A Rare Gem
By John Walker on March 15th, 2013.
“The game John is meant to review,” said the email attached to Driftmoon review code. Well, I’m not one to argue, so in I went. An RPG from a two-person team – Instant Kingdom – made over seven years, is an intriguing prospect. Having been intrigued enough to finish it, here’s wot I think:
The Next Action Hero?
By Adam Smith on March 11th, 2013.
Congratulations! You made Magicka and have finished creating odd DLC content for the friendly fire(ball) simulation. What do you do next?
1) Go hiking in the Pyrenees.
2) Why not craft some sort of single player Magicka RPG?
3) Form a band sort of like Daft Punk but with all the sci-fi robot vibes replaced by wizard’s robes and jokes about willies.
4) Create a fast-paced multiplayer homage to eighties action movies, of course.
If you picked four, you are probably Arrowhead and you have made The Showdown Effect.
Grave
By John Walker on March 6th, 2013.
Tomb Raider is out, and I’ve played the single player to the very end. How does Lara fare in this reboot of one of gaming’s most famous series? Here’s wot I think:
Squawks and Doves
By Adam Smith on March 5th, 2013.
There are all sorts of Paradox games these days, which can be confusing for a fellow who is mostly looking for armies to command and maps to paint in his chosen colour. Fearful that March of the Eagles might be a Napoleonic era take on Angry Birds, I was pleased to find an internally developed strategy title, but this is a wargame rather than a historical playground. I am rubbish at war.
Port at the devil
By Alec Meer on March 1st, 2013.
Brütal Legend was Tim Schafer and Double Fine’s follow-up to the cult classic Psychonauts, and tragically denied a PC release. Only now, four years late, it’s suddenly got one. A strange, very hard-to-describe hybrid of hack’n'slash action, real-time strategy and open-world racing/exploring, it’s also an unabashed love letter to the golden age of heavy metal: a tale of a Jack Black-voiced roadie finding himself transported to a fantasy world of demonic tyranny and rock imagery. With a mixed reception on console, will its strategic elements and ramped-up graphics make it a better fit on PC? If you like to gamble, I tell you I’m your man.
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Arch suspension
By John Walker on February 26th, 2013.
Obeying the new law that all puzzle games must rotate is The Bridge – a black and white, Escher-inspired set of reality bending puzzles from The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild. The last time we heard from it was a demo released in late 2011, but now it’s here, on Steam, GamersGate and the Humble Store. But should you spend your £12? Here’s wot I think.
Jessica Picture
By RPS on February 26th, 2013.
Close friend of RPS, Emperor of Poetry and World’s Biggest Angela Lansbury fan Chrissy Williams was the only person who could possibly solve the greatest mystery RPS has ever faced – how to cover Murder, She Wrote 2: Return To Cabot Cove. She returned with the following evidence.
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Silence is golden
By Alec Meer on February 22nd, 2013.
In the market for a humorous turn-based strategy game but don’t own Windows 8? Then Skulls of the Shogun isn’t for you, excellent as it otherwise is. A more Windows-agnostic take on That Sort Of Thing is Highborn, a fantasy battle game from the co-creator of Command & Conquer. I’ve just spent the day with it. But not the night, of course. Not on a first date.
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Negative Space
By Jim Rossignol on February 22nd, 2013.
This is the problem: there’s too much other stuff. I run a PC games site, and even I missed this one arriving late last year. And I shouldn’t have. A top-down, claustrophobic horror-shooter with procedural levels. It’s brilliant, horrifying, commanding, excruciating. We’ve posted about Teleglitch before, of course, but last night the boy Quinns told me that we hadn’t written enough about it, and that it was “a phenomenon”, like a top-down System Shock, he said. Coming back to it today, I realised I’d played a few minutes of it and become distracted, thinking to return later. Short-term memory was over-written. Forgotten. The old beta is still here, installed and abandoned on my gaming desktop. I had no idea. I grabbed the latest version and went back for the afternoon.
Well. Quinns wasn’t wrong.
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Maximum Graphicsability
By Alec Meer on February 21st, 2013.
Crysis 3: a first-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic, alien-invaded New York, in which you wear a Nanosuit which enables you to temporarily become invisible, damage-resistant or able to leap moderately-sized walls in a single bound. It has a lot of graphics. It’s out now in the US, and tomorrow in the UK. Here is an opinion.
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Weather Forecast
By John Walker on February 21st, 2013.
Indie duo Denby Raze have released their first adventure, Richard & Alice, to the downloadables. Is a story of post-apocalyptic morality, and two people stuck in a prison, enough to win over my frozen heart? Here’s wot I think:
