them into works of art worthy of any wall. It was simple to get disoriented since many Spectrum games, like Atic Atac, stretched over hundreds of displays. We loved the maps, boy.

Of course, Newsfield wasn’t the only one to have a tip-related revelation. Your Sinclair, Crash’s competitor, realized early on that it required a tips area. Usually, the skillo YS chose to approach things a bit differently, having two distinct columns: Hack Free Zone for cheats and tips, and Hacking Away for POKEs. Former Your Sinclair staff writer Phil South explains, “I suspect it was because anyone can read a tip and try it, but inserting POKEs required a bit more savvy.” South, who wrote under the pen name Hex Loader, examined reader correspondence, reviewed entries, and typed everything into the two parts. “[It] was valuable to the readers, and the more of that we could do, the more value we would add to the magazine,” he says. “Plus, the research and testing of the tips was 80 percent done, and all I had to do was find out if they worked and write a few jokes in response.” Relentless mappers, like a young man called Mischa Welsh, even found themselves employed by the publication to provide material on a regular basis, and Your Sinclair went above and beyond the standard name-checks, publishing portraits and biographies of those who dared to submit suggestions.

As readers, we would devour all of these tricks, maps, and suggestions, meticulously enter the POKEs (which sometimes would even work), and then experience a revitalization with the corresponding game. This was one of two sections (along with the letters pages) that were more reader-created, although every other portion of the publications was thoughtfully crafted by its professional writers and freelancers. Roberts beams, “The process began with a giant postbag.” “We received hundreds of letters a month, and it was my job to sift through them and find some interesting ones for the Playing Tips pages.” Roberts wrote out each tip with a brief introduction and a name check for the contributing reader using a green-screen Amstrad PCW8256. “I created a rough layout outlining the locations of the pages in each issue after finding out how many I had. The POKE procedures were the mainstay of the advice pages, but we could utilize a decent map just as it was.” Roberts had to find the POKE’s game and practice the routine before meticulously penning it up for the magazine, just like all these tipsters. The first paragraph was the last component. Roberts’ Muses, Looking back, those Playing Tips pages read like a journal from my adolescent years; they discuss my nascent DJ career, my run-ins with the girls, and my holiday and Christmas activities. Very enjoyable to reflect about.”

Not everyone experiences things in the same way. “It wasn’t fun at all, as a journalist,” grimaces Rignall, who worked as tip master at ZZAP! 64 and Newsfield’s Amstrad publication, Amtix. “All you were doing was copy-pasting, copying people’s letters and looking at POKEs – it was incredibly tedious!” Another problem was timing: the magazine needed in-depth instructions for games that wouldn’t even be available when the reviews were published. Staff writers were unavoidably given that task. Rignall’s ideas are echoed by your Sinclair’s Phil South. “Aside from the tedious retyping of everything, it was a breeze. All I needed to do was think up some clever jokes. That really very much sums up my whole career as a journalist.” Your Sinclair eventually combined its two parts into one magnificent Tips spread: coworker Marcus Berkmann entered the realm of POKEs and pointers, while South moved on to other responsibilities. South chuckles, “He was a very meticulous cove, old Berkbilge.” “He had very tiny precise handwriting that looked like notes taken by miniature spiders.”

The tips sections, which people flocked to, caused conflicting feelings among the journalists who created them. Games got more sophisticated but less obscure as the 8-bit era faded. Long-form guides replaced the POKE, the ubiquitous Eighties magazine staple, as the latter gradually vanished from circulation. According to Rignall, “I think it peaked around 1994 and then just slowly faded at the end of the ‘nineties.” I believed Gamefaqs was amazing right away and would completely replace the need for magazine hints and advice. You could immediately get these really thorough written instructions, and people were doing them for free.”

Journalist Keith Pullin began working with PC Zone in the late 1990s, having gained experience as a “Games Counsellor” on Nintendo Hotline, an official service provided by Nintendo to provide advice and assistance with their games. Remarkably, one of his first responsibilities was penning a Dear Keith type advice piece, a.k.a. the “agony aunt.” “The weird thing was, it was mostly still letters, actual snail mail,” he informs me. “There was an art to finding the ones to publish and respond to, and the holy grail was finding a game that was reasonably popular and current, so people would be interested in it.” Like Crash’s adventure column in the 1980s, this was part of a wider tips section where readers would ask Pullin for a hint or tip, and he would answer. If he could, that is. “Quite often [the letters] just didn’t make sense,” he says with a chuckle. “The one piece of information that people tended to forget to mention was the name of the game!” Pullin also commandeered the instructions area, penning massive essays devoted to a single game. “To attempt to get hacks, level skips, game saves, or anything else to lessen the agony, you would get in touch with the publisher or developer. Next, you needed to get specific screenshots of the particular item you were discussing. I think that was some of the hardest labor I’ve ever done.” And that was just the hardest part of it. That involved reducing the whole text to 2,500 words. It implied that the objective of a level on a game like Carmageddon 2 would be reduced to “Kill everyone.” Leap across the chasm. Step into the mall. Murder each and every one. Get out of the shopping center. I’ve frequently questioned if anybody is really benefitted by this degree of ambiguity.”

Crucially, even though the advice sections continued to appear in publications like PC Zone, they were no longer seen as essential as they had been in years before. In 2001, Keith Pullin published his last Dear Keith; by then, he was mostly relying on the internet for his knowledge. That same year, his last PC Zone guide was published. Throughout the 2000s, cheat codes and manuals continued to appear in a variety of video gaming periodicals. There were even specific tips publications, like the venerable PowerStation. It was not to last, however. The internet had prevailed.

Though tips and guidance are readily available these days, these sections were formerly more beloved by us for reasons other than their suggestions. For editors like Julian Rignall, testing those POKEs and typing them all out may have been an excruciating task, but for us readers, the magazines’ interactive nature served as our portal to the world of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Nick Roberts remembers, “Magazines were always about being part of a club.” I believe that readers have been drawn to that club for a considerable amount of time. That has never truly been supplanted by the internet.”

The lavish pixel imagery and intriguing storylines of Backbone are ruined by the game’s uninspired latter act and dull gameplay.
Backbone has a melancholic quality. It seeps into everything, including the settings, the climate, the conversation, the music, the plot, and even the names of the individuals, much as a rancid perfume does. It suits this pixel-perfect, “post-noir” detective story at first, so it’s not exactly out of place, but later on, when the story takes an unexpected and surprising turn, it seems phony. Even a long-con. Because in the end, Backbone is quite different from what it seems to be.

Your existence as a PI The beginning of Howard Lotor, a raccoon detective with a taste for the theatrical and the traditional trenchcoat, is essentially what you would expect. He can’t allow a thought escape his thoughts without adding a good dash of pessimism, and he lives in a tiny, dilapidated flat. Howie is eager for you to understand how unfulfilling his employment is, as it seems to consist only of a never-ending procession of unfaithful spouses.

Though gloomy at times, Backbone’s trip through futuristic Vancouver brings you to some very beautiful locations that are lovingly created in chic pixel art. While jogging up Glanville’s main strip, you can look through the windows of the apartments stacked above the stores and offices to see the creatures inside eating and smoking, silhouetted against the flickering light of their TV sets. Rain is speckling the screen as neon reflections dance in puddles formed in the pavement. For a voyeur like me, it’s constantly interesting, and when combined with a melancholic soundtrack and amazing sound effects, it’s a monument to skillful world-building that manages to create a planet that seems real and accessible even with the anthropomorphic animals filling the streets.

A delightful tingle of self-awareness runs throughout the story, from Howie’s acknowledgment of his predicament—”Look at me; I am a raccoon in a trenchcoat,” he tells a passerby—to his succinct To Do list, which includes calling his mother. Howie is endearing in that grizzled, tough-shell-warm-heart kind of way most fictional detectives are, too. Purchase soap. Pay your bills. Avoid dying. I suppose they are good life lessons to live by.

However, there isn’t much difference in the gameplay. Apart from a few monotonous and egregiously underutilized puzzles and stealth scenes, Howie mostly walks from talkative NPC to talkative NPC, enquiring and obtaining information. The fact that so many of the animals you come across on your voyage are wonderfully rendered, eager to converse, and given names is fantastic, but even while the conversation is often written rather well, the absence of voiceovers may make these meetings seem a bit hollow.

When it comes to Howie’s interviews, there’s simply the appearance of choice. Although he can use different strategies to interrogate different NPCs, from what I’ve seen after playing through twice, it seems that all paths ultimately lead to the same place, regardless of the conversation you choose. Though it’s adorable that we matched up this old Gastown couple in the hopes that they can provide company in their latter years, at times it feels like nothing more than needless busywork. Was it really necessary? Did it make the tale progress more? And because they were standing a good twelve feet apart, did they really need a detective to pair them up?

Renee should really learn how to boil her own filthy tea, you know. There’s also a lot of cult stuff and an odd, dark pivot to the dubious decisions made by the local meat suppliers. A contemplative side story explores what happens when the wealthiest members of society work together to change the law and bend regulations in order to maintain the impoverished under the control of a select, affluent few. Subsequently, you enter the last act. Yes, that last act.

I’ve spent a lot of time playing games. I’ve spent a lot of time playing terrible games. Nothing has ever prepared me for the last third of Howie’s trip, and I have a suspicion that even if you could conjure up the most absurd, outrageous, far-fetched, and completely implausible scenario from the back of your mind, you wouldn’t be able to anticipate the outcome if I asked you to guess. Backbone takes a story turn so absurd that it almost breaks free from its genre. In the process, it betrays its characters and the effort that has been done up to this point, leaving important plot points unanswered and cast members unmentioned. A part of me is happy that Howie has finally discovered a story worth looking into, but it also unravels all of the deliberate, thoughtful buildup in a manner that leaves me dumbfounded and furiously angry.

And, see, I understand. Computer games. These amazing items allow us to completely detach from the world around us. With a medium like this, the enchantment is in its ability to tell stories that go beyond the confines of our reality, so simple basic truths like gravity, rain, death, and love no longer hold true. Instead, we can create implausible worlds with unlikely characters.

But once again, Backbone takes a completely unexpected turn rather than just a strange detour, leaving me utterly disappointed with a disorganized jumble of unfinished tales and narrative gaps.

“Backbone will likely be remembered by all those who encounter it, but probably not for the reasons the developers hoped.”

Even with its shortened duration (you can finish this in one day), there’s not much of a reason to play it again. Though at £18 it’s not exactly cheap, and given there aren’t multiple endings (narrative designer Danny Salfield Wadeson confirmed on Twitter that there’s “just the one ending… [as ]it’s the story we wanted to tell”), I could forgive a brief experience if the gameplay was rewarding and the story worth telling. As such, it’s difficult to suggest Backbone given how brief your experience will be, especially considering that it plays more like a visual novel than the role-playing game it claims to be due to its complete absence of interactive gameplay components.

In the end, everyone who uses Backbone will undoubtedly remember it, although probably not for the reasons the creators had in mind. Nothing will get you ready for the startling, absurd conclusion of the game, even with a great beginning, attractive graphics, and a really endearing protagonist. Undoubtedly, Backbone purposefully left its storylines unfinished to smoothly transition into a later installment; perhaps, a follow-up will build on its achievements and provide gamers with a more fulfilling ending.

Give the Dark Alliance rebirth some time, and it will prove to have its own charms despite lacking polish and local cooperative gaming.
Dark Alliance isn’t a wonderful game, therefore I can’t look you in the eyes and say that it is. My body’s rational bones all know that. You could play this type of game for an hour and then decide you don’t need to see it anymore since you’ve formed your opinion. You feel that this game is a little cheesy. And it’s true to some extent, so I’d be hard-pressed to convince you differently. Dark Alliance gives you a bad first impression by stumbling in and dripping on you like it’s inebriated. You’ll cry out, “What happened to the series I loved?” “Where is the neighborhood cooperative?” Why does it seem to be a game for the Xbox 360? And why does it feel like I have Marmite stuck in my thumbsticks when I try to manage it? But, and this is a but, I assure you, it’s a grower. After many hours, I actually kind of like it. Yes, it’s stupid, but when was that ever a negative thing?

First, let’s go back a little. Because it allowed you to play with friends on the same console, Dark Alliance is the 20-year-old Dungeons & Dragons hack-and-slash (or action role-playing game, or beat-’em-up, or whatever you call it) series that most people remember. However, with this new version of the show, you are unable to. Playing must be done online. I see. It can be played alone, and at first you will, but it seems alone and a little pointless without someone else, which is one of the main reasons it starts out badly.

When you’re downed alone, there’s no one to bring you back to life, therefore you have to respawn. It is impossible to initiate team attacks—which are quite effective—by yourself. There’s really no relief when you’re alone yourself; everything will come to you. Additionally, when adversaries swarm in from all directions, they will disrupt your assaults, juggle the timing of your blocks, and kick you while you’re on the ground. It’s not really enjoyable.

Adding to this is a rather sluggish sense while playing the game. Everything you perform in Dark Alliance appears to take longer than it should, including opening boxes, gathering treasure, leaping, fighting, and even running. For an action game, it’s not that good. Dark Alliance’s attack animations, which rapidly drain your stamina, are similar to those in Monster Hunter, which makes matters worse. I make the Monster Hunter analogy, but it’s not done nearly as effectively as in that game, and this method deprives you of a sense of direct control.

Combine this with an overall dated appearance (I don’t know why they haven’t bothered to texture the faces of the four main playable characters), a performance that occasionally stutters on the Xbox Series S (1080p), wooden animations, and enemy behavior that is sometimes so stupid that it seems like it doesn’t move at all. The whole thing isn’t very well built and lacks originality or creativity.

It seems to be improving! As soon as you play with someone else, it becomes better. You may utilize the matching service, which works well, or host (privately or publically, via invitations). It occasionally places you in a group with individuals who are either much lower or much higher level than you are, or it joins you in a game where you can’t play as the character you are because someone else is, and you can only have one of them per group (there are four characters). However, it only truly becomes an annoyance when someone lowers your total group strength, preventing you from raising the Challenge Rating. But generally speaking, it matches you with rather good players.

On the Xbox Series S, I haven’t been able to enable in-game voice chat, however. Since small speech indicators sometimes appear but nothing is audible, I presume it is there. However, I’ve learned to like the quiet comprehension that takes its place—you can always use Xbox party chat to get around it.)

The game suddenly makes sense when played in groups. Actually, the four characters are basically just one large design. They are all complementary to one another. Large, hulking foes who are almost hard to defeat hand-to-hand may now be kited about to target targets from behind or close range, while lesser foes that impede the movements of the more agile heroes can be knocked aside. The game gains vitality and vigor abruptly, and the long pauses in between your assaults are suddenly filled by someone else.

The stages themselves quicken as players work together to locate and gather trinkets, which are automatically distributed among you (although you must get equipment from chests separately since it spits out a piece for each of you). The nicest part is that you can easily be resurrected (and indefinitely, as far as I can tell), so even if you screw up and die, it won’t worry you. In fact, I’m leaning toward the notion of keeping all administrative activities (such as leveling up, equipping, and merchanting) within the village center area to avoid mission-related slowness caused by individuals fiddling with menus.

After you play the game in this manner for a long, you’ll start to get a deeper appreciation for it, and as the Challenge Rating rises, strategy will start to show. You’ll start to pay attention to what the different status effects of the moves you unlock (that you purchase in between missions) do and how to employ them most effectively. You’ll start to block and become less careless with your attacks. You’ll also start to recognize and be aware of the triggers for team attacks and executions.

See, none of this changes the gameplay entirely. Playing with other people doesn’t provide Dark Alliance an instant boost in grace and dexterity. There’s still an element of crudeness to the gameplay at its heart, and enemies still do stupid things like group together and attempt to assault fallen friends who are unstoppable (which may be rather beneficial in some situations). However, what you were going through now seems quite charming. I’m enjoying the rhythms of warfare now that I’m used to them. With a leaping knee, I rush in and unleash a massive swing with my hammer that sends goblins hurtling over cliff faces and into the air like golf balls. That would be fun for who?

I get a rush from persevering through difficult fights with my newfound Cattie-Brie (ranger/healer) friend, and we often revive one another. Even now, after I finish a quest, I still look forward to returning to the village center to see what treasure I may find. There are still plenty more missions to see, and they are typically becoming better as well. They are larger and more stunning. There’s a lot of gameplay here when you take into account all the various Challenge Ratings, which is, I suppose, what the endgame entails—rerunning them to get the finest equipment combinations.

Thus, although Dark Alliance isn’t a very good game, I don’t believe anybody was implying that it was, which accounts for both its lower pricing and its availability on Game Pass. It’s reassuring once you get used to it. It’s moreish, much like comfort food. It’s better that way since it’s not too complex or demanding. Most importantly, I’d want to play it more.