DONTNOD

Life really is strange for this unpredictable Parisian outfit

The words ‘Final Boss’ are written on oskar Guilbert’s office door. Inside, rather than an intimidating showdown with a challenging figure covered in glowing red bits, we find Dontnod’s friendly CEO. His spacious workplace features a slanted glass wall offering a grand view of Paris’ Sacré-Coeur Basilica sitting on Montmartre, which is bathed in an orange early-evening glow.

Return Of The Obra Dinn

Lucas Pope’s obsession with antiaspirational vocations continues with Return Of The Obra Dinn, a game in which you play as a 19th-century insurance loss adjuster. Unlike the designer’s previous game, Papers, Please, which placed you in the musty environs of a fictional yet grimly recognisable Eastern European border checkpoint in the 1980s, here the location is somewhat more exotic, even if the work itself is just as monotonously gruelling. The Obra Dinn is an East Indian merchant ship which was lost at sea, somewhere around the Cape of Good Hope, while en route to the Orient. One October morning in 1808, the forsaken vessel drifts into port. The return is marked, not with rejoicing, but with red tape. As a trusty red-blooded insurance adjuster for the East India Company’s London Office, you embark on the ship and, against a soundtrack of creak and slop, you begin to figure out what happened to the 60-odd crew members (a number scaled back from Pope’s original, ambitious crew of 86), many of whose bodies litter its decks and nooks.

SteelSeries Nimbus

As far as mobile gaming controllers go, there’s really only a few names that are worth taking a look at. SteelSeries is one such brand with a solid reputation behind it. We recently reviewed the Stratus XL and gave it a glowing four-star review; now we have an Apple version to complement it.

The Nimbus is SteelSeries’ answer to a quality Apple controller, be it for Apple TV or even the iPad. Available at the Apple Store, it has already got certification from the big shots themselves. The geniuses will probably even tell you to buy one.

Pebble Time Round

A change of strategy sees Pebble design its best-looking smartwatch yet. But is it style over substance?

Rewind back a few years ago and smartwatches were the stuff of James Bond movies and pipe dreams. Then along came a recordbreaking Kickstarter project by a little known US start-up called Pebble. A few years later, almost every manufacturer, from Apple and Samsung right through to Alcatel, has launched a smartwatch, but the design and functionalities of wearables has come on leaps and bounds. No longer are they big, lumpy square behemoths that feel like you’ve strapped anchor to your wrist – now smartwatches are beginning to actually look like watches. It is this idea, a watch that does smart things, that serves as a starting point for the Pebble Time Round.

Samsung Gear VR

The most accessible VR headset available, with the best balance between quality and price

Our first sort of experience with virtual reality (VR) dated back to the ill-fated Virtual Boy. Legendary Gameboy creator Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo in 1996 in the wake of Virtual Boy’s commercial failure. That ended interest in VR in the 1990s, with many stung by it and not wanting to hear about it ever again. Exactly 20 years later, 2016 sees the rebirth of VR, rising from the ashes of the Virtual Boy.