Category Archives: Game Reviews

Dune by any other name: Twilight Imperium Rex

Posted on by Henry

Twilight-Imperium-RexPretty cover art?  Check.

Fantasy Flight is good at making fun games, and their rehashing of the original Dune boardgame is no exception.  Though they were unable to nab the necessary IP, they’ve cleverly injected the mechanics and flavor of the original Dune into the universe created for Twilight Imperium.  But simply recreating an old game was not enough; they then streamlined and shaped it into something that you can pick up through one round of experimental play.  The end result is a highly entertaining game with excellent group dynamics, one that introduces just enough complexity to give you lots of material to work with without overwhelming you with its intricacies.

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Game Analysis: Dragon Warrior Monsters

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

Pokemon X/Y comes out tomorrow.  So today I am going to talk about my favorite monster collecting game.  No, it’s not Pokemon.  In fact, my favorite game in the “collect, raise, and battle” genre is a spinoff of the well-known series Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest.  The game is Dragon Warrior Monsters (DWM), and while I have not played it through as many times as I have the original Pokemon, I have loved it a great deal more, and spent more energy on it.  It is rare for me to actually write stuff down in a notebook for a game, but for DWM I found myself recording my findings in a notebook for future use.  This is due to its unique take on how you collect and battle your little monster minions, even if you raise them just like most other RPGs (yay grinding!)

The story for the first game (yes!  There are more than one!) begins with your sister getting kidnapped by a strange monster.  Immediately after another monster shows up and offers to help you get your sister back.  He takes you to another world and introduces you to a king.  Apparently there is a tournament soon, and the prize for winning is a wish.  Before you can participate you must train up and qualify, and so begins your journey (which includes other stories as well).  I am honestly terrible at plot-synopses because I don’t like to give anything at all away (I believe part of the joy of a story is going into it completely blind).  So as per usual I am going to focus my reviews on mechanics.

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Sword & Sworcery

Posted on by Henry

firstlook

The Scythian.

I finally finished the magnificent Sword & Sworcery.  This game is a sumptuously designed experience.  Sword & Sworcery shattered my expectations by providing such a beautiful and completely enveloping story that I almost want to call it a story before I call it a game.  And don’t get me started about the sound design.  Or rather, do, because the music is simply a delight and the sound design creates a beautifully ethereal and dreamlike space that lends an air of enchantment to the entire piece.  I’m listening to the music right now, just because I can.

This game is wrapped up in a bizarre shell of self-awareness, with the other characters completely cognizant of the duality of the game and maybe even aware of how everything will end.  And yet it still has an emotional pull that I haven’t found in any other games I’ve played recently.  Stories I’ve read, movies I’ve watched, yes.  Games?  No.  Despite a one year hiatus part way through completing the game, I’m still exceedingly excited about it.  I want to play it again all in one sitting just to get the full and immediate impact.

This is a game worth discovering.  It is an adventure that is glorious and sad and perfectly appropriate, all in one.  Let me tell you more…

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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

title-postcard

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

star_control_kohr_ah_ur_quan_by_dczanik-d2z6mty

“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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