X-COM was a really great game, and Hard West is flattered by the resemblance. But when it comes down to it, there is nowhere near as much genius in it as there is in Firaxis' predecessor. As a tactical shooter it's fine, if simple, and the fairly gentle system requirements and low price point bring it back to the table a little. Lacking in obvious flair and with sub-games that often do little to add anything to the game besides unnecessary management, the gunfights still manage to keep Hard West from being a failure.
The storyline of the campaign mode is sort of fun and playing a season with all of the ups and downs that brings is also fun, but for me I think most of the joy comes from the nostalgia, I'm afraid.
Rebel Galaxy is extremely 'aggressively priced', as I believe the marketing guys say. For the money, it's really the best you can do for space trading. It's fun, simple and engrossing, and if you're put off by Elite Dangerous' more-than-double price and you're not bothered by single-player only, Rebel Galaxy is really filling a niche that needed to be filled.
So OK. I know I'm supposed to be frothing at the mouth. I know that something I was really looking forward to was passed off to me in an unfinished, slapdash state, and if there'd been less in the way of public outcry Warner would have happily taken the money and run. But after all the grief, and all the misery, there's a really special game hidden here. A tightly-scripted, well-paced superhero simulator that captures the attention to detail that Gotham City deserves with care and respect. If you're still willing to give it another chance, I doubt you'll really be disappointed.
Then, once I realized that I'd been a numskull, I installed the DLC and tried again, playing with the new tourism and leisure districts, and building taxi ranks and bus lanes, and… well, once again I had a great time and felt that the DLC was a little light on content.
They're good at telling stories, these Frictional guys. They're good at building tension, and at using audio cues to stimulate fear. But in the end, I was put off by the inconvenient monsters. When fear is replaced by impatience, something is lost. This is something that Alien Isolation had very occasionally, and that completely ruined the 1999 PC game Aliens vs. Predator. When the monsters become a nuisance, and you're more worried about them for holding up your progress into the main plot than really terrifying you, it's hard to stay really scared.
It's these moment-to-moment planning decisions that really make Satellite Reign a game to recommend and to remember. Eventually, when you've researched the top-flight weapons and your soldier can stand toe-to-toe with entire squads while your hacker turns turrets against the security forces and the infiltrator moves unseen through swarms of alerted guards, you'll get the feeling that nothing can stand against you, and that you've earned every single ounce of your power. But in the early days, while you're scrambling to stay hidden from Dracogenics' henchmen, making the call to pull out with nothing more than a little more intelligence on the layout of an enemy compound to lick your wounds and rethink strategy for the next assault, something really special is happening. Strategy, being formulated in real-time. A surprisingly rare event for a real-time strategy game.
Just like the previous two games, Shadowrun: Hong Kong has stayed with me when I'm not playing it. The flawed, moody characters and the clever use of Asian magical traditions got into my head, and when it finished, I missed all of the main characters. It takes a pretty cool game to do that. For that intensity and depth to be maintained over a series of three games is pretty remarkable.
At the end of the day, this reminded me a great deal of Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island series of recent years. It's a modern take on a classic genre, heavily capitalising on a famous name and rich in character and humour, but ultimately built on a straightforward foundation short on real innovation or beauty. Still, it's been a while since we've seen a lot of these adventures, and this is the first chapter of five. The main characters are endearing enough that after a couple of chapters they might be able to carry the games more or less on their own merits, but less in the way of un-skippable animations (some of which you'll need to sit through a lot) and mid-game ambling would go a long way toward warming me up when the subsequent chapters arrive.
There's not a lot to separate Magicka 2 from its hallowed predecessor. But give it time. Paradox aren't ones to sit idly by, particularly when it's as popular a series as Magicka. And besides, as throwaway party-style fun with a deceptively complex core, it's a tried and tested formula. Like death-death-shield.
I'm still far from the end. I will check in with further thoughts as I progress, but at this point I can unhesitatingly recommend the Witcher III as yet another on the crammed top shelf of excellent RPGs we've seen in the past 18 months. Buy it, buy it, buy it.
At the end of the day, there are a few good ideas in what is obviously supposed to be a multiplayer-focused RTS, but there's just a lack of anything really imaginative, anything we've not seen before.
When they talk about games that stand apart from the crowd... well, Worlds of Magic is the crowd they're talking about.
The fantasy genre is always one of nostalgia for a world long gone, the vague, wistful ancestral memory of weary travelers and simple taverns, of brooding castles and dark-blooded wars. But also nostalgia for a real-life youth spent whispering about orcs at the back of geography class. Somehow, Pillars of Eternity captures this personal emotion with flair and empathy.
There I go again, swinging back the other way! The problem is this. I am a little upset at endless Ubisoft FIFA-esque annual updates that, also like FIFA, are very slight variations on a theme. But these games will never be wholly beige and uninteresting, because they're built on a tried and tested way of making you have fun. Sailing the seven seas with a crew of salty sea dogs, taking on a pair of angry French frigates is just fun. Sneaking through the bushes at a governors' soiree, then sneakily shooting one of his guards with a berserk dart and watching him slaughter all of his erstwhile comrades - that's always good for a giggle. You can feel the swagger when you first buy the captain's uniform and cut a dashing figure through the streets of the colonies. The weaving of historical fact and off-the-wall videogame fiction is engrossing and superbly crafted. So what that it's basically a game you've already played? That doesn't stop it being fun.
Colossal Order's stated goal is 'to let you build the city of your dreams', with the emphasis on everyone having unique needs and interests. Of course, their covert goal was to topple SimCity. In both cases, they've succeeded gloriously.
If this relatively obscure episode of history isn't your thing but you're jonesing for some Total War, of course, it shouldn't be too long until the incredible sounding Total War: Warhammer shows up. Apart from that, at least we know that Creative Assembly has a bright future making sci-fi survival horrors.
I have sort of enjoyed my time with Blackguards 2, although writing a review where all you really want to do is scream "IT'S THE SAME AS BLACKGUARDS!" has been a challenge. It really is a testament to the fine voice actors and tightly crafted combat above everything else, that even after two extremely similar games I'm still not staggeringly bored of it all. Slightly bored, perhaps, but not staggeringly.
There is a solid wargame here, as you'd expect from the Panzer guys at Slitherine. Warhammer fans will be able to lose themselves down the rabbit hole of unit loadouts and Armageddon pattern variants, tinkering with constructing the perfect battalion, and there's even a map editor bundled with the game (which I found to be a little more complex than it needed to be). At the moment, I can't help but feel that a full-price ticket is a little ambitious for a game that looks for the most part like it could be handled by a web browser, but once the price comes down a little it's a worthy gateway drug to the world of really crunchy wargames.
Maniacal mansioners, Leisure suit lounge lizards and grog-swilling pirates will have a fine time. Teenagers will probably be hopelessly confused. But as a stand-alone adventure, with all the nostalgia stripped away, it's still pretty good.