The Devolver Bootleg collection is cute, and the more of the games included you’ve played, the more giggles you’ll get out of what is essentially a one note larf.
It’s definitely a different and interesting take on the genre, but ultimately I fear this will be a path less travelled by those after a stone cold JRPG classic.
After finishing with Druidstone, I found it interesting to think how much less of a game it might have been if its developers had gone through with early plans to make levels procedurally generated. While a more random, improvisational version of Druidstone might have appealed to my appetite for turn-based tactical games, and might – in fairness – have been more replayable, I suspect I would have enjoyed it less, and gotten bored before the end.
Draugen does a lot of tropes very well, but it does others in a tired way that garners side eye from me.
Iif you feel like switching your brain off for a bit and doing some serviceable mulching then….maybe? I feel like Eko Software had a chance to bring back some of that dread and foreboding to the Diablo formula that Diablo 3 did away with. Warhammer is baroque and silly but it’s also rich with detail and tragic heroes, and Chaosbane plays the whole thing a bit straight, storywise.
Vambrace has the art, sound and story direction of a top-flight RPG, bolted onto a badly designed roguelite.
Void Bastards is ultimately not more than the sum of the parts I outlined 1400 words ago, but it’s worth rummaging through all the same. Just like yer da said about the bins, when he finally found those Euros.
SteamWorld Quest isn’t going to be the next Slay the Spire, and to be honest, die hard Spire-ites will probably find its one-and-done story a bit, well, restricting. But for card novices (which I count myself one of), it’s still a real charmer, no matter how sluggish it might get in those early hours.
Ultimately, it’s the planets that make this game what it is. Worlds full of mysteries and anomalies. To me they are proof that there is still no substitute for handcrafting your virtual realms.
It’s a pity that the game fails to take advantage of these analogies and delve into their immense potential. Instead, it’s too fixated on traditional jump scares to embrace the twisted, palpitating gut of its story about a flawed protagonist and his struggles with inner demons.
At its heart, Pathologic 2 is a frustrating game. Ten times more interesting than your average immersive sim (probably the genre it belongs), yet hundreds of times less inviting.
Observation is clever, but it’s also astoundingly dumb.
Thea 2 is interesting in a ‘may you live in interesting times’ sense. An imperfect thing that I can’t help but feel affectionate towards.
It feels a bit eager at times, a UI that is maybe too minimal and trusting. If your scrolling comes to rest on one of these days for even a short while, it’ll launch right into that day. There’s no clicking to confirm. But you eventually get used to this, discerning the day by the drum beats that accompany each drag of the mouse wheel.
This is the game Surviving Mars should have been in the first place.
It’s the best Total War game, the best historical strategy game released so far this year, and its stories are so compelling I’m as excited to read about other people’s anecdotes as I am to create more of my own.
The parts I like far outweigh the parts I don’t. I’ve got my weirdo NPCs, my Ark hunting, my Whoopinkoffs and Dimbledicks. I’ve found every Ark, now, but I still plan on gambolling between side activities. I still want to explore, even though I wish I was exploring a world that had been less generically destroyed.
With that in mind (among other crimes) it would be easy to see him as the charlatan he is said to be by his enemies. But there are also moments that reveal a more complicated and conflicted man. In a short game full of haughty songs and jokes about willies, that’s an impressive achievement.
I’ve been very positive about A Plague Tale so far, and it is indeed a good game.
If you don’t mind button bashing through some brawls, just to see more of these good fellas solving bad problems with their strong fists and stern words, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is ready, once again, to get ridiculous.