Classic SF with Andy Johnson

In this conclusion to a three-part series looking at Crystal Dynamics' first trilogy of Tomb Raider games, we explore the final game - Underworld. A slightly haphzard effort to combine the best aspec…

Part two of a three-part series on the Tomb Raider: Legend trilogy (2006 - 2008).

Tomb Raider: Anniversary represents a unique fusion of two eras of the Tomb Raider series. While preserving some of th…

In 2004, the Tomb Raider series was in a bad place. The critical failure of The Angel of Darkness led publisher Eidos to sack Core Design from the series, and bring in another of their studios - Crys…

There is a grand tradition of rally video games, stretching back into the 1980s. Released for a host of platforms, they have varied in their approach to realism and their relationship to official cha…

My overview of Michael Moorcock’s epic Elric saga continues, and concludes, with this second part. The guide covers the eight main novels in the sequence in their internal chronological order; to cat…

By 1972, Ursula K. Le Guin was increasingly being seen as one of the most important writers of science fiction and fantasy. Following three fascinating but mostly ignored novels, the Oregon-based aut…

Nothing looks quite like Amid Evil. Released from the murky ambiguity of Early Access into the sunlit uplands of actual completion in 2019, the fantasy shooter by developer Indefatigable has a genuin…

Ursula K. Le Guin made her name with her groundbreaking 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Thie episode recommends this oft-recommended book, introduces some of its themes, and looks at how it con…

Michael Moorcock is one of speculative fiction's greatest ever authors, and Elric of Melniboné is one of the key characters in British fantasy fiction. However, the series' tortured chronology can ma…

C.J. Cherryh's 1981 novel Downbelow Station won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, becoming the first book published by DAW Books to achieve this feat. A part of the long-running Alliance-Union universe,…

On September 5 and 6, 3D Realms masterminded an online game show dedicated almost entirely to retro-style FPS games. This episode runs down some of the highlights from Realms Deep 2020, and what the …

Ursula K. LeGuin is best known for her award-winning sci-fi novels The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Disposessed (1974). These are both part of her loose "Hainish cycle", but far fewer people …

Vincent Bevins' remarkable book The Jakarta Method is an unsettling but hugely informative look at the history of anticommunist violence in the 20th century. Focusing primarily on the Indonesian mass…

Richard Garfield's boardgame King of Tokyo had sold 750,000 copies even before its second edition was released in 2016. This episode looks at what made this classic dice-rolling game a hit, and and w…

Featuring Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode and Claudia Cardinale, The Professionals was one of the biggest Westerns of the 1960s. Packed with explosive action and a fantastic scr…

The survival FPS Metro 2033, developed by Kiev-based 4A Games, is a triumph of environmental storytelling. This episode explores the game's depiction of a society forced to survive in Moscow's metro …

During the late '70s, Black Sabbath found themselves in a challenging position. Suspicious of their management, burned out on coke, and with new music styles springing up around them, they released t…

Released in 2001 and developed by Rage Software, Hostile Waters has been called "one of the best games you've never played". This episode examines this unusual hybrid of real-time strategy and action…

Walter Hill began his career as a film director in 1975, and up until 1984 released a string of seven terrific action, thriller and Western movies. Some, including The Driver, The Warriors and Street…

With Populous: The Beginning, beloved British games developer Bullfrog produced one of their last great games - an innovative and literally groundbreaking hybrid of the god game and the real-time str…