Simulation

Motorbike games have always been a part of video gaming culture. Go back to the early days of SEGA and Nintendo and you'll see countless attempts at bringing those two-wheeled speed demons to the digital realm. This has kind of dropped off in recent years as developers would rather show off pretty cars with high end labels. MotoGP 13 proves that there are still games out there for people that want their motorbike fix, offering high speeds, realistic physics and challenging gameplay that will keep a hardcore fan happy for months.

The Fast and the Furious films - which I've today learnt have long been cut down to just Fast and Furious - are pretty strongly focussed on a particular sort of person. It is perhaps the best example of the car porn genre, showcasing flash vehicles, sexy women and loud rap music.

Each and every year sees the release of dozens of sports management simulators, and the vast majority of them are extremely niche. While the likes of Football Manager destroys millions of man hours each year, similar games are often completely overlooked, panned or even mocked for their apparent lack of interactivity or their place in the sports hierarchy.

Since releasing Title Bout Championship Boxing 2.5 back in 2008, the boxing simulation series has laid dormant, as Out of the Park Developments shifted their focus full-time to their baseball management sim, finally selling it to frequent collaborator studio P.I.S.D. Ltd. back in May. Hand in hand with that news came word that the long-awaited Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013 would be released - and it arrived this week on PC and Mac, a (somewhat) successful for the oft-forgotten franchise.

Ever since its first global release for the Nintendo Gamecube a decade ago, Animal Crossing has amassed a very large and devoted fanbase. Its Sims-meets-Harvest Moon real-time gameplay is notable for its charm, depth and accessibility. This fact alone easily makes Animal Crossing one of Nintendo's most popular franchises. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the latest iteration of the series, this time finding its home on the 3DS. For many, this was a highly anticipated game, especially after it was revealed that the Japanese release last September was an instant ...

If you've heard of Game Dev Tycoon, there's a good chance it's for one of two reasons. Either you've seen the story of their day one anti-piracy stunt, in which developer Greenheart Games uploaded a version of their game to torrent websites, a version in which your games are violently pirated and never make any money, or because of the accusation that Game Dev Tycoon is basically Game Dev Story slightly reworked. Either way, you're probably starting your little garage-based development studio with an opinion on how things are going to go already. You're ...

It's not unusual for a fan of video games to believe the industry is going wrong somehow. Through the use of DLC and the like, they feel the industry is losing what is most important to it: the games. With the likes of Game Dev Story giving these same fans the opportunity to do things differently, a new subset of the "Tycoon" genre has been born. Publisher Dream, a new title recently released for DSi and 3DS (via DSiWare), is one of those games, but how effective is it in allowing you to make your publisher dreams come true?

So it's come to this. The likes of Farm Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator have become beyond a joke, have become mainstream and apparently deserve a parody of their own. From YouTube onwards, Surgeon Simulator 2013 is the main topic of conversation, with hundreds of thousands of videos popping up in a matter of weeks. It's difficult, it's wacky, but is it worth buying and will you get your money's worth out of it if you do? The answer depends on how far you're willing to stretch a joke.

Unlike most iterative sports game series, the Out of the Park development team never rests on their laurels in the off season, making it one of the only sports titles worth purchasing on a yearly basis. Out of the Park Baseball 14 is no different: where OOTP13 received a number of cosmetic changes and feature additions, OOTP14 is about refinement, reworking a lot of the game's code and adding another layer of depth to its core gameplay mechanics – in other words, it's a completely different, new experience, something many other sports titles can't boast ...

For some baseball fans, the Out of the Park Baseball series appears too dense and text-based to be enjoyed. At first, it can be – managing an entire baseball organization from top to bottom is no easy task. But the beauty of the series is how user-friendly it is, allowing players to sculpt their own experience, allowing both hardcore stat heads and casual GM-wannabes to enjoy the game in their own way. The mobile little brother to the desktop version, the iOOTP series has always been a great showcase for this versatility in gameplay, scaling the experience ...