Sci-fi dogfighter Everspace [official site] has been stuck in the early access nebula since September last year. But last month it turned up the warp crank and charged the star batteries to “quite full”. Zoom! It’s a roguelike that our Alec took a peep at once before. But it’s properly out now, so I’m going to tell you wot I think.

It’s an arcadey, gun-swapping dance of asteroids and explosions. I’d call all the boosting and lasering and missile-launching a “ballet” but that would imply some finesse on the part of the pilot, whereas I have none. Nevertheless, it’s a better-than-average dogfighting sim – uppercase “DOGFIGHTING”, lowercase “sim”.
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As soon as I peek out over the wall, bullets zip past my head and ricochet off the bricks around me. I duck back down, my screen blurring. I’m pinned down. That is, until the artillery comes down on the enemy trench, its screeches echoed by the cries of the Americans caught in the blasts. I pop my head back up to have a look at the light show and my screen turns black. A second later the kill feed updates. I was shot in the head, apparently.

This ends up happening a lot in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam [official site]. The original Rising Storm, a spinoff from Tripwire’s Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, was an unforgiving shooter and this is no different. Being a beginner in this game is a struggle. You’ll die in one shot, often from an unseen enemy. You’ll kill teammates by accident and get shouted at in chat. But if you’re willing to get over the initial bumps and you’re happy to play it the way it’s supposed to be played, then the payoff is more than worth it. Read the rest of this entry »

StarCrawlers [official site] is a game about punks and rebels – people eking out a living on the edge of space by stealing, smuggling and doing odd jobs for the shady corporate entities that run the galaxy. It’s cyberpunk, but with the soul of Firefly and the mechanics of Eye of the Beholder. These different inspirations fit together neatly, rather than competing, resulting in a cohesive and ambitious party-based dungeon-crawler. Read the rest of this entry »

A third-person exploration game that eschews combat to finally prove Tomb Raider never needed the guns. RiME [official site] is a beautiful, magical game – here’s wot I think: Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of games that look like they might give me that Spelunky feeling but most of them just leave me feeling a little empty. Not Caveblazers [official site] though. Rupeck Games’ debut captures the craft and chaotic delights of Spelunky better than anything I’ve played since Spelunky itself though and it has quickly become one of my favourite roguelike platformers.

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Tokyo 42 [official site] is a game of games. It comes across as having the pure and earnest intention to hybridise everything that has been most beloved in games from the last half-decade (and a couple from decades earlier), and then adds in cats and samurai swords for good measure. Inevitably, it doesn’t all work, but moments of half-madcap, half-measured brilliance glimmer through a patina of low-level frustration.

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