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Feature: Through the looking glass
This is not a review of the wholly unfinished Underworld Ascendant
Having poked around at the earliest stages of Underworld Ascendant, I've reached the conclusion that it's just not in a fit state to be released, and as such, not in a fit state to be reviewed. Announced in 2014, this spiritual sequel to the seminal Ultima Underworld games of the early 90s was Kickstarted $860,000 in early 2015, with a ridiculously optimistic release date of…
Underworld Ascendant is out now, OtherSide Entertainment's crowdfunded spiritual sucessor to Ultima Underworld. For the younger among us, or those who had better things to do in the early 90s than trawl imaginary dungeons, that means it's a first-person action RPG with a focus on puzzling out creative solutions to problems. There's stealth, parkour and multiple ways through every level, with your choices on a…
Draculas are notoriously fond of a lie-in, rarely even opening the curtains before dusk, so it's no surprised that the launch of Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night is delayed again. The vampiric new metroidvania from Koji Igarashi, who's best known as assistant director of the seminal Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night, and his gang at ArtPlay is now expected to launch in 2019. Responses from…
Several years after escaping the dungeon hell of Kickstarter but a little later than planned, Underworld Ascendant has announced a release date of November 15th. Y'know, the action-RPG coming from OtherSide Entertainment? Y'know, the studio co-founded by Ultima Underworld designer Paul Neurath and Deus Ex director Warren Spector? Y'know, whose legacies are felt in immersive sim-y elements from sneaking to stacking boxes to pass obstacles?…
Feature: Hide and seek
Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser’s hauling cargo across pirate-infested star systems in space sandbox Objects in Space. It’s so quiet I can hear the dog breathing as he naps in the hallway. I’ve turned the in-game music player off, killed the power to every component on the ship and I’m hurtling through…
Castlevania successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night looks the part in its new story trailer
Castlevania is on its way back, whether Konami want it to or not. Minus the license but not much else, Symphony of the Night director Koji Igarashi and his new crew, Artplay, have been busy on Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Some were disappointed that we didn't see anything new of the game at E3, and now it seems the team were busy putting the…
Max Payneologists will be happy to know that Remedy have revealed their new shooter, Control, which they describe as a "supernatural third-person action adventure". It looks a little bit Psi-ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, a little bit Inside and a little bit... I don't know? Come and take a look at this throbbing gun and explain to me what's happening.
With the final season of Telltale's The Walking Dead kicking off soon, there's no shortage of good interactive experiences from that fictional universe. Hell, I'm impressed if you've managed to stay caught up. I'm pretty sure I've still got at least half a season in my cue, just like the show itself. Meanwhile, serving as the Fear The Walking Dead to Telltale's series, there's the…
Skullgirls developers Lab Zero have proven their skills on the artistic and mechanical fronts, and with upcoming action-RPG Indivisible they're applying them to a formula that almost nobody has touched in decades; PlayStation JRPG classic Valkyrie Profile. For those wise enough to have backed the crowdfunded game, a new demo has been released, and for the rest of us, a fancy new gameplay trailer that you can see within.
OtherSide hopes you’re smarter than Underworld Ascendant in first trailer
Underworld Ascendant is the first in a series of titles where Looking Glass studios alumni are moving to reclaim their former mantle. Under the OtherSide Entertainment banner, they're working on a proper System Shock sequel, but the game we'll see out of the gate next is the Ultima Underworld sequel we deserve. The Dungeons & Dragons flair is mixed into an immersive sim setup that…
Not long now until you get to sit in the cockpit of your own floating Cold War submarine-inspired spaceship, because Objects in Space [official site] is coming out early next year. Before now it didn't have a publisher, but 505 Games have decided to bite. If you haven't heard about it before, it's an open-world "stealth-action" space game that thinks the ships in other space trading…
Feature: Panned-emic
Every week we send Brendan into the no-go zones of early access to take pus-filled samples of half-made games. This time, the infectious disease management of Quarantine [official site]. Beijing, Chengdu, and Dehli are all quarantined. Michael Clayborn, my crack medical operative who has served me faithfully, has died in the industrial Siberian wastes of Irkutsk. The entirety of South America has been sealed off…
A cursory glance at the newly announced Quarantine [official site] could easily lead you to say something like “oh, it looks like Plague Inc but from the human's side”. But you are not thinking hard enough, cursory glancer. As board game aficionados will tell you, Quarantine looks a lot more like a single-player version of the much-loved Pandemic.
David Lynch-inspired, small town whodunnit Virginia [official site] is gearing up for its launch next week and has released a new character trailer in preparation. We get a closer look at the game's protagonist, Anne Tarver. She's an FBI agent, fresh on the scene after graduation. She drives around Virginia with her partner, Maria Halperin, as they try to solve the case of a missing…
Right, I'm going to level with you: I'm really behind on Virginia [official site] news because I want to go into it as fresh as is feasible while retaining my job on this PC gaming website. Single-player mystery thrillers involving FBI agents are very much my area of interest and I do prefer mysteries where I know very little about them going in. With that…
It's been ages since we last visited the Twin Peaks-inspired-ish first-person vignette 'em up Virginia [official site] but whoa hey hello, here's a release date and a demo out of nowhere. The demo is about twenty minutes long, offering a taste of life as a '90s FBI agent investigating a missing child in a small town and answering basic questions like "Okay but what is…
Last year, Overkill Games upset a pretty vocal corner of their Payday 2 [official site] community by introducing microtransactions to the co-op heist 'em up - something they'd previously promised to avoid. In an announcement made yesterday, Starbreeze - Overkill's parent company - revealed they've now acquired full rights to the Payday franchise and as such will scrap paid-for in-game items via the next update.…
Feature: What is it with New Orleans and zombie apocalypses?
Survival games seem to break down into two broad categories. On the one hand, you have the survivalist games, where the focus is on an endless battle against the elements, a hostile environment, and resource scarcity so severe that even basic needs like food and shelter are hard to satisfy. Then there are survival games like EKO Software's How to Survive 2, where some survival…
Regular reader Bunty Hoven writes: Dear Alice, Why do people not call Jonathan Blow, Jason Rohrer, Jonathan Brodsky, and Jonatan Van Hove by their preferred names of J. Blo, J. Ro, J. Bro, and J. Ho? Oh, and when will you post about Skullgirls folks Lab Zero's crowdfunding campaign for their action-RPG Indivisible? It has a public playable prototype out! Yours, Bunty Well Bunty,
Feature: The Beauty Of A Sniper's Patience
The everlasting threat of a single bullet, the terrifying glint of a sniper scope in your eyes, and the darkness that covers your enemy make Sniper Elite V2 [official site] one of the most gripping gaming experiences I’ve had. You can't take your eyes off the screen for a second; instead, you must remain calm, remain patient, and study your environment. Was that sliver of…
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