Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ve been playing The Wreckless on and off throughout the day, and during that time there have been moments when I’ve thought – “holy crap, this is the answer to my TIE Fighter cravings”. Hopefully that’s enough to send plenty of people scurrying off to download the demo immediately. I’ll move onto my reservations later but I’ll leave them to one side for now because this is an honest-to-goodness space combat simulator, with simple controls, physics that allow for drifty dogfights and lasers that light up the dark void with their scorching fury. YES.

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Afterfall: InSanity is an independently developed, Unreal powered third person action-horror game. It’s available to preorder for a mere $1 at the moment, but unless 9,980,000 more copies are sold before release on November 25th you’ll rather dubiously end up paying the full amount of $33.90. I’m not making that massive figure up by the way, though I am rounding it to the nearest 10,000. The $1 will go to charity at least. So, fancy donating some money? Good on you. There’s loads of charities out there. But I’m here to tell you about the game.

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The Diablo III closed beta has just begun, and we’re fortunate enough to have access to it. (Which is a shame, as I was supposed to be getting married on Saturday.) So I’ve of course put aside that silly plan of going to sleep and blitzed through the first couple of hours to bring you the very earliest of impressions of what’s on offer.

I’m writing this as someone who played Diablo 2 long ago, thoroughly enjoyed it, but never obsessed over it. And certainly only ever played solo. (Which may well describe my life after this weekend if I’m not careful.) Here I’m going to give you my initial reaction to playing the third game of the series, tonight.

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Dead Island was released (in some manner) in the US yesterday, and arrives in the UK, once it’s painstakingly paddled across the massive oceans of the internet, on Friday. I’ve been playing it for a long, long time, and yet still haven’t got anywhere near its ending. And as such, even though I’m about to tell you Wot I Think, in the interests of probity will offer you my Impressions.

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Hot damn! Now that did the trick. I’m prone to worrying about what game I should play right after finishing something great. It’s a science, like which album or song do you play right after something that’s lifted your spirits or got you in a singin’ mood. You don’t want something that’s going to shut you up. It’s the same with games: picking the wrong bet as a follow-up can sour the experience, or at least fail to take advantage of my mental momentum. My mood could be ruined. I could be left adrift for a few days, every game seeming strangely unappealing. Last night, I got it right – following up Deus Ex: Human Revolution with the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine demo. Hot damn. Aside from the whole machine-assisted warrior element, these are two very different games. After some 30 hours of sneaking, hacking and pondering in DX3, mindlessly eviscerating Orks by the dozen with a Power Axe was exactly right, exactly the coda I needed.
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Originally due in 2009, it’s been quite a wait for Krystian Majewski’s Trauma. Nominated in three IGF 2010 categories, including the Grand Prize, it was pipped in each, but clearly highly lauded. Kieron spoke to the developer about it back then. Well, it’s just been released this very hour, and having played it I’m jolly well going to say things about it.

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Can one of my favourite games of 2010 also end up being one of my favourite games of 2011? That’s a question you’ve been worrying about a lot, I know. So, allow me to answer it: maybe. Now allow me to answer that more usefully. Desktop Dungeons was a freeware indie title which pretty much transformed a roguelike into a logic puzzle. One dungeon, one character, an array of monsters of varying toughness scattered around it. Your challenge was to work out how you could kill your way up to the boss monster, by way of using spells, pickups, stat upgrades and devising the most efficient ways to level up without losing too much health or perishing in the process. Honestly, it’s an apparently effortless example of fitting one genre neatly inside another. Best of all, it only takes 10 minutes to play a session, and as such the original DD – now its ‘alpha‘ – will probably stand proud as a perfect gaming snack regardless of how well its new, Unity-powered do-over does.

That latter is a paid game and now in beta, but accessible only to those who’ve preordered. I’ve been taking a look at it (by ‘look’ I mean ‘playing until 3am’) and some thoughts follow. But – big but – these are thoughts on an unfinished beta, which has a ton of features, polish and changes yet to come. If you so much as hint that you’ve interpreted this as a ‘review’, I’m going to smack you so hard.
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This is in theory going to evolve into a Wot I Think, but at the moment my progress is stymied by what I think but don’t know for sure is a bug, so that’s on hold until I’ve either found a way to traverse past this impasse or sucked it up and restarted. In the meantime, here’s some initial thoughts about the Paradox-published Pirates! meets C&C meets Diablo curio Pirates of Black Cove, which was released yesterday. Don’t let that bug thing see you decide against it on principle – there’s some neat stuff in here.
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With the PC version of Eric Chahi’s god-game delayed by a few weeks, I’ve opted to sully my body and mind with the now-out Xbox version in order to get a sense of what we’re in for. I promise I washed my hands afterwards. I can’t tell you anything about the PC take on From Dust’s performance or controls or DRM, and nor can I until I’ve spent good hours with that version, but I can give you a sense of how it plays presuming it’s broadly unchanged from its console cousin.
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I’ve spent a few hours nuzzling up to Chantelise, the next Westernised translation/do-over of a Japanese indie title from noble Recettear chaps Carpe Fulgur. Because I appear to be pretty terrible at the game, a full Wot I Think is probably some days off. Meantime though, here’s some early impressions ahead of the release on Friday.

It strongly evokes Recettear while being absolutely nothing like it. Obviously much of that has to do with the love it/hate it/be a grown up and not be too fussed either way art style, but even beyond that a confluence of tone (via Carpe Fulgur’s extensive and breezily charismatic rewrite of the dialogue), references (many items bear similar if not the same names) and interface design paints this as a clear companion piece.
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