RPS Feature Robots aren't fans
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
My cursor lingers over Binary Domain whenever I pass it in my Steam library, accompanied by memories of bullets slamming into metal skeletons and malevolent robots slowly marching towards my vulnerable squad of fleshy humans. No other game has made shooting up machines so satisfying.
RPS Feature A rhythm platformer
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Ersatz is an action platformer with a twist. It has a bunch of rhythm elements, with players having to dash, run, slide, and slam in time with an eclectic soundtrack through a total of eight stages. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Squirtile, I upscale you!
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
No? You should. It’s one of my fondest gaming memories.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Good Lara, bad Lara
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
A very good game wearing the skin of not a very good game. Peel that skin away, or at least try to ignore it, and find the golden bones underneath. Alternatively, just play the survival mode DLC and experience Rise of the Tomb Raider‘s best bits without the flab with a new sense of urgency.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Are you vaguely entertained?
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Gladiatorial combat RPG Swords and Sandals has been part of my life for a very long time, and yet I sometimes forget that it exists. Most recently I was reminded when I saw new Steam release Warriors: Rise to Glory! which appears to be a Swords and Sandals game in all but name. Then I noticed that Swords and Sandals 5 Redux is also on Steam. Maybe I’m not the only person who’s heard of this series after all!
RPS Feature Hide-and-seek with guns
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
The Hidden is crying out for a standalone revival. Released just over ten years ago, it was an asymmetrical Half-Life 2 multiplayer mod that turned a squad of machinegun-wielding military grunts into fragile prey for one invisible player. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Cereal filler
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
It was called Mission Kellogg’s outside of the UK, but we got the much better name so I’m gonna run with that. It’s a platformer made by some people that also make cereal! About cereal! That came on a CD in a packet of cereal!
Excuse me, I’ve got some nostalgia I need to work through. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature A dream quest
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Still very much a going concern around these parts, but screw it, I’ve not yet written about Slay The Spire, a game that has consumed most of my waking thoughts these past couple of months, so here we go. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature It's reasonably punishing
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Long before Mark Essen aka Messhof commercially released Nidhogg, he made a dozen fascinating, bizarre, infuriating, joyous free games. Punishment 2: The Punishing was all of those things. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Pack your bags
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I spent a year writing DevLog Watch, a weekly column in which I would link to developers who were charting the game creation process from its first moments. It’s been entertaining in the years since to watch many of those games grow and eventually be released, but of those that didn’t make it, I’m most sad to never get to play a finished version of Omnia Mecum Porto. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Watch out for that tree
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I started writing this thinking “neat, I get to celebrate a game where your only mode of attack is to pelt things with fruit”. Then I remembered that you do also have a knife in Disney’s Tarzan, and butchering cheetahs with sharp implements might not actually be all that child friendly. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Soviet McGee's Alice
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Little Girl In Underland imagines a universe where Soviet Russia discovered a copy of American McGee’s Alice and decided to make their own version of it. I like this version more than American McGee’s. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Trollish behaviour
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I never did. Because playing Hugo involved calling a premium phone number, speaking Irish on live television, and pressing phone buttons to guide the squeaky-voiced troll down a grainy railroad until you made a random mistake and got crushed by an oncoming train. I’m very glad I never played Hugo. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Half-Life 2 for dummies (in a good way)
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I think about replaying Timeshift, a 2007 FPS that has all but evaporated from the wider collective gaming memory, surprisingly often. Which is because I find myself hungry for a perfectly decent 7/10 action game surprisingly often – hard to come by in an age where it seems as though blockbuster manshooters can seem polarised between the epochal and the disastrous, and between absurdly lavish cutscenes and hamster-wheel multiplayer.
Sometimes I want to play something without complications, something entirely self-contained and something that lets the critical part of my brain drift off to sleep. This time-bothering shooter did that deftly. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Sins of the father
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Dark Souls > Bloodborne > Dark Souls 3 > Demon’s Souls > Dark Souls 2.
But if you like the rest, you should still play number 2. It’s good. Being good just isn’t quite enough when you’re born into a family of geniuses. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature A broken game, but in a good way. Maybe?
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Talisman, in either boardgame or videogame form, is a stupid game. It might even be a fundamentally broken game. Man, I love it. And I hate it. But also, I love it. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Fight the undead with bullets and planks
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
The winner of TIGSource’s B-game competition, Cottage of Doom places you in a cabin surrounded by zombies and challenges you to survive against the hordes. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature My worst self
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
When people ask me about the first game I ever played, I tell them it was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. That’s not accurate, but it was the first one I played that made me realise the unique power games had to transport me to other worlds, and into the shoes of another person. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature "The cat eats the coat"
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Get a bucket ready, friends, I’m about to use a disgusting word. Duolingo is the only successful example of “gamification” I’ve ever encountered. It’s a – okay there it is. Yup. That’s it. Let it all out. You’ll feel better afterwards. Better out than in, they always say. Or, in Spanish: mejor afuera que adentro. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Hotter wheels
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I was never really into Lego as a kid, but I was sure as hell into Lego Racers 2. It was the first open world game I played, which sent me on a tour across rich, varied lands long before I’d do the same in the likes of Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect. Ok, so maybe those worlds weren’t quite as detailed: but once you beat the boss of the dinosaur one your car would start leaving fire trails behind it, and that counts for a lot. Read the rest of this entry »
