Posts tagged “The Joy Of”

VINDICATION. That's what Hardspace: Shipbreaker says to me. I have hinted several times that salvage is grossly under-represented in games. And now here's a game all about it, and it as excellent as I'd hoped.Despite being an estimate year from release, Hardspace Colon Shipbreaker already gets a lot of things right. But my favourite thing about it is one I didn't even expect to feel…

Travelling in games is special. The Lord Of The Rings might describe Frodo popping over to Mordor to chuck a ring in a volcano, and 1917 might show you every inch of ground covered by those soldiers, but short of physically going on a yomp in the real world, nothing conveys a sense of a distance travelled quite like huffing your way across the open…

I’m having a moment in Divinity: Original Sin. I’m lost in the limitless depths of my inventory, its small icons denoting vague categories which make me forget which character was meant to give what to whom, or where I put that unidentified sarong I swear I picked up in the last battle. Meanwhile, the NPCs in the market square around me are repeating their lines…

It took me a couple dozen attempts to escape hell in Supergiant Games’ early access roguelite Hades. Once I succeeded I thought I might give it a break; return when there were new updates. But it absolutely has its claws in me, which is how I found out that mucking about and losing is actually way better than trying to win.

Griefing, a term applying to any bad faith behaviour in an online game, whether it’s ruining things for your group or harassing other players, has reared its ugly head since early MMOs like Ultima Online. The behaviour existed even further back in MUDs, text-based multi-user dungeons, before the term griefing had been coined. Yet, going by the popularity of Untitled Goose Game, there’s clearly a…

If there’s anything that can bring a dose of certainty to a dark night in the Polish countryside, it’s that voice. “Flat left over jump, extra extra long keep middle 170,” it says as we speed by trees and hedgerows and fields and barns. I can’t see the world outside the glare of my headlights, but that voice knows everything. “Into six right, opens over…

"Audio logs", said a game designer, eliciting a chorus of involuntary groans from absolutely everyone. They're clumsy, they're silly, and they're usually badly done, to the point where it's tempting to insist that they be consigned to history altogether.That would probably be overkill.

I have been skittering around Outer Wilds like one of those birds who lives on a rhino's back and survives by eating rhino dandruff (I have watched both series of Planet Earth). I haven't been able to sit and play it in big sessions, but I've been picking at it and finding interesting morsels, making a bit more progress each time. I'd be making more…

While some people might be into neon-lime Dragonblades and only the edgiest of Reaper skins, my favourite part of Overwatch is its spawn rooms. It’s fun to enter the fray guns blazing from time to time, it is supposed to be an FPS after all. But there’s something about the spawn rooms in Overwatch that adds an extra layer to how you connect with the…

The submarine is filling with seawater and nobody left alive is doing anything about it. The captain is calmly discussing the battery life of his headset radio with the ship’s doctor, who is standing still on the upper decks fiddling with his inventory. Two decks below them a ravenous trio of giant, shrimp-like sea creatures are burrowing from crew quarters to medical bay, flooding the…

I’ve been virtually flying Spitfires for as long as I can remember. I’ve shot down scores of Stukas, maimed messes of Messerschmitts and hunted hosts of Heinkels. But never have I thought about who refuels my plane when I get home for tea and medals. Who reloads the guns, patches up the bullet holes, and grumbles about me putting too much stress on the engine.…

The Assassin’s Creed series is no stranger to promoting the wholesale murder of folks with whom you disagree. From battling Templars on the seas of the Caribbean to viciously and repeatedly punching the pope, these games have a history of exacting revenge on all-powerful (yet never successful) shadow organisations. A few hours into Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, you’ll come across another one. The “Cult of Kosmos”…

Even as a kid, I always had a fascination with death. It’s manifested in a number of different ways over the years. From learning various mythologies to get a grasp on their take on the afterlife, to reading mystery novels that taught me hundreds of impractical ways to nearly get away with murder, most of my hobbies involved death in some form. So, it's not…

The latest Football Manager is the most accessible yet. Which means less stressing over incremental tweaks, stats and numbers, and more scope to channel your energy in a completely different direction. This season, play it as it was intended (by me) to be played: with a dash of live-action roleplay. Whether you’re a tracksuit coach or a three-piece supervisor, the world’s most comprehensive soccer management…

I like bad weather and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the raw, sublime beauty of it. More likely, it’s a form of meteorological Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve lived in Britain long enough to appreciate being constantly rained on (at least until Summer when my face melts off onto the pavement). But the bad weather I’m talking about lies in the Goldilocks zone. I want neither…

From darkspawn to archdemons, Dragon Age is renowned for its epic battle against undead beasties seeking to wreak havoc in Thedas. However, my favourite mission in the entire series isn’t a magnificent fight, nor has it anything to do with high tales of monsters and men. My favourite mission is a fancy party in Dragon Age Inquisition.

I’ve never been a big fan of hunting, which is why I didn’t think I’d be so captivated by theHunter: Call of the Wild. But I don’t love it for the hunting. I discovered that, once you lay down your arms and forget about bringing home the venison, this hunting simulator becomes an amazingly relaxing experience. If you subvert its purpose almost entirely, it’s actually…

I’m not usually one for speedrunning. I do however get a kick out of being able to get through a game much faster on the second or third time around. There’s just an immense satisfaction of revisiting a brain-bending puzzle or boss fight that had you agonising over an hour the first time, only to mop it up in minutes on a second run.Of the…

Bear with me for a minute, and let me tell you about the greatest Lord Of The Rings game ever released. There have been myriad games based on Tolkien’s work, most of which weren’t very good. Some more recent efforts include War In The North and Shadow Of Mordor. I liked the latter a lot, but the fact remains that there is one game to…

I have to admit, I’m not the best at every video game, but I’m just awful at Western RPGs. I never wrapped my head around Neverwinter Nights’ D&D style of play. I built my character incorrectly in Knights of the Old Republic and it made my playthrough excruciatingly difficult. I’ve passed on playing other popular WRPGs like Planescape: Torment just for the fear of having…