Not a keeper
By Alec Meer on February 19th, 2013.
Impire is a strategy-management game about building an evil underground lair, from Blood Bowl and Game of Thrones devs Cyanide.
If I was mad, I would write this entire piece without once referencing Dungeon Keeper. I am not mad.
Read the rest of this entry »
And I would match five hundred swords
By Alec Meer on February 14th, 2013.
After a few months of making people happy on iPhone/Pad, EightyEight Games’ lo-fi match-3/RPG mash-up 10,000,000 arrived on PC a couple of weeks back, for a low, low price and not a lot of fanfare. I quite fancied a go. So I had one. Then I wrote this about it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Booker
By Alec Meer on February 13th, 2013.
Matters are rather different for the third BioShock game than they were for the first. While Irrational’s original had to grab attention from a machinegun-crazed mass audience, their next one comes with built-in renown, potentially affording the studio more opportunity and freedom to indulge themselves in other aspects of the game. Where BioShock’s undersea city of Rapture was, in hindsight, much more of a concept than a functioning place, BioShock Infinite’s floating metropolis Columbia seems to be striving harder to have an explicable and finely-sketched society.
Reflecting this is newly-released ebook novella Mind In Revolt, by Irrational’s Joe Fielder with assistance from Ken Levine, which could technically be described as a prequel but seems more designed to flesh out the social pressures bubbling under Columbia’s utopian surface in the way that the rollercoaster ride of an action videogame might not.
Read the rest of this entry »
I've got a bad feeling about this plop.
By John Walker on February 12th, 2013.
Of course you remember Aliens, right? Who could forget Danny Glover kicking ass on the Discovery One, Sarah Hamilton shouting, “That’s how they git you. They’re under the goddamned ground!” Ah, the memories. John’s spent the day ploughing through Aliens: Colonial Marines, so he can tell you wot he thinks:
Jelly shouldn't hurt this much
By John Walker on February 12th, 2013.
It’s been the buzz of the indie world – a puzzle game so fiendishly difficult that people pass it to one another like an illicit material. But I eat and drink puzzle games! They occupy a frightening amount of my waking life. A rare day goes by without my attempting a cryptic crossword, a killer sudoku accompanies my every early-morning sit-down, and my phone, tablet and DS offer me a limitless supply of puzzle distractions. I would like to meet the Slitherlink player who could outdo me. I eat puzzles like the hungry man I am. So bring on Jelly No Puzzle! Here’s wot I think.
Morrow is the wind
By Alec Meer on February 8th, 2013.
Dragonborn, the second major Skyrim expansion (third, if you count Hearthfire) arrived on PC this week, after an unfortunate two-month wait from the Xbox version. I’ve unearthed my old character and dragged him off to the island of Solsteheim for adventures anew. Was it worth it? Hearken to me now, traveller.
Read the rest of this entry »
Antibiotic
By John Walker on February 6th, 2013.
Cadenza’s six-axis FPS hasn’t taken the easy path. But via its circuitous route Retrovirus is now out on Steam for about £14, and I’ve pew-pewed my way to the very end. With massive improvements since the last time we saw it, just wot will I think?
WTF!?
By Nathan Grayson on January 31st, 2013.
Truth be told, Antichamber felt nearly finished the first time I ever laid hands on it. That was nearly a year ago. But creator Alexander Bruce insisted that – even after multiple years of near-obsessive fine-tuning – his non-Euclidean, Escher-ish, other impressive words that start with E puzzler needed more. So now here we are. But is it actually, truly finished? And was it worth the interminable, largely radio silent wait? Here’s wot I think.
Pocket XCOM
By Alec Meer on January 30th, 2013.
Undead ancient Japanese warrior-themed. indie strategy game Skulls of the Shogun has been in development for four million years, and was finally released yesterday for PC, Xbox and Windows tellingbone. Well, only for Windows 8 PCs. Yeah, controversy/insanity. But what about the turn-based strategy at the heart of it? I’ve only gone and played it so I can tell you.
Read the rest of this entry »
Operatic
By John Walker on January 30th, 2013.
Ed Key and David Kanaga’s Proteus has been floating around for a while, almost finished, almost finished. But now it finally is, and up on Steam, and I’ve been playing it on a loop. A game I really didn’t get the first time I enjoyed its pretty colours on a GDC show floor, now makes complete sense to me. Going in, I had no idea what to expect. Coming out, here’s wot I think.
You're not the boss of me
By John Walker on January 28th, 2013.
If I were a lesser being, I’d introduce this piece about No Time To Explain with some sort of joke about how I do indeed have time to explain, and I’ve done exactly that below. But I’m not. I’m the even worse sort of being who writes it anyway, but pretends he’s above it. Here’s wot I think:
