Over the course of the last decade or so, gaming as a whole has made strides in virtually every relevant area of development. Whether itâs gameplay, graphics, physics, simplicity of development⦠you name it â itâs been improved. Itâs a natural process of iteration that, strangely enough, ignored a single element older games had nailed back in the day: hotseat multiplayer. Of cou...[Read More]
Minecraft is seen as a sort of mixed blessing in the design community. On one hand, it displayed that you donât need next-gen graphics or complicated mechanics to draw in a large crowd of fans. On the other, it started a trend of voxel-based copycats trying to quickly and cheaply cash in on the fame Minecraft had. Now, should any poor developer be tempted to use minimalist voxel-based des...[Read More]
I spend a lot of time on Steam. I am not talking about time spent actually playing games via Steam, but rather I spend what is bound to be a significant part of my life going down what I like to call the âSteam rabbit holeâ. I have not taken an exact tally, but Steam currently has more games than Iâll ever realize â and that number gets bigger each month! This means that there are a...[Read More]
Asa gamer, do you ever yearn for a bit of whimsy in your life? Do you ever want to play a colourful, vivid game that cracks jokes all the time and isnât afraid to pull a fast one on you to keep you entertained? Naturally, such games do exist, but it is my personal belief that they are too few and far between. Iâm not jabbing titles that take themselves seriously, mind you, itâs just t...[Read More]
I’m a big fan of structure, and that’s one of the reasons I like games such as The Solus Project. For a while now, we’ve been getting sandbox titles that had little to no form – true to their name – and while this is fine for when you just want to have fun and ignore the loosely strewn together storyline, a gaming session in which a person is properly invested in whatever title he or she is playin...[Read More]
If someone asked me about my favourite intellectual properties Iâm positive Warhammer 40K would be one of the top three. My obsession with this universe goes into the early days of my gaming career, when Dark Crusade was the first RTS I really got into on PC â this made me look into the universe of Warhammer and read up on lore. In an instant, I was sold. Itâs not strange, then, that ...[Read More]
Iâve always had a soft spot for hero games. Whether itâs the more serious and grounded Spiderman games, or the more zany and whacky Saints Row 4; Iâve always admired the sheer amount of exhilaration and exploration presented to me in each game. Of course, from time to time thereâs a flop, but for the most part, itâs rare for me to play a game about superheroes and not have some mo...[Read More]
Simplistic, yet fun and creative! Â As some of our readers may know, in case youâre familiar with my previous features, Iâve got two basic archetypes by which I judge a game; optimism that degrades into general disinterest or disappointment, or anticipated dread that turns to joy when I find out a game is actually much better than it looks. With Human Fall Flat, this may be the first game Iâ...[Read More]
Over the last couple of weeks, Iâve spent a not-inconsequential amount of time playing Pillars of Eternity. Got a copy off GoG in an effort of expanding my DRM-free library for the hell of it, and I have to admit itâs an exquisite game indeed. A phenomenal RPG, even, with truckloads of content spread around the vast game world for the player to interact with. However, it misses a certain somet...[Read More]
It takes a special kind of game to pull off immersion properly. And Iâm not talking about the kind of immersion weâre served often enough in atmospheric games. No, Iâm thinking of VR-level stuff that makes you gasp in awe at just how amazingly well-realised the game world is. Some such titles I can name off the top of my head are The Long Dark and The Forest. Mind you, this isnât ab...[Read More]
Itâs not about killing; itâs about killing with style. This is the mantra behind Four Door Lemon Ltd.âs latest endeavor â 101 Ways to Die. Slated to release on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 soon this year, the game itself is a physics-based puzzle game with a bit of a bloody twist. Though, before I go into details about that particular twist, a bit of backstory. You are a new assistant to t...[Read More]
 I rarely get wrapped up in MMORPGs, and Iâve only dabbled in the major IPs, but Black Desert had me rethinking my decision. I mean, Fallout 4 is taking up a lot of my time recently, and I donât see how itâs any different than those dreaded âtime-drainsâ like World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies. I think my biggest hurdle is that these AAA titles usually get mediocre review scores, a...[Read More]