Reviews
Dirt 5 is a visual tour de force, and anyone who will be picking it up on the next-gen machines is going to be in for a treat with a racer that offers you something new to look at around every corner. But scratch beneath the shiny exterior, and what’s left? …
Crown Trick is an easy to learn, hard to master turn-based rogue-like with a great presentation and tough but enjoyable combat. It fits into the rogue-like mould with a few standard elements; random encounters, enemies, weapons and dungeon layout but also does enough to make it stand out amongst the wave of rogue-likes that have been releasing on PC recently. In the game you play as Elle, a young girl who finds herself trapped in the realm of Nightmares and with the help of a magic crown, has to stop those responsible for keeping her there.
If we did classic scores rather than Verdict’s, The Outer Worlds would have been given that classic 7/10 score. A rating which indicates a game is well rounded and generally pretty good, without being outstanding. You know, something you might pick up when it’s on offer. Funnily enough, The Outer Worlds has just landed on Steam and GOG after a year of Epic exclusivity with a two week 50% off deal, and for £24.99, I’d suggest it’s something worth your while picking up. …
Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York weaves a familiar tale. Yet it is not a tale familiar out of triteness, but rather in its bleak and despairing contemporaneity. Shadows of New York artfully depicts our 2020 hell-scape, holds it up as a mirror and doesn’t so much ask whether or not we’re fucked as yell it in our faces.
It is a tale of a debauched, grotesquely wealthy elite presiding over a city of broken, desperate people, haunted by an impending apocalypse—climate-induced, technological, viral, pick your horror—precious few seem inclined to curtail, let alone prevent.
And this apocalypse cares not a whit for whether you’re human or vampire; after all, Kindred were once human themselves, and its ruling body, the Camarilla—so intent on maintaining the status quo at all costs—a potent metaphor for a global system that refuses to change, adapt, or evolve.
Even when everything is at stake (soz).
As Far As The Eye (AFATE) is a procedurally generated strategy and survival game based on a hexed map in which you build, gather resources and achieve set objectives before moving onto the next area and eventaully to the center of the map and final objective ‘The Eye’.
They say the Devil, or perhaps the WompRat, is in the details. I don’t think there’s a game I’ve played recently that epitomises this as much as Star Wars: Squadrons (SW:S) does. There’s just something in the way your avatar flips switches in the cockpit, the way they punch the console when trying to reboot or the little between-mission conversations with your wing-mates that makes the whole experience something greater than the sum of it’s parts.
But what is the final tally then….?
I’ve been playing the Dual Universe Beta, by Novaquark studios and I’ve reached a point where I think I can comfortably give you my verdict on the game as you’ll likely find it, were you to jump in now.
My initial work-in-progress thoughts on the Beta can be found here.
So then….. what DO I think?
After successfully kickstarting development on Wasteland 2 in 2012, InXile Entertainment are back with a third, similarly crowd-funded instalment of the iconic CRPG series, swapping the dusty wastes of Arizona for a Colorado blanketed in irradiated snow.
It’s fair to say that Wasteland 3 and I did not get off to the best of starts. After investing three hours in the game, which was spent acclimatising to turn-based combat and learning the ins-and-outs of its stats system, I returned to find my save files had been erased. I’m still not sure what went wrong. For a game that develops piecemeal, this was upsetting.
I briefly considered whether the snafu had dealt a fatal blow to my objectivity, but reasoning that it had not I resolved to start afresh and move quickly through the opening sections. Unlike my first play-through I was able to save a young Ranger – Pvt. Jodie Bell – from the murderous goon who had taken her hostage, setting me on an altogether different path to the one I had previously embarked upon.
It’s a path that has proven to be one of the richest gaming experiences I’ve had in some time. Which is to say, folks, that Wasteland 3 is very good indeed.
I’ve talked about art of rally quite a lot since seeing it at EGX last year, and I was expecting good things. I wasn’t prepared for just how good this indie rally game was going to be. It’s great fun, and deserves to stand alone as a brilliant game, not just as a brilliant racing game. …
Griefhelm is a side-scrolling medieval-them-up made by Johnny Dale Lonack and published by Thorrnet Publishing. It see’s you, yes YOU dear reader, enter a series of duels in a quest to, well, erm, it’s not actually clear, but still, QUEST! During a series of battles you’ll progress, level up and achieve ultimate victory.
Does it land the kill, or are we parrying out of, erm, fun?
Let’s find out.