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Feature: One free-flowing combat system to rule them all
With Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor, I thought, "This is it. They've perfected Arkham-style combat. It can't get better than this." With Middle-earth: Shadow Of War, I realised how mistaken I'd been.
Feature: It's like Minecraft, except it runs properly
Minecraft has brought us a great many things, but despite having played it religiously for a good four years and then sporadically for a good six years after that, one thing it never ever brought me was a well-optimised, lag-free experience. Enter Vintage Story.
Feature: Headbutting its way into my heart
I played Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode for hundreds of hours. With my beloved Krogan, Klom, and my vastly overpowered Crusader shotgun, I would charge around the maps I'd come to know like the back of Klom's helmet, blasting and headbutting my way through Reapers and Geth and Collectors and whatever else the game threw at me. It was glorious. I can't quite say that…
Feature: You've already been here before
LoveChoice remains one of the shortest, simplest games I've ever played, never mind written about. And to write about it in any detail risks spoiling why it's so special. It can be yours for less than two quid. You should give it a go.
Feature: Much more than a roguelite
Wielding the almighty Heart-Seeking Bow, Coronacht, I weave with godlike alacrity between the attacks of my foes, line up the shot, release at just the right moment, and - pop! - they dissolve with a sigh back into the underworld from whence they came. I'm clearing out rooms in record-breaking time, and it's a good thing too, because the infernal contract I signed with my…
Feature: Put on a iron spaceshirt
Wing Commander tee em 5 Colon Prophecy Gold is one of the cheesiest games I've ever played.
Feature: Off you pop
Jumping off things is the best thing you can do in Assassins Creed games, and the best things to jump off are all in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Feature: Come tut at Turing
The Turing Test is an experiment where you determine if an AI can pass itself off as human. You get a person to talk to computers and humans, over text, and see if they can determine which is which. The idea is interesting, but flawed. The Turing Test is also a first-person puzzler made by Bulkhead Interactive, and it is the same.
Feature: Blast from the past
When I first played Some Distant Memory about a month ago, I would have said it was like a futuristic point and click version of Gone Home. In it, you play a mech'd-up archaeologist called Zal, who stumbles on an old house from before The Collapse, an apocalyptic event that sent the world into disarray and left only tiny pockets of humanity intact. During the…
Feature: Playing God
I have tried and failed to play Vilmonic. It's an artificial life sim where you're in charge of your own organisms, cultivating the ideal conditions for them to prosper and grow. Think Creatures, but with optional genome editing. It's too much for me, but it is fascinating.
Feature: Once more
I shouldn't have sent my mech into the earthquake zone. It was a stupid decision, induced by a greedy desire to punch another bug and scrounge a few extra drops of XP. I hadn't ignored the risks, I'd just overlooked them. I'd left myself a turn to escape before the tiles plunged away, and the only insect left on the board was tucked into a…
Feature: It's clobberin' time!
Bookbound Brigade is a fun little game that came out in January, about a super-team of literary characters hopping through various books together to save their collective world. It borrows a lot from the near-ubiquitous Metroid formula, including non-linear levels, upgrades that need to be found, and tons of backtracking. I particularly like the mechanic wherein different group formations give the brigade alternative fighting techniques,…
Feature: "Educational"
Have You Played… The Adventures Of Batman & Robin: Cartoon Maker?
I'm not that into Batman, generally, but I'd broadly agree that Batman: The Animated Series is one of the best animated shows ever made. Visually it was unmistakable, combining bold, simple character designs and restrained use of tone and palette to make a unique noir aesthetic. It was super cool. Which makes The Adventures Of Batman & Robin: Cartoon Maker, B:TAS' 1995 "educational" spin-off CD-ROM,…
Feature: Two certainties
The little demon that revives you every time you die in The Messenger is a bit of a git. It's an often quoted idiom made famous (but not originated by) Benjamin Franklin, that "...in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". Quarble is both of these things. When he first appears, he gleefully informs you that every time you perish,…
Feature: Commander in pants
One of several things I lamented during the golden age of abandonware (an era with a contested definition, but generally "the 2000s"), was a dearth of games explicitly about politics. Simulators in particular were practically unheard of, which is how I ended up playing 1993's Shadow President, a game about getting frustrated and trying to invade the United Kingdom.
Feature: The boys are never coming back
You might have played Towns. These days, it’s interesting as a cautionary tale from the history of the early access model, but at the time (2012) it was very much headed towards being my kind of thing. A sort of Reverse Dungeon Keeper, it tasked you with running a town on top of a load of stacked-layer dungeons, and building your settlement to a point…
Feature: The deadliest dance of all
Rarely have I felt so powerful as I did the second time I defeated Lady Butterfly in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. During my first playthrough, Lady Butterfly was the boss that forced me to really learn how to play the game, to spend time internalising all the movements and steps of the intricate dance of metal and death that makes the game what it is.…
Feature: Pack it in
I’ve written a few times now about my family’s fabled first PC, a 1995 Packard Bell that had the faint air of a sickly Victorian child, resurrected as a sullen robot a century after finally succumbing to an ill-defined but fatal spluttering sickness. It was a machine that seemed to be ailing from day one, but since it was the first PC we’d had, we…
Feature: The Angry Birds catches the Worms
Castlestorm was Angry Birds re-imagined as tower defence, with a dash of Worms and a WoW-lite aesthetic, and it was extremely good! If it was released today, however, I’d probably ignore it. Because, even though it isn’t even a mobile game, it’s got a massive case of rubbish mobile game energy. It’s all exaggerated, cartoony fantasy characters, bright colours, and humour of the kind that…
Feature: Chess with spaceships
Please. I'm begging you. If you've played Battleboard, let me know. I'm starting to think it was a shared hallucination.
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