Category Archives: Game Reviews

Sir, You Are Being Alpha’d

Posted on by Henry

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Your merciless foes

Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also runs a game company, called Big Robot.  For one month last year, Big Robot ran a kickstarter project to fund their game Sir, You Are Being Hunted (now available both directly from Big Robot and through Steam).  I backed that project.  This summer, just a few days ago in fact, Big Robot released an alpha of their game to their backers.  Can you see where I’m going with this?  Good.

What follows is a collection of my first impressions of Sir, You Are Being Hunted, a game about traipsing across faux-British countryside in search of important MacGuffins while being mercilessly pursued by a very large number of robots with guns.

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Monsterhearts: taking a peek under the ribcage

Posted on by Henry

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Monsterhearts sells itself as “the messy lives of teenage monsters.”  But the truth is that the monstrous nature of the PCs in any game of Monsterhearts really just serves as a reminder of the alienation, discomfort, and feeling of mislabeled or misunderstood powerlessness that gnawed at so many of us when we were teenagers.  And maybe as adults as well.  Furthermore, themes which have filled classic literature for ages rear their heads again and again in this game; you don’t have to have ever experienced any of them yourself in order to be fascinated by and indulge yourself in them.

A quick background: this is an RPG which has grown out of the Apocalypse World system created by Vincent Baker.  It takes the sparse elegance of Baker’s ruleset and applies it to a very different type of life.  Read on to find out what makes Monsterhearts different from Apocalypse World, and learn some of what makes it so dynamic and so much fun to play.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Posted on by Mattias Lehman

GENTLEMAN-GUSTAF-FUCK-YEAH

Choice is the name of the game when it comes to Action-RPGs. Old RPGs (especially Japanese-style RPGs) didn’t have much choice, and they play a lot more like interactive movies than games. Your ‘choice’ came down basically to your character (and not ever his crucial character elements, but simply how you geared him. I say this not to impugn that style (the Final Fantasy series is one of my favorites), but only to point out how the Western RPG market diverged. If you look at earlier RPGs like Neverwinter Nights and Baldur’s Gate, not only do they flesh out character creation (instead of having a set character you can outfit, you build your character from scratch), but you get increasingly more options, via sidequests and choices of which factions to ally with. But I argue that these choices are hardly real. Why? Because they do not meaningfully impact the game. Sure, you can ally with the thieves’ guild against the mage’s guild or vice versa, but honestly:

  1. what difference does it make?
  2. Isn’t it basically determined by the class you play?

This can be most exemplified by more sandbox RPGs, where the extra ‘freedom’ you have is to explor ethe continent doing sidequests. But ultimately, the gameplay doesn’t change all that much.

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The Real SC: Star Control

Posted on by Henry

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“You Will Soon Die. Make Whatever Rituals Are Necessary For Your Species.”

Some of you will recognize the above picture of a predatory space squid caterpillar.  I was reminded of these most wonderful villains a few days ago by a short little news item; it surfaced here in the daily torrent of Rock Paper Shotgun articles, and I found this informative tidbit through Ars Technica.

Star Control may yet ride again.

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DEFCON: How about a nice game of chess?

Posted on by Henry

DEFCON

Just kidding.  We all know you just want to play Global Thermonuclear War.  Poor Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare never gets any love.  DEFCON, developed by Introversion Software, offers all the Global Thermonuclear War you could ever want.  Its spartan and elegant graphics looks just as appropriate today as they did on release in 2006, with clean glowing lines showing up beautifully on the dark background of the world; Introversion took the design aesthetics of the global tactical displays from various Cold War nuclear war thrillers, and created a game that perfectly delivers their inhuman reductionism.  It is a cold, hard, unfeeling game that leaves you feeling challenged, rewarded, and maybe a little bit broken inside as you watch the megadeaths pile up and desperately hope that you can kill a few more people than you lose.

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Artemis Bridge Simulator Offers Arch Entertainment

Posted on by Henry

Pun aside, this game is not about building bridges.  It is about being on bridges.  Spaceship bridges.  While it can be legitimately panned for its exceedingly high computer requirements (it isn’t demanding about system specs, it demands many systems), this game is a multiplayer gem of excellent quality.  I played it for the first time this weekend, and now…

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Held at Gunpoint

Posted on by Henry

There’s a lovely new game that came out very recently.  It’s called Gunpoint.  Perhaps you may have heard of it…

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Game Analysis: Diablo 3

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

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Since I took a look at a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 I figured I might as well take a look at the actual successor.  Unlike Path of Exile however, I really can’t think of too much that draws me to Diablo 3.  This makes me especially sad since I waited in great anticipation for its release, playing Diablo 2 over and over again in the meantime.  I paid full price for it.  I paid for a copy for a friend to play with me!  That is how much I wanted to continue my Diablo 2 fun in Diablo 3, but I ended up losing interest and dropping the game extremely quickly.  You can maybe discount my analysis because I haven’t gotten much actual game time in, but I would argue that it isn’t my job to persist at playing a game until it is fun, it is instead the game’s job to keep me interested in playing.

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Not a Gun Show; Total War: Shogun 2

Posted on by Henry

With Rome 2 looming on the horizon, it’s time to look back at where the last game left us.  Shogun 2 represented a fairly impressive step forward from the previous games (Empire, Medieval 2), offering a slick new heir to the already prestigious line of Total War games.  All of the buzz about Rome 2 suggests that Creative Assembly is ready to do it again.  But how does Shogun 2 really stand up to the previous Total War games?  What should CA look to keep, and what should be revised or removed?

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Game Analysis: Path of Exile

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

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I like Path of Exile and I hate Path of Exile.  This game is everything I loved about Diablo 2, but it also amps up the parts of Diablo 2 that I was not a fan of.  It is an action-RPG title that experiments with excess, and by doing so has given me all sorts of mixed feelings.

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