Co-operative games are great. I adore working as a team to solve problems and experience stories in games. Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator takes cooperative gameplay to a whole new level of role playing and fun.
I thought I didn’t really like isometric RPGs. It turns out what I really didn’t like was how most isometric RPGs played. An endless slog of grids and turn based combat getting in the way of enjoying the roleplaying. Disco Elysium is an Isometric RPG. I love Disco Elysium. This is a game that starts with you hearing from your ancient reptilian brain and your limbic system. And only gets more entertaining and weird from there. It’s the kind of game where I failed a skill check upon trying to take a necktie off a fan and suffered a heart attack because I wasn’t robust enough. What I think I’m trying to convey here, and it’s incredibly important, is that Disco Elysium is an excellently written, deeply thought out, exceptionally funny and distinctly weird game about choosing and playing roles. It does that better than every other game this year. Disco Elysium is an Isometric game about reading dialogue, selecting responses and occasionally making a skill check related to your choices. Skill checks roll two six sided dice, add your skill modifier and try to beat a number between 1 and 20. Double Ones is always a fail, Double 6s is always a success. Sometimes these are active. They’ll be you trying to use your physical instrument skill to break open a container, or persuasion to convince someone to help you. Sometimes these will be passive. Your Encyclopedia skill has your brain pop in with an explanation of a world Read More
Control might not represent the most average day for Jesse Faden. Finding the secretive government organisation that took your brother all those years ago could be cause for celebration. Finding a dead man, picking up his weird gun and finding that you’re now the paranormally appointed Director of that same organisation could be a point of concern. And that’s before you find out about all of those horrifying mind warping horrors they’ve been studying for decades now. So a rough day then.
You’re never more than ten feet away from a rat. This is a well known aphorism about city life. God I wish the rats in A Plague Tale Innocence were ten feet away. Instead they’re clustering around, seemingly mere inches from my character. I can hear their chittering and squeaking as they wait for my meagre torch to go out. I could move out of the shadows to the safety of a brazier, but then I’d be seen by the guard. Instead I time my movement wrong, step too close to the and as the music swells, I am devoured by clambering rats in a verminous maelstrom of teeth and claws. A Plague Tale Innocence is wonderfully unpleasant and exhilaratingly tense.
The best games in the city building genre are time machines. A player should be able to run the game, begin building their metropolis and suddenly realise that they’ve lost an evening and gained an urban sprawl. Islanders manages to do this in a way most city builders don’t. It turns the whole process of building your city into a puzzle in and of itself.
Life is Strange 2 had a tough act to follow. The first season was an adventure game based around time travel and decision making with “intensely” loved female teen characters. This is a road trip story starring two Hispanic brothers where the main draw is that the younger of the two must be looked after and taught by the older of the two. For the most part in Episode 1, it’s impressive how well the transition goes.
Stellaris is a deeply engrossing experience. It’s a member of the 4X genre (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit,eXterminate) of strategy games from Paradox Interactive but with a real focus on story telling through the strategic gameplay and emerging narratives.
Microsoft are definitely in the underdog position for this generation. They’ve had multiple big titles being cancelled or delayed or just not well received enough. Weirdly, in spite of how they started this generation, their backwards compatibility and console features have turned into their saving grace. But what do we expect them to be focussing on for the E3 2018 Conference? What are our Microsoft E3 Predictions?
EA now has a huge uphill battle in the minds of the general audience and media following the Battlefront 2 Microtransaction Brouhaha. What do we expect for them to bring to the Table for E3 2018? What are our E3 EA Predictions?
On a boat, off the coast of Dubrovnik, there is an alien. First contact for humanity is beginning. It’s up to the player to decide what happens next. The newest game from Bithell Games is a more complex and interesting Text Adventure than you initially might think.
