This week saw Blizzard confirm that Overwatch’s Jesse McCree, the wise-cracking DPS cowboy, would be renamed following fallout from the sexual harassment suit filed in the state of California. McCree was named after real-life Blizzard developer Jesse McCree, who was shown to be aware of the heinous ‘Cosby Suite’. McCree has since been terminated by Blizzard.
It’s something many fans were clamouring for in the wake of the damning revelations, painting a toxic workplace rife with discrimination and sexual harassment. Good riddance, we say.
The dimension of Quake’s evil has the power to possess. We see its dark influence in the corrupted soldiers of fallen portal stations and the Eldritch structures that blot a netherworld beyond space and time. That dark influence has now taken possession of Machine Games, and they have channelled it into the game’s fourth official expansion, Dimension of the Machine.
QuakeCon got off to a fantastic start today with the release of a remastered Quake, available on digital storefronts for just £7.99 – and free too those who already own it. Long-rumoured and much anticipated, this remaster comes courtesy of Machine Games Nightdive Studios, and id Software.
Machine Games had already proven their Quake bona fides with the 2016 release of Dimension of the Past, a third expansion pack to the original game that was released on Quake’s twentieth anniversary. That expansion pack is now available in the remaster package, along with plenty more to be excited about.
Idris Elba being cast as Knuckles in the next Sonic film, rumours of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City and San Andreas remasters, plus the announcement of Frostpunk 2 have made for a very busy week of gaming news. In a different world, we’d be covering some of these big news items…or at least the Frostpunk 2 news as that is brilliant, but sadly we all have busy day jobs. Apart from Ross who floats around as Editor making all of our words sound so much better.
If you haven’t checked out Jon’s impressions of Back 4 Blood, then before reading on for Our Week in Games, do check that out.
“The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace…”
The start of last summer was special, in spite of everything: I completed System Shock for the very first time. I had long been acquainted with its sequel, but the original eluded me. To my surprise it was unquestionably the best gaming experience I had throughout 2020, save Half-Life: Alyx.
Not bad going for a game close to thirty years old. I didn’t much expect anything comparable in 2021, but 1994 wasn’t done with me yet.
Mini Motorways made its debut on Steam at the end of July, and will be coming to the Nintendo Switch next year, but it still feels absolutely like a mobile game at heart. Perhaps, though, I should correct myself there. It feels like a touch game at heart. This isn’t some in-app purchase driven knock-off, but a very smartly thought-out city builder that begs to be picked up and played, one which will undoubtedly find a very welcome home on the Switch.
Coming to Mini Motorways on the PC without having played it, or its predecessor Mini Metro, I was immediately struck by how clean and fresh it looked. I’m a sucker for good-looking art, and with Mini Motorways, where everything is fairly minimalistic, there is more than enough character to draw me in. I love the way the cities expand as the days and weeks tick by, but in such a subtle fashion that you don’t realise that you’ve progressed from managing the road network of a village at the start, to now trying to tame the sprawl of a megalopolis. A sprawl that is all your own doing.
The end of game reviews of your city are what I live for.
Once a few in-game weeks have passed and your starting route between two houses and one work place has grown exponentially, it’s wonderful to take a moment to pause, delete your original road networks and create things afresh to best take account of how your city has evolved. A city that has evolved to grow around your roads, with houses sprouting in the most awkward of spots but able to be ignored. Meanwhile the new business that sets up on the other side of a river when you have run out of bridges to plop down will be what finally brings a game to an end.
It might not be your traditional city builder, and yes it might work best on a touch device, but Mini Motorways is a gem, and comes highly recommended.
I was recently fortunate enough to gain access to the Back 4 Blood (B4B) closed-beta, and I’m going to share my thoughts on the game as it is and where I think it can go both before and after release. Bear in mind as this was the beta build of the game content and mechanics may – and probably will – still change.
Another week rolls by here at The Reticule, and all is quiet. Well, it was until Jon returned!
As we explained last week, we are still looking for new diverse voices to join our motley crew. Even if you aren’t looking to write with us, feel free to join our Discord server to hang out and talk about whatever takes your fancy. With that, on with Our Week in Games.
Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you’ll know it’s Olympics time, and Team GB have Sky Brown competing in the park discipline. Today you can (nearly) emulate Sky with The Ramp, an indie skateboarding title from Paul Schnepf.
Unlike Sky’s adventures in Tokyo, The Ramp features vert skateboarding across a handful of locations, and that’s pretty much it. On the Steam page, Paul describes The Ramp as offering you 15 minutes of flow for “the price of a medium sized cinnamon pistachio latte”.
The Ramp is out right now on Steam, and I’ll be putting down the price of a fancy coffee for 15 minutes of flow.
