Gore blimey
By John Walker on February 9th, 2012.
First-person shooter The Darkness II is out in the US, and tomorrow in the UK, and I’ve played it through to the gruesome end. Past the gruesome beginning, via the gruesome middle. How does all that grue hold up? Well, wipe away the lung and take a seat, and I’ll tell you Wot I Think.
Crude strategy
By Alec Meer on February 8th, 2012.
I started playing Unigine’s seabound strategy game Oil Rush a fortnight ago. Then I got distracted by a shard of light in the corner of the room, and before I knew it a fortnight had passed and I still hadn’t written up my thoughts on it. I’ve finally woken up again, and I am indeed ready to tell you what I think.
Tower defence meets Galcon would be the hard sell; intense mini-map based node-capturing strategy would be the softer one. With conventional RTS having a bit of a slumber in recent months (unless, of course, you’re deep in StarCraft II leaderboards), Oil Rush finds itself in a faintly privileged situation. Not too much sci-fi build’n'bash competition out there, so this quiet little contender potters into the ring and raises its fists. What to expect from this rank outsider?
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The Holey Grail
By Tim Stone on February 8th, 2012.
When The Hivemind asked me if I had any experience of pulling swords from stones and I replied “None, but I’ve removed quite a few splinters, thorns, and bee stings from T. Stone.” everyone in the room collapsed into helpless laughter. It was the subtle kind of helpless laughter, the kind where the laughers don’t make any sounds, or show any outward signs of being amused, but I could tell my little word-play had gone down well because moments later I was being asked to provide a joke-free (they were most insistent on that point) Wot I Think on Neocore’s latest Arthurian epic.
Gallagher need not apply.
By John Walker on February 7th, 2012.
Developed by one-man team RichMakeGame – aka Rich Edwards – Pineapple Smash Crew is an indie take on top-down action shooters that was the winner of our Indie Games Arcade award, and has recently arrived on Steam. I’ve played it through to the end, which makes me Space Captain Walker and able to tell you Wot I Think.
The Ultimate Gamefriend
By John Walker on February 2nd, 2012.
I hope to goodness that I need write nothing more than, “harmonising three-headed dog” to convince you to play Cuboy: Back To The Cubeture Era II. That, or perhaps that one of the cutscenes is a montage sequence made from a series of crayon-drawn pictures accompanied by a song about making something from wood. For me, learning that Zeus wears a Yankees cap and says things like, “Sup ya’ll, I’m Zeus, god of lightnin’, pimpin’ and phat ass beats,” is a special treat. His flow gets all the ladies, and haters can go to Hades. This is the game in which you trim Atlas’s armpit hair. Here’s Wot I Think.
internet culture nebula
By RPS on January 28th, 2012.
The Internet’s Leigh Alexander gave us her take on visual novel, Katawa Shoujo.
It’s with a mix of amusement and chagrin I admit my career as a game journalist might well have never taken off if it weren’t for the erotic visual novel genre. Some of my earliest writing explored the “weirdest” games I could find – bunny girl dating sims, teenage girl “training/raising” games, brutally sexual supernatural murder mysteries, and stuff like that, and I think my work was recognized fairly early on in my development as a writer just because I was pouring so many words onto stuff no one else would touch.
I put “weird” in quotes, by the way, because I actually tasked myself with understanding and explicating them. And when you do that, these games don’t actually seem all that weird. What else would a niche, shut-in audience of otaku want but a gameplay experience that blends anime porn tropes with emotional simulations of human drama – without any possibility of becoming stuck or frustrated, since visual novels are indeed more “story” than “game”?
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All Points Bullet-*in*, could be the pun, right?
By Brendan Caldwell on January 28th, 2012.
Mr Caldwell has been playing APB Reloaded. We asked him to tell us what he thinks about it. It’s quite the story.
Right, this is the thing…
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Woolly
By John Walker on January 23rd, 2012.
A mistake Saints Row: The Third didn’t make, but always seemed horribly likely to, was promise more than it could deliver. Those trailers, those terrifying spoof gameshows, the hype of such a scale of silliness and violence, was all delivered. Which is one of the many reasons why it was one of 2011′s best games. But how do you follow it up? With a weird cat-thing and his twisted competitive event, Genkibowl VII.
This one cleans up
By John Walker on January 17th, 2012.
It’s pretty exciting to already know one of your games of 2012, midway through January. And it’s always exciting to have a game that compels you to play the same levels over and over and over and over and over, despite the fact that it’s over two hours since you needed to go to bed, and your hands hurt from thumping your desk, because you have to get a bloody “S” on this level because… because you just do! That would be Dustforce.
Quality Underlies Banal Exterior?
By Adam Smith on January 9th, 2012.
An uncanny piece of scientific equipment. A series of sterile test chambers. A first-person puzzle game that demands spatial awareness and the precise handling of increasing combinations of elements. It’s Q.U.B.E. and this is Wot I Think.
Seeing stars
By Brendan Caldwell on January 4th, 2012.
Brendan was not allowed to sleep during his holidays, instead we made him play Stellar Impact, which he thinks is pretty good. Shame, then, that so few of you are playing it.
Merry Christmas. I trust everyone had a wonderful time, stuffing their faces with poultry and listening to that quaint little old monarch talk about her Royal Gas or whatever. Anyway, now that I’ve insulted the Royalists I’m going to dispense with the Christmas theme because there is no way I can link it to Stellar Impact, which is a spacey game set in space. The first thing you should know about Stellar Impact is that it is a good game. There. The second thing you should know is that it is a slightly unbalanced game. The third thing you should know is that I have no idea what I’m talking about. But why?
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