Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Reviews
Sky-high ambition. Incredible visual design and attention to detail. Promise it couldn't possibly live up to. Shortcuts. Pride. A fall.
[Luftrausers] is such a little thing. I have to focus hard to remember it when it's not right there in front of me. It probably doesn't have much staying power. But when it's there, when the sound of machine-marking throbs through my speakers, when I drop like a stone into the ocean then rebound heroically skywards, with smoke pouring out my engines, it's everything that matters.
You should always judge a game by what it is and not by what it's not, but there's a gulf between the way in which I want to interact with mulitplayer first-person shooters and the manner in which Titanfall has been provided. It won't stop me playing, but it might stop me playing for as long. That's a shame.
I think there are two reasons I play strategy games. One is for complex campaigns requiring deep thought and careful planning, whether that be in Unity of Command or Supreme Commander. The other is for the relaxing power trip provided by swirling numbers of units, as in Eufloria or Galcon Fusion. Infested Planet sits somewhere between the two, a mid-point that's more satisfying in some ways for the greater sense of accomplishment it delivers and less satisfying in others for the frustration of never quite letting you relax.
In conclusion, then: Loadout is a riot. Loadout is free. It does not, however, provide a model that is conducive to me wanting to spend any money on it. The loadouts of the name are fun to make, but ultimately lack the variety they believe themselves to have. These things seems like a failure for a free to play game, but perhaps I am simply not its cash audience.
It's such a shame. I was hugely excited about Windforge, but it feels like a game that's not had enough critical eyes on it during development. It's awkward, it's unbalanced, and there's a sense of resignation in the exploration that saps the joy out of it.
Towerfall is a traditional pleasure, and it's easy to see why it's fun with friends or against the computer, because we've all played games like it before and can remember that they were fun. But there's an extra level of beauty and elegance in Towerfall's animations and mechanics, and it's those that make Towerfall special.
It's lovely to play a game that covers unexpected ground and Year Walk certainly does that, although the player character feels like a curator of folklore rather than an individual partaking in a personal spiritual experience.
Through it all, I laughed, I cried and I savoured the tension. At one point I paused the game and shook my head in frustration, faced with too much bad behaviour in too short a time, but I'm hooked and excited to see what comes next. Episode one ended with an ill-advised bang but episode two continues with a whimper. And that's as it should be.
It's an unusual, singular game that uses the normal tools of first-person shooter design (UDK) to make something plainly weird. I'd give it some kind of gold star for just being different.
For all of its speed, channelled from FPS games of the distant past, Tower Of Guns encourages thoughtful play. Despite the randomisation of enemies, pick-ups and areas, every distinct element that can appear is a known quantity, and that means the risks and possibilities are always obvious. But no matter how much experience you have, if you can't think fast enough – and, no insult intended, you probably can't – you'll still struggle to survive.
It is at once the South Park game we've been waiting for since the series started 17 years ago, and a cluster of stupid mistakes and bad balancing that we'd hoped Obsidian had put behind them.
It's just that it's really a game about the levels, about solving them as puzzles. They were good enough that I enjoyed the night I spent completing it, but I don't think they're good enough – in variety, in opportunity for personal expression – for me to want to go back and perfect all of them.
I like Strike Vector. I like it a great deal. And I recommend it if any of that stuff sounds like your cup of rocket fuel. I just suspect that I will soon forget it. And that's a true and terrible shame.
Lords of Shadow 2 is a shocking misfire.
Strider's not really the kind of game the cognoscenti get excited about. It won't be winning any awards or the subject of a load of thinkpieces, and that's because it's nothing more than a simple design executed near-flawlessly. It's limited in the same sense that a cat is limited by not being a dog. Strider is a great game and it gets me totally pumped; it looks incredible, sounds amazing, and is tonnes of fun. If I ruled the world this would be on billboards, and they would say very simply: STRIDER'S BACK.
For where it falls short, it far more often had me crouched in a shadow, heart racing, waiting for the perfect moment to dart past a guard's routine. It may be the fourth best Thief game, but it's a damned fine game in its own rights.
Aside from interface complaints, I would not really call Banished a bad game. I would also not call it a pleasant game.
When all's said and done, that's a fantastic way to take a break from reality for a couple of hours. For all my gripes, I'll be surprised if any other game this year makes me laugh as much as Jazzpunk did.
In terms of making people want to play because it looks beautiful and strange, rather than because it's an adventure game. Unfortunately the latter creates huge expectations, an albatross they hung around their own neck.