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Today
Feature: Still afraid of the dark
A while back I was saying that so many horror games these days are about either babies or Catholicism (and obviously there is some crossover there), and Alice0 pointed out that actually they were mostly about a Protestant's idea of Catholicism. This was obviously very correct - as are most things Alice0 says - and we had a short discussion about this and about how…
3 days ago
Feature: Technical witchery married to a good game
Fast and loose, or tight and controlled? That's the question I ask myself at the start of any run in a game with permadeath - that is, a game that sends me back to the beginning upon death. On this particular life, am I going to try my hardest, and aim for deliberate progress toward a specific goal, or am I going to throw caution…
Feature: A smorgasbord
The ten-minute indie games of the 10mg collection reviewed in ten minutes each
Here's a free tip for you, if you keep fish - you're probably feeding them too much. Small fish, like guppies and tetras, might have big appetites, but they only have little tummies, so they prefer to eat little and often. Now: what if... video games?. There is a new indie dev collective called 10mg - named, I assume, after a small amount of... some…
5 days ago
Feature: Rebel Savescum
Valya, my sniper and occasional medic, kicks things off. Having chloroformed a sentry, she's now sat snug in his position, with a great view of the SS officer commanding the checkpoint. Crack - her rifle (it's our only decent one) fires, and his head bursts. On the other side of the position, Captain Zorin leaps from a bush preceded by a hurled knife, under the…
6 days ago
Feature: A Dim Bulb
At the end of the first of three acts in Torchlight III, there's a boss character who repeats two of the same barks over and over. One is "This should be fun." The other is "Let's make it interesting." I couldn't help but hear both as the ignored voice of a quiet developer at the back of a Torchlight III planning meeting.Torchlight III feels an…
Feature: I ship it
When three-man studio Runner Duck released management-tactics game Bomber Crew in 2017, it was rightly praised for turning the "move people around the parts of a large vehicle in an ever-increasing state of panic" aspect of roguelite classic FTL into a whole game. Followup Space Crew takes the action back into space. And while there's a superficial level of similarity to FTL, with reactor power…
2 weeks ago
Feature: Ghosts of summer holidays past
Recently I have been blessed with a plethora of sweet, soothing games with a good sense of humour (like Spiritfarer, for example). I Am Dead, from the developers of perennial RPS favourite Wilmot's Warehouse, is a 3D puzzle adventure game about past and present and place, and is another tonic for these trying times. In it, you play as Morris Lupton, erstwhile director of the…
Feature: For a few spaceships more
My opinion of Star Wars: Squadrons is all over the place. I was excited when it was announced, as I'd been yearning for a proper Star Wars flight sim for years. But then I reined in my expectations, because my bland triple-A release sense was tingling. I played a few hours of Squadrons as soon as it launched, and finished my session feeling a bit…
Feature: Early bird catches the brain worm
Baldur’s Gate III early access is a devil’s bargain: a cure for impatience, but at what cost? You can say that of any ‘pre-release’ release, but it feels apt here, given that act one of Larian’s epic RPG and Dungeons & Dragons revival is a trip through temptation country. There’s a Mind Flayer tadpole burrowing into your skull and an assorted cast of druids, healers,…
3 weeks ago
Feature: Songs about vain
Family follow-up Rivals brings you more lovely musical detection
Only a month ago I wrote about Family, a free investigation game about plotting the movements of musicians across a (fictionalised) '80s London music scene. By placing the right people in the right bands at the right times, you're drip fed more clues so you can then place more names, and so on. Well, turns out that was just warming us up. Meet Rivals, broadly…
Feature: Check yourself before you Shrek yourself
In the classic opening move for the type of review some of you might typify as "the classic 7/10", I'll say this: I liked The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos far more than I expected to. It's XCOM by way of Order Of The Stick, but with the battles connected by wandering about in the ‘gather your party and venture forth’ tradition of…
Feature: Best Game Ever 2?
Spelunky 1 felt so precision engineered, so complete, so perfect, that the announcement of Spelunky 2 seemed like the reveal of a new wrist watch. If it had a fancier strap and more cogs, at best, I'd still just be hoping that it told me the correct time.
4 weeks ago
Feature: Crysis Remastered, reviewed
Sure, Crysis Remastered is nice, but have you ever played the original Crysis?
Crysis was always about more than its graphics. Crysis was and is a first-person stealth playground, with destructible buildings, clever enemies, and a set of flexible superpowers with which to make one collide with the other. Crysis Remastered is that game again, with new graphical bells and whistles you probably can't use, and a substantially higher price than the original game costs now.
Feature: The pendragon is mightier than the swordragon
It's a relief to know that some life-or-death battles where the fate of the nation is in the balance can be attempted a near infinite number of times. A complete cycle of Inkle's turn-based strategy meets Arthurian storytelling, Pendragon, can be wrapped up pretty sharpish if you're on the lowest difficulty and aren't getting too lost on the map. From the south coast of Wales…
1 month ago
Feature: Attack and dethrone god
Hot god encyclopaedia by way of hack ‘n’ slash roguelike Hades was basically already game of the year when it released into early access in 2018. Its core components were all in place. You fight through a constantly randomised hell filled with monsters and bosses as Zagreus, sarcastic and perpetually titty-out son of Hades. Along the way, you can pick up abilities bestowed by gods…
Feature: Chop idol
I have only reached the void while drunk. I had been too conscious before then. I didn't yet understand.Post Void, I had thought, was about being fast. I was probably too old to ever be good at it. That never mattered even when I thought it was true, but it isn't. Post Void is about letting the game take you. Its hypnotic rhythms, its lurid…
Feature: Company Of Heroes with giant mechs
Iron Harvest is an alternate history RTS in which the great empires of the early 20th century invented giant stompy robots with machine guns for heads and spinning blades for arms. Inspired by the work of Polish artist Jakub Rozalski, who paints smokey pastoral scenes loomed over by grey machines lumbering across hazy horizons, the game depicts a world in which the mechanization of warfare…
Feature: No need to be stumped
I think that I owe myself an apology. I have always thought that I was no good at these sorts of spatially-based push-em-up puzzles. But A Monster’s Expedition, which is entirely made up of them, has challenged that assumption purely through the power of great teaching. It’s all well and good when these brainteasers are tossed context-free into other games as Pokémon gyms or Professor…
Feature: BREAK the cycle
There is a lot happening in Star Renegades. For a seemingly small game it throws an absurd amount of idea clay into the RPG kiln. What comes out of that fire is an impressive, if unwieldy, mosaic pot. You can easily spot pieces of other games. Into The Breach’s do-over storytelling, Grandia-esque timeline battles, a whiff of Shadow Of Mordor’s nemeses, and not-quite-Persona levels of…
Feature: Blood for the blood god
There are horror games like Agony that are pretty fixated on the idea of the intersection of sex, demon worship and horror being solely on the corner of Lazy Gore & Torture Rd. and Fannies With Teeth Ave.How shortsighted they are proven now, when a neon-saturated open-world murder mystery set on a tropical island in a different reality manages to do sexy ritual blood sacrifice,…
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