Feature: I'm Aurion and so is my wife
It has been four years since I wrote about Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan, a 2D fighting game that fused JRPG/anime with pan-African fantasy.I've played thousands of games since then, and nothing quite like it.
Posts tagged “Have You Played”
Feature: Impostor syn-drone
Who doesn't like a good wibbly robot? The Signal From Tölva is about plunging into the minds of drones as you potter about a sci-fi warzone, dotted with the metallic carcasses of a forgotten civilisation. It drips atmosphere like a too-big spider emerging from a bath.
Feature: RIP Slamadeus Grozart
If Graham allowed us to swear above the cut, I would one hundred percent have started this post with a string of expletives. Because Warhammer-themed sports game Blood Bowl 2 is utterly maddening. I'm playing in a league at the moment, the bottom of which I am hugging like a flipping anchor, and while the people I'm playing with are great, I dread every fixture…
Feature: It's really not complicated
Arise: A Simple Story is a game about the three Ls. No, not Lemons, Lemons, Lemons (a small joke for RPS Vid Bud fans, there), but life, love, and loss. You know, the BIGGIES. In it, you're reliving the memories of a sweet old man as he journeys on to the after life, taking in everything from the breathless rush of childhood, where you're bounding…
Feature: Race up for the stars
Race For The Galaxy was the first game I played that forced me to use my plans as currency. What a concept!
Feature: Steel horse
Hope you like chipped paint textures, and the colour grey. Because you'll be seeing a lot of them in Deadliest Catch: The Game. Oh, and crabs. Hundreds and hundreds of near-identical crabs, which you must sort by hand, examining each one in turn before either throwing it back in the sea, or condemning it to an icy hold to await its demise on the plate…
Feature: Kraken stuff
You know I start at least one post a month with a seemingly tangential zoology metaphor, and I'm afraid you just hit this month's. Because when I think about Age Of Mythology, I think of Gomphotherium. Why do I think of a weird, extinct elephant? Because it was a perfectly good 'phant, is why, and a definite improvement on previous iterations on the theme of…
Feature: Wheezy company
Battle Brothers is a very difficult tactical game about managing a mercenary company.So of course I hired the beggars. I hired the "cripples", the falsely accused servants, and the oddballs. I gave them decent food and a place to belong. Sure they'd all die horribly, etched with debilitating and ever-mounting physical and emotional scars, mangled and torn by blades and bludgeons, screaming themselves awake from…
Feature: A linear open world
I love lines. There's so much you can do with a line, and at the same time there's very little that you need to do to a line in order to make it look good. All you need is contrast, soft lighting, a few warm pastel colours, all set against a comforting piano-zen soundtrack; and you've got a simple yet sophisticated aesthetic to match your…
Feature: Subsurface tension
The first time I came across a Reaper Leviathan in Subnautica is a moment in my gaming life that I'll hold onto forever. One moment I was alone amidst endless ocean, a trespassing sack of meat and flippers wondering where the hell I was. Then, a deep, forbidding thrum. I whirl about, checking my surroundings for predators. Nothing in sight. Eventually my gaze settles on…
Feature: Trust me, you'd remember if you had
One of the last things I expected to do in Samorost 3 was have an impromptu jam session with a singing frog hippo, bopping lizard ferret and tooting fish fox. Apparently they like busting out some tunes when the fuzzy bee bums on the nearby reeds are arranged at specific heights, and they really get into the groove when you start dancing alongside them. It…
Feature: Robber band
There aren’t enough heist-focused video games. You’d think the ludicrous success of Grand Theft Auto V would’ve led to more Ocean’s inspired capers, but no. Where are all my Nespresso-drinking, salt and pepper hair-having protagonists? At least the spirit of Clooney and Friends can be found in Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine.
Feature: A two-tone masterpiece
I am so very impressed by everything that Gun Rounds does. Rarely have I come across a game that so skillfully marries such disparate ideas. Playing it feels like watching a balloon modeller as they twist and squeeze together two resolutely independent balloons. It's loud, it's captivating, and I have no idea how it's being done; and then at the end, the modeller is left…
Feature: School runnings
Like an excitable tiger with a lisp, critically-acclaimed horror game Devotion bounced off Steam before I got to play it. It's a shame because I was really looking forward to seeing what developer Red Candle Games was going to do after I was scared pantsless by the studio's first game.
Feature: Throwing urine the deep end
Oxygen Not Included occupies a similar space to Factorio and Rimworld in my list of all-time favourite games. All three are marvellous and near-impenetrable management games, oozing with character and complexity. The key difference is that in Oxygen Not Included, it's guaranteed that you'll spend at least some of your time expunging whole pints of urine from your base before it can seep into your…
Feature: Quack attack
Pato Box is... lord. What's the best way to describe a hybrid of a dystopian graphic novel with Punch-Out about a boxer with the head of a duck who sets out to destroy the secret society of assassins that betrayed him?I mean, it's fun as well, but honestly. Throw me a bone here, game.
Feature: Anarchy in the R.P.G.
Despite the occasional highlight that captures the imagination of the masses, beat ‘em ups are sometimes seen as also rans these days. Likewise, punk rock anthems rarely make their way onto the top 40. Ska Studios didn’t let any indifference to either deter them from making three power chord trick video game equivalent Charlie Murder.
Feature: Sound Alchemy
Opus Magnum is the most tactile game I've ever played. Playing it makes me remember last Christmas, when I was given one of those wooden assembly kits where you have to snap together the various wood pieces like a jigsaw to create a three-dimensional sculpture. In my case, it was a little steampunk clock, all interconnected gears and ornate swirls. Turning a gear at the…
Feature: You should, Your Grace
Am I a bad dad for letting my daughter run around with a pet bear cub? Almost certainly given the circumstances, but seeing as how I'd already let her enlist a snail, magical rooster and a prickly hedgehog into her army of so-called 'secret agents', I thought it would be churlish, if not positively unfair, to deny her this new, grizzly companion. After all, my…
Feature: Bumper addition
The Addams Family and The Twilight Zone are just TV shows to me, not pinball tables. I've never had an affinity for IRL bumpers and flippers. I do, however, quite like pinball-infused video games.The absolute joy that is Yoku's Island Express opened my eyes to what a video game could do with pinball elements, a few years back. And, in 2019, Creature In The Well…
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