Vermintide 2 Review: Co-operative fun with the Rat Pack
Four Heroes. Around a thousand enemies. One of the most satisfying co-operative experiences of the year. Vermintide 2 is a blast of a game.
Four Heroes. Around a thousand enemies. One of the most satisfying co-operative experiences of the year. Vermintide 2 is a blast of a game.
What Remains of Edith Finch is now the bar set for all Interactive Dramas going forwards. It’s a compelling anthology of little narratives that build up to much more than the sum of it’s parts.
Space Marine always stands out as an amazing example of capturing the feel of a universe through adaptation. It’s an exercise in showing how understanding a property can lead to a great game.
PUBG as a game shouldn’t work. It’s a multiplayer only game that requires around 100 players for a match. It looks bland as white rice. There’s fundamentally no narrative, no story. To start a game is to commit to a single 30 minute time sink where 99 players are going to lose. This game should have empty servers, critical panning and a bunch of postmortems to dissect exactly how bad of an idea it is. Yet it’s easily one of the most engrossing games I’ve played in a long time. Somehow PUBG is a highly compelling game that’s sucked up most of my year.
Shadow of War is a game that demands the player’s attention. It is brash and loud, hurrying the player along a path of constant engagement Not a moment goes by without a prompt or an icon or a mission or an encounter with enemies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’ve had a great deal of fun playing, but it is utterly exhausting.
Even to this day, I’m still kind of stunned that Machine Games Wolfenstein: The New Order is quite this well written and designed as a game. Wolfenstein is the literal grandaddy of shooting games. You are B.J Blascowicz. A man with a gun, shooting from the first person.You shoot Nazis. Till there are no more. Sometimes the Nazis have magic, sometimes super science, sometimes both. You shoot them till they fall over.
Let’s get it out of the way. LA Noire is not a game for everyone. The story is cliched, oddly paced and tropey. The incredibly expensive facial recognition tech is somewhat let down by the clunky dialogue system. But in spite of all that, it does a fantastic job of capturing the feel of being at the heart of Noir Detective stories. Even Better, LA Noire is a perfect game to play with a group of friends. Following the clues, making connections and catching lying witnesses out is better with company
Heat Signature is a fascinating exercise in how well and how quickly you can improvise. You’ll be given a problem to solve. You’ll have a very short time to solve it. You’ll have a limited set of tools. You’re going to come up with some very fun solutions. Or die trying.
Absolver is an online 3D fighting game. In this game the moveset is created by the players, the fights are gorgeous and fluid and it’s all wrapped in a paintstroke aesthetic.
Nidhogg 2, from Messhof, is a 2D duelling game that is built around multi-player combat. Specifically, Nidhogg shines when being played with friends. Whether it’s local couch Co-op or online, fighting against a person you know creates a wonderful experience as you try to best each other in this superb duelling game.