Books are awesome. But making a book an interactive experience, making it leave the page and enter the land of games, is much more difficult. The most common example of the attempt are visual novels. Visual novels are really hit or miss; to make a game that is also a book, you need to make your largely text-based experience immersive. Analogue: A Hate Story, is the most spot-on, out-of-the-park visual novel I’ve ever ‘played.’ Immersive doesn’t even begin to touch this story – try enthralling.
Once again I find myself returning to the roguelike well for a drink. This time, though, I’m visiting a game that I had originally passed on called KLEI’s Don’t Starve. The combination of the art style and the $14.99 price tag made me look elsewhere, even if it toted a survival roguelike gameplay. It took a friend to recommend it to me before I finally tried it, was it worth it? Continue reading
It’s virtually impossible to bring up a game like Marvel Heroes without having someone say that it’s “like Diablo”. Genres are like that and expectations can be hard to live up to. I have recently been playing in the beta and I have to say that Marvel Heroes not only delivers the kind of KAPOW action you want from a game based on Marvel’s more popular characters, it does it without feeling like a clone of another game. It truly stands on its own against all opposition. Separate gear for each character, the ability to swap out characters you own on the fly, and voice acting for quick quips in combat all make this game feel amazing. So don your mask and spandex and save the world! Continue reading
I’ve been patiently refreshing my inbox since I heard that Blue Manchu was sending out a new bevy of beta invites for their tactical RPG Card Hunter. I wasn’t lucky enough to get one in the first wave, but much to my F5 button’s relief, Charles was. He knew exactly how frothy I was to get my hands on the game after playing it at PAX 2012, so he reluctantly handed over his beta key to allow me to write this piece.
Card Hunter already seemed like a polished and fun experience at PAX, but demos are a hard beast to judge. Whole teams can be whipped up to create an alluring and functional facade while all that lies behind is a mess of a game. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to spend a few hours with the beta, does Card Hunter deliver the fun experience it promised at PAX?
Fuck yes it does, and more. Continue reading
Arena of Heroes is the thinking man’s MOBA. A wild claim? Perhaps, but Arena of Heroes is focused far more on strategy, planning, and combinations than on surprising an opponent with a quick button press. It’s more akin to a game of chess than to popular multiplayer online battle arenas. Well, presuming you use chess pieces that include a chain-gun wielding rabbit from space. I’m taking a wild guess here that you probably don’t. Maybe you should be reconsidering how you enjoy turn based strategy. Continue reading
I love Alien and Aliens. They are two wildly different films, and I tend to like Alien better than Aliens,but they were extremely solid movies. They set up a great gritty sci-fi universe that has been stretched and molded almost as much as Star Trek or Star Wars. The first movie set up the universal narrative with tension and horror, and the second brought it home with action and explosions. Then the third and fourth movies came out, and they did not live up to the promise of the first two.
Dead Space follows almost the exact same trajectory as the Alien movies, and it’s third installment makes me extremely worried for the future of the IP. Continue reading
If you haven’t head about it yet, the small indie game developer Greenheart Games set one of the most potent and ironic traps for pirates ever concocted. While many developers opt for some form of DRM, others choose to program in disruptive easter eggs that activate if the game is obtained through less-than-legal means. These easter eggs usually prevent the pirate player from finishing the game, my favorite being Earthbound’s ultimate dick-move. However, Greenheart’s out-of-the-box anti-piracy measure extended beyond the game. They set out to meet pirates head-on with their recently released game Game Dev Tychoon. Continue reading
Poker Night 2 has been consuming my evenings since its release last week. Seriously, I have been logging many more hours in this game than I feel comfortable plainly stating. One might say that I have gone “all in” on this particular game, but only if one happened to have a terrible sense of humor. Luckily, I have such a sense of humor and so does Poker Night 2. I didn’t think that I could love a poker game this much, but the cast of characters has sold me 100% on this title and make it absolutely worth playing if you care about any of them. Continue reading
Injustice… let me count the ways I love thee. 1) Beautifully rendered side scrolling fighter game, 2) Fun ‘king of the fighting mountain’ play that gives you a satisfying story snippet of your hero at the end, and what everyone is talking about, 3) a fun compelling story mode that lets you play as more than one hero! Continue reading
I’m a part of the generation that experienced computer labs full of Apple IIe computers. I would sit in front of those green screens, flipping floppies and punching gigantic grey keys, biding my time with typing programs until I could pop in the king of all edutainment games: The Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail was a very formative experience in my gaming history. I feel that’s likely a shared sentiment, even though I’d guess most kids treated it as a buffalo-extinction simulator.
Thankfully, The Men Who Wear Many Hats share this love for The Oregon Trail. Using the familiar structure of Apple IIe game, their “retro zombie survival” game The Organ Trail follows a group of five individuals in modern day trying to find a safe haven in Western America from the zombie apocalypse. Originally a Flash game and a Facebook application, the “Director’s Cut” of the Organ Trail was released on Steam for $4.99. Is it worth your five-spot to play go West with a shotgun? Continue reading
