Recommended – Page 15

Happy about: Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (and a few words on Nex Machina)

12/01/2018 28/06/2019

It’s been a while since Bulletstorm has been released and yet, no other game since then has tried to successfully combine the best elements of style action titles like Devil May Cry, classic FPS games and modern scripted FPS games in one nice package. The only title which tried to go for at least something similar in speed, but not in tone or stylish action, was the pretty good DOOM (2016). Although, it does feel like the FPS games in general are trying to recapture the speed and simple joys of the earlier days of the genre recently, so maybe things aren’t that bad and we’ll get more fun titles. But for now, we can also finally replay Bulletstorm on PC without the goddamn GFWL in the updated Full Clip Edition. And that’s, mostly, good.

O tempora: Command & Conquer series, as a story

31/12/2017 28/06/2019

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

People who read me for a while now know that I tend to preface my strategy game post with clearly outlining that I absolutely irredeemably suck at those. Yet, there are several franchises that I love, even if I play on easiest difficulties or outright cheat while playing them, just for the sake of their stories, their worlds, the music the style and everything that isn’t gameplay I just fail to be interested in. And for a while I planned to revisit one of the most influential and creative franchises that are no longer with us, because EA. Anyway, I just wanted to take a look at how the series evolved in style and story, with few mentions of gameplay, through its 3 separate sub-series with One Vision, One Purpose.

Happy about: Vaporum

21/12/2017 28/06/2019

You know, there was a time when “dungeon crawl” felt like something bad and boring for me. Probably more due to disposable boring dungeon quests in RPGs, bad Diablo clones and grindy Japanese action RPGs. I actually didn’t play a lot of classic dungeon crawlers, like Ultima Underworld or even newer titles influenced by it like Arx Fatalis and didn’t get to understand the good bits of this subgenre of action RPGs until Legend of Grimrock 5 years ago. But since Grimrock, I was highly interested. And there haven’t been that many good follow ups to that game, apart from its fantastic sequel. Games usually focus too much on combat, or too much on puzzles, or too much on something else, never really feeling as balanced and as engrossing as Legend of Grimrock games were. Vaporum is one of the better examples so far.

Thoughts on: The Sexy Brutale and Epistory – Typing Chronicles

07/12/2017 28/06/2019

Sometimes it feels like the best gaming ideas are never getting re-explored despite being amazing. Sometimes some game developer thinks the same and re-explores a cool game idea. The Sexy Brutale and Epistory – Typing Chronicles are perfect examples of games that we should have more of.

Happy about: The Turing Test, Event[0] and Valley

10/10/2017 28/06/2019

Had a chance to play 3 first person adventure titles, all with different “adventuring” approach. Two of which dealt with questions of AI and morality and I wanted to end there, but then I also played Valley and couldn’t bring myself to play more of The Solus Project, due to all the “survival” elements in it, which I tend to not like. So, 3 is a pretty good number.

Happy about: Orwell, Emily is Away Too and The Banner Saga 2

12/09/2017 28/06/2019

Story-driven titles, be they based around simple text or visual based interactions or on top of fleshed out other genres/mixes of genres, always have to consider the dangers of being story-driven – does the story focus enhance with the gameplay, is something done at the expense of something else, are the stories written and/or told in a good enough way for the game to have a story focus? Let’s look at some good examples among the titles where story is almost all there is: Orwell, Emily is Away Too and The Banner Saga 2.

Thoughts on: Neverending Nightmares, Dropsy and OneShot

31/08/2017 28/06/2019

Three open-ended exploratory story-driven games, all using unconventional approach to the genre they would usually be in. Let me write a few things on Neverending Nightmares, Dropsy and OneShot.

Few words on Dead Rising

28/08/2017 28/06/2019

To my surprise, I’ve completed the first Dead Rising today, now that it’s on PC. To my surprise, because I felt (and still do) that this game isn’t really “for me” and because I attempted playing Dead Rising 2 before and didn’t enjoy the experience much. I still feel like I cannot write this as a “proper review”, especially since I cheated in a few places to speed things up and didn’t redo the same things proper, so my perception is a bit off. But I do have a few words to say about the game and what I’ve seen of the series so far.

Thoughts on: The Silent Age, Mr. Pumpkin Adventure and Four Last Things

13/08/2017 26/04/2020

The art of point and click adventuring can be tackled in many different ways. Some focus on story, some on puzzles, some on comedy, some just try to create an unexpectedly deep adventuring via a simple mouse-based controls interface. The Silent Age, Mr. Pumpkin Adventure and Four Last Things, however, are of the simple sort. The story, the puzzles and the comedy.

Thoughts on: Near Death, Firewatch and Maize

08/08/2017 28/06/2019

Three first person view games with heavy focus on exploration and open-ended maps. Three completely different approaches to that concept. Survival, drama and comedy. Done to varying degrees of success.