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Feature: Barbarossa boiled down
Are we capable of coding an AI that will play this game competently and plausibly? I wish more wargame developers asked themselves this question early in the design process, and treated answers of “possibly” and “not sure” as reasons to head back to the drawing board. If they did we'd have less warfare fare but more games that convince and challenge the way Cauldrons of War:…
Feature: Battering an iron ostrich to pieces never felt so good
If you've read anything I've had to say about Horizon Zero Dawn to date - and I've eulogised it twice already - the tone of this review shouldn't come as a surprise. I knew the PC port would have to be either unplayable, or introduce an inexplicable wisecracking pelican as Aloy's sidekick, to change my opinion of what's probably my favourite ever action game. And…
Feature: Finlandia or Appalachian Spring?
Dear Simon, Your Dad sounds like a chap after my own heart. It's quite possible we were both in the Kerovian Republic at the same time. We might even have shared the same aviodyne gondola or stood atop the same stinking jagiphant carcass! In answer to your birthday present recommendations question, as it happens I have recent play experience of both of the titles you…
Feature: Claws for concern
If there's one thing I respect in any creator, it's commitment to a concept. I believe in going all-in on things, even when they're ridiculous, on the principle that passion and dedication can elevate even the most outlandish nonsense to a state of beauty. Fight Crab challenged this belief.
Feature: It's over now, the music of the night
Maid Of Sker is a first-person survival horror game, which makes the name a bit confusing because it's pronounced like "Made Of Scare". Sadly, this isn't a very good description of Maid Of Sker, because although there are some good and creepsome bits in it, this isn't a game made for jump scare compilations on YouTube, nor it is suffused with a creeping, lingering dread.…
Feature: Sandwich Artist's The Thing
Carrion has fleeting moments of brilliance. You might have seen those moments, in the GIFs that have been popping up on Twitter over the course of the Metroidvania monster mash's development. It's a shame, then, that the brilliance doesn't last beyond the frames of a looping animation.
Feature: Hidden folks
How refreshing it is to have a Scandinavian-inspired story that isn't about detectives in woolly jumpers unearthing all manner of grisly nasties from the crisp white snow. Röki's young heroine Tove does do her fair share of digging in Polygon Treehouse's gorgeous point and click adventure, but instead of dead bodies she's collecting celestial stone discs, strange sophorus flowers, and jars of sticky black goo…
Feature: Ordering up a nice steaming cuppa feelings
I’ve had the luxury of a few days to sit with my thoughts on Necrobarista before having to tell you wot I think, and wot I think is this: the game tricked me in the best possible way. Of course it’s a game about death, it’s set in a café that predominantly serves the recently deceased. Many of its characters are wrestling with their own…
Feature: Square strategy
Plebby Quest: The Crusades and I did not get off to the best start. This is partly because it’s called “Plebby Quest”, a dreadful title that has little to do with the game itself. Neither "plebs" nor questing featuring prominently. Instead, Plebby Quest is more like a diet Crusader Kings, offering a similarly grand medieval strategy in a package less likely to pack on the…
Feature: The wood is very visible actually
I don't usually like survival games. I like the idea of survival games - the idea of making a safe home out of the wilderness and learning to make my own boots out of rabbit skin, and so on. I would never be able to do this in real life, obviously, because I am small and fragile and I don't really enjoy even the most…
Feature: Jung people these days
Most roleplaying games span continents, planets, even galaxies. Persona 4 Golden – the first of Atlus's celebrated RPGs to make a belated landfall on PC - is set almost entirely inside a single town. It's not even a very memorable town: neither a wistful Chosen One Village nor a bustling world hub, but a wilting suburb done up in Google Map shades of tarmac and…
Feature: I'm so sorry, Bina
Christ, I'm not sure what to make of Griftlands. At first I was close to adoration. It's an unusually story-focused deckbuilding roguelike - and it's from Klei, of Oxygen Not Included and Don't Starve fame. That sounded wild to me even before I learnt that it's about moseying around as a bounty hunter in an alien city, doing odd jobs for the locals and building…
Feature: First-person shooting meets light strategy
Disintegration has a good line in names. Across its campaign missions, you play Gravcycle pilot and - yes - television presenter called Romer Shoal in a rebellion against "integrated" human-robot hybrids led by Black Shuck. If those names aren't fun enough to roll around in your mouth, consider that the TV show Romer presented was called "Cradle 2 The Grav".If only there was as much…
Feature: A relaxing katabasis
So many are the dignities heaped upon Beyond Blue, that it's somewhat hard to get at the game beneath. When I began playing, I knew that it had been made in association with the filmmakers behind the Blue Planet II series, and in consultation with a host of marine scientists. I knew that it promised a sober and ultra-realistic exploration of the oceans, and that…
Feature: Cull cussing cowboys creatively
Claymore Game Studios, the newly formed outfit tasked with reviving the Commandos franchise, is in need of an Unreal Engine expert, a 3D artist, a 3D animator, and a senior level designer. Whoever secures the latter job will, if they are sensible, do nothing their first week except watch old war movies and play Desperados III. Proving that the superb Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun…
Feature: A lean, mean, greenin' machine
A while back politicians in the UK identified the environment as a key battleground to fight over, and all started riding around on those tiny bikes you can fold up and carry around London to prove they cared about trees. Not to be outdone, EA have, ten years later, released their latest expansion to blockbuster tiny-person life simulation series The Sims 4 along a green…
Feature: Zhuzh it up, commander
Who remembers the 90s? Teachers cowering under their desks, living in constant fear of gunge reprisal. Dave Benson Phillips stomping a Furby to death behind a Woolworths. Princess Diana slowly opening her mouth on live television to reveal the very first Tamagotchi. And then there was you, a horrid greasy goblin person hunched over a yellowing CRT monitor in the corner of the living room.…
Feature: Coal-hearted
There it is, the trans-planetary pipeline. One long tube of metal scarring a rural alien planet. It brings coal and water to my power stations, and electricity to my factories. It has taken a day of planning, construction and pumping. Now, the pipeline stands before me, a snaking behemoth of energy consumption. Suddenly, a thought comes. Why didn't I just build coal stations next to…
Feature: TOOT TOOT
Two weeks ago, Monster Train breezed into my life like a man wearing a trenchcoat stuffed with cocaine. I've been playing Shiny Shoe's roguelike deckbuilder almost every night since, and I have no intention of stopping.I can't believe I'm about to say this, but it's at least as good as Slay The Spire.
Feature: Chrono Trigger Finger
Each fifteen seconds of a match of competitive FPS Quantum League repeats, creating its own timeline of player actions which persist until the end of the third run, or until that timeline is interrupted by the actions of a player in a subsequent run. It’s Clock Blockers, basically. Sometimes, you pull off supremely tactical synchronized plays with versions of your past self. Sometimes, you have…
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