After the success of the Bioshock franchise, many have tried to look back at other games involving creator and lead writer Ken Levine. Most roads lead back to System Shock 2, a game that was obviously a deep influence for the team’s later work on Bioshock. For the first time, System Shock 2 has been made available on Steam, a chance for gamers to look back at an important part of gaming history. Despite a few ...
The king has been murdered by his three children, but not without siring a illegitimate heir. After having an affair with a dragon (who we're assured was in female human form at the time), a child is born. You're that child. The future of the kingdom is in your hands, Dragon Commander.
For anyone on the outside looking in, the MOBA genre can look like a scary one. There are too many numbers, too much clutter on the screen, too many characters, abilities, items and you have to work as a team! I have a confession: I used to think that too, and as I dipped my toe into the deep blue ocean of MOBAs I was still thinking it. Now, some lost hours later, I have emerged a fan. I say emerged, I can't ...
The Saints Row series started out as a free-roaming criminal rampage game that was very close to Grand Theft Auto, but by the time Saints Row The Third showed up the developers had pretty much abandoned the idea of edgy crime drama and made a game where gamers could drive around on the Light Cycle from Tron, shooting people with a Shark Gun while their pal Burt Reynolds helped them beat up zombies.
Europa Universalis is a franchise where you don't just control a country or play a king, you are the ruler of your very own nation. That comes with all of the good and all of the bad. The power to do whatever you want, but the responsibility to not always do it. The need to protect and expand your nation whilst all others do the same.
The creation of any video game requires a great amount of time, work, and skill to pull off, even with a vast team of developers with various skills. Due to the complexity of the medium, it is unheard of for a single person to create and develop a high quality game all alone, until now. Dean Dodrill, the creator of "Dust", programmed and designed every aspect of the game outside of the voice acting, music, and ...
Neverwinter, a game set in the D&D universe, started as a series of isometric RPG games with a heavy focus on pausable strategic combat. Since then Neverwinter has evolved into a free to play MMO with fast paced action combat, player created content, and a unique currency system.
Like many that grew up during the 8-bit generation, I have an intrinsic love for Capcom's DuckTales for the NES. I found its music, visuals and level design to be among the best during that time, and I revisit it occasionally. Despite my skills at deftly pogo-jumping my way to victory being rusty, I still believe it's a classic, and I was more than just a little thrilled when Capcom and developer WayForward ...
These days, it seems like everyone is trying to breathe new life into the zombie genre. Most developers are looking for the angle that nobody has done before, trying to make zombies terrifying all over again and forcing people to sneak around in the darkness lest they find their tender brains being chewed. What happened to all the fun we used to have with zombies, where we were the ones with all the power and ...
While many indie developers are attempting to make old genres relevant again, there are those that are trying to create new ones. One such dev is Lucas Pope, with his latest game, Papers, Please, being labeled as "A Dystopian Document Thriller". The word "Dodocument" will no doubt throw some people off, but after spending some time cross-referencing passports and work releases as an immigration inspector in ...
Three things in this world are certain: death, taxes, and stealth missions in video games. Some games include stealth missions for variety or back-of-box feature lists, and others include them as an alternative to smash-and-grab gameplay. Few games really focus on covert gameplay as a primary mechanic, and that’s probably because making good stealth games are hard. Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine from Pocketwatch ...
What happens when you blend a puzzle game with adventure and stealth elements, a pinch of comedy, and a dose of noir? The answer is Gunpoint, a unique indie game that is impossible to be tied down to a single genre. This concoction of various ideas may sound like it would create too much dissonance to be fun, but everything comes together in perfect harmony to create a one-of-a-kind adventure.
Rise of the Triad is one of those success stories that just don't happen enough in the gaming industry. Essentially a fan game, it was created by people who loved the original Rise of the Triad (released in 1994), people from across the world who worked from their homes, put money in just for the love of the project.
Shadowrun's last appearance in video game form wasn't that pretty, leaving fans disappointed that Microsoft decided to turn their cyberpunk, urban fantasy pulp RPG into a multiplayer shooter. Thankfully, the mastermind behind the franchise, Jordan Weisman, headed to Kickstarter in order to fund a project designed to take the series back to its roots: Shadowrun Returns.
Prehistorik, when it was originally released back in 1992, got decent enough reviews and something of a following. What's interesting is how quickly it aged, though. Reviews from 1994 spoke of it as if it was an old fashioned retro game, a game that had aged beyond playability.
Nicolas Eymerich, the main character of The Inquisitor, is not a nice man. While the likes of Guybrush Threepwood and Eric Idle's Rincewind kept us playing with their fish-out-of-water optimism, Nicolas has already seen it all. He probably yelled at it as well. He does a lot of that. He's a very angry man. And while I can't help but think that the developers hoped his anger and intelligence might inspire ...
Releasing games in chunks similar to a TV show seems to be a growing trend among developers, thanks in part to the success of Telltale's The Walking Dead. German developer KING Art, notable for their award-winning title The Book of Unwritten Tales, has opted to go for the episodic route with their latest adventure game, The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. This first chapter sets the stage for their throwback ...
Mind Games is a DLC that adds a slew of new content to Sword of the Stars: The Pit. It includes new levels, new weapons, new items, and new enemies. But, the most exciting addition is the psionic powers, along with 2 new classes: the ranger and the psion.
You are the last hope for mankind as a deadly plague is killing your world. Your mission is to travel deep into an alien facility that may or may not have the necessary resources to create a cure. This place is called The Pit and all who have entered have never returned. Can you survive the dangers that lurk within, or will death take you?
The combat in Dark sucks. By extension, this means almost all of Dark sucks, as it's built, by and large, around this idea of combat. You see, it's a little known fact that vampires can only clumsily walk up to enemies, bash them over the head or suck their blood, making loud slurping noises like granny at Christmas and alert everybody within a five mile radius.
Pester is a top-scrolling shoot 'em up where you fly your ship against tons of enemy fighters, dodging an occasionally absurd amount of enemy fire, grabbing power-ups and wiping out as much alien scum as you can before you lose all your lives. It's as simple a concept as it ever was, with the arrow buttons controlling your movement.
While not without its hangups, Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition is a solid fighter that takes the franchise back to its roots while pushing it forward at the same time. The fantastic campaign, combos that require more skill than luck and clever new additions not only make this one of the best Mortal Kombats in years, but it's also one of the best fighters on PC.
Final Fantasy VII is a classic. Its story, its score, its mechanics - for many this was the game that defined what RPGs should be. With another re-release, this time on Steam, Square Enix proves time is no barrier to a decent game, although a little polish might serve to get rid of the dust.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is perhaps Sierra's most notorious adventure game. While it's not as crafted as their later work, creator Al Lowe managed to make it and its sequels cult classics in the eyes of the many that played the series of adventure titles released in the late 1980s and throughout the '90s.
I love when great games are born from mods. Take Day Z for example, originally a mod for Arma II and is now getting its own standalone title because of its popularity. Cry of Fear is a mod of Half Life 1 but, unlike Day Z, it has its own complete style. What I mean by that is Team Psykskallar, the developers of the game, only used the Half Life source engine and basic code to make Cry of Fear. Everything else in ...
It seems like every game they release these days calls itself a 'survival' game. How many of them actually are? To me, if you are calling a game a survival game, that implies consequence. If you are playing a game and the only consequence of failing to survive is that you have to go back to the last checkpoint, then what you are playing is not a true survival game, in my opinion. I can say one thing with ...
High Moon Studios, most notable for their Transformers titles, have taken it upon themselves to finally give Deadpool, Marvel's infamous antihero, a starring role in his very own video game. It's a game that certainly captures the redeeming (and some not so redeeming) qualities of the crazed mercenary, but suffers from design decisions that, while heavy on “brakkabrakka!”, are dated and lack style. Somebody ...
While I've thoroughly enjoyed playing Borderlands 2 like a fiend the last ten months, I never found myself to be fully satisfied with the game. Sure, it feels great to get all the uber-rare weapons and mods and take on all the raid bosses and whatnot - I'm talking about emotionally: if there's one way Borderlands 2 disappointed me, it was how it mostly wasted its opportunity at creating a resonant narrative: ...
Knights of Pen and Paper is a game designed to take you back to a time when a group of likely slightly smelly individuals would sit around a table, getting engrossed in a story of their own creation. By lovingly combining table top RPG with the gameplay devices of late eighties/early nineties, Behold Studios have created a game that is both nostalgic and fresh, seriously fun and, at times, frustratingly true to ...
Each and every year sees the release of dozens of sports management simulators, and the vast majority of them are extremely niche. While the likes of Football Manager destroys millions of man hours each year, similar games are often completely overlooked, panned or even mocked for their apparent lack of interactivity or their place in the sports hierarchy.
