Chalgyr's Game Room
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Cities: Skylines has successfully stolen quite a few hours of my life and taught me that the urban architecture in my home city leaves a lot to be desired. With its ability to create your own city design right down to the roads and the great detail available on each of your denizens, Cities firmly rivals, and in my opinion passes SimCity. It’s the only game I have even bought computer parts specifically so I could play it. I had to install a heat sink the size of my fist into my computer to keep my core from becoming a puddle of useless metal. Totally worth it though because this game is one of my favorites of all time. However, I’m a firm believer that not everything should be brought over to console. Although the developers did an amazing job in converting a quintessential computer game for the couch warriors, it just doesn't work.
Everspace is a single-player space shooter that takes its primary gameplay influences from roguelike games, and rather than dungeon diving you are careening through stunning sectors of dangerous space. With a captivating story, massive 3D environments, fast-paced and brutal combat, Everspace does what few other titles could do, and that is make the incredibly frustrating and often cheaply challenging roguelike genre an interesting, gorgeous, and most importantly, an accessible genre to those gamers like me that are put off by roguelikes. Everspace, now fully released on Xbox One, is easily one of the best games of the year.
Thea: The Awakening is a mishmash of different genres that could have come out feeling jumbled and confused. However, some smart design choices allows Thea to be something bigger and better than the sum of its parts and brings its interesting experience over from PC to console rather successfully.
The Town of Light is a fascinating if unsettling story that is seen through the eyes of a sixteen year old girl. The visual style is unique if not fantastic, with a thick atmosphere that is held back by limited gameplay. This is an adventure game that can fall into the walking simulator category for the most part, which allows you to explore - but at a pace that is going to be too slow for some gamers. There is some payoff here however, for the patient who are willing to survive not just the tale, but some technical challenges along the way as well.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy - Episode 2: Under Pressure continues what the first episode began, putting together an interesting tale about a group of misfits who are as often their own worst enemies as they are best friends to one another. Still, the quirky but lovable collection of characters helps to carry what has been only an average story so far, while demonstrating that there is plenty of potential to be had here in the upcoming chapters.
The last episode in almost every Telltale Game winds up being the best in the series, but The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier Episode 5: From The Gallows continues the trends we saw throughout the entire New Frontier series. For better or worse, this was a very consistent five episode arc that had very few highs or lows, and simply delivered a good but not great tale in the Walking Dead universe.
In all honesty I am not sure where to start with Victor Vran. Back in July 2015 Pierre-Yves scored it well and said quite a bit that remains true nearly two years later. Victor Vran is an excellent hack-and-slash action RPG set in a Van Helsing-esque Victorian-era fictional world that has you playing the role of a Hunter and carries you through a number of sprawling dungeons full of spiders, skeletons, specters, and everything in between. Even two years after the original launch the magic of Victor Vran, while familiar, is still present.
Everyone thinks that being royalty is easy. Sit on a throne, yay or nay the missives that cross your desk. You know... be the boss and have your minions, errr advisers, take care of the rest. In some cases everyone may have been right. In other cases? Strap in for a debt-inspired adventure framed around when royalty came back to claim land that was theirs. Let's just say that there was a freaking huge bill attached to it and not paying it off is not an option!
If Nox and Magicka had a baby, Mages of Mystralia would be it. Fun, easy to get into, it won’t take long before you are swinging magic like a pro as you guide Zia on her adventure, crafted by Ed Greenwood and the team from Borealys Games from Montreal.
Cladun Returns is exactly what the series needed in order to make a successful comeback. Originally for the PSP, this newest entry is releasing for both the newer PlayStation handheld as well as the big box that sits in your living room. Conceptually Cladun hasn't changed all that much, as its scope still aims for small stages that are designed to be done in a minute or less. That is the core concept, at least in theory. In actuality Cladun is anything but small, with tremendous amounts of content that provide considerable replay value as you simultaneously grind for experience and tackle challenges within each stage in under the target time.
Dark Rose Valkyrie manages to straddle that difficult balances between familiar and fresh, introducing new ideas while still remaining approachable to fans of the JRPG genre. There are elements of repetitive grinding here, something I personally have no problem with and genre fans will no doubt enjoy as well. That being said, the pace of Dark Rose Valkyrie is a slow burning one that is unlikely to bring new fans to the JRPG genre.
Pox Nora is one of those titles that is really hard to describe in a few sentences, because it draws from a handful of different gaming genres and manages to blend them into something that as a whole is rather unique. Having been out on PC for a few years now, Pox Nora makes its way to consoles and while it does show some of its age, the overall strategy behind the engine still works pretty well.
It is a fantastic time to be a fighting fan these days, and perhaps no game epitomizes that more than Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2. Without a doubt, there is no better 2D fighting game on the market right now. I have covered numerous Guilty Gear titles over the years, and time and again I come away impressed with the amazing visuals, fast action and surprisingly deep combat mechanics. Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2 is easily the best of an outstanding bunch. Even referring to it as a 2D fighting game feels just a bit off, with the 2.5D visuals. Mind you, this is not a truly 3D fighter like Tekken, but the gorgeous visuals still move about the field of play in interesting ways that really highlight just how breathtaking the graphics are. The animations are buttery smooth, with tons of color, detail and movement both in the fighters at the forefront of the action and in the imaginative background environments.
Seasons After Fall has been out for some time on the PC and is only recently made its way over to the consoles. Being woken up by a soft female voice, you'll be taking control of "the seed" as it possesses a nearby fox in order to traverse the lengths and depths of the forest in order to perform the ritual of the seasons.
Narcosis benefits from a unique environment and some really solid writing, though a short campaign and a story that loses steam detract from the overall experience. In the end, Narcosis winds up being decent, but not as great as it could have been.
When I first caught wind of The Surge a year or so ago I was immediately intrigued; after all Deck13 are the minds behind the success Souls-like pseudo-clone, Lords of the Fallen. Returning to the difficult twisted-dungeon crawling action-RPG genre, Deck13 brings us The Surge, a title steeped in high science fiction and it works. While I am a huge sucker for GrimDark fantasy of the Dark Souls games, the High Fantasy of Lords of the Fallen , the Cthulhu-esque setting of Bloodborne, or the Edo Period-esque world of Nioh, taking that same type of gameplay and placing it in a hard science fiction setting had my eyes alight with a ravening desire to play. After what seems to be an eternity, The Surge has released and goes to show that From Software and Team Ninja are not the only two that can do a punishingly good action-RPG.
The original Outlast was effective for a variety of reasons, from its excellent use of lighting and sound design to a genuinely creepy setting and story. The sequel title tries to ramp things up by making the story even more twisted, and the overall experience is still a solid one, if it has not really evolved much from its predecessor.
Birthdays the Beginning is a really challenging game to describe in just a few sentences. It blends some genres and will undoubtedly be a divisive title as it is a slow burn that often provides more of a passive experience than an active one. The thing is - I find myself enjoying the time spent with it more often than not, despite some of its flaws.
Samurai Warriors 4 was a great entry into the core vein of the series. Samurai Warriors 4-II took things a step further with some slight modifications to the experience both in terms of gameplay and narrative approach as it focused more on the people than the Dynasties that they fought for. Building further on the ideas presented in 4-II, Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada finds a balance of both while also improving upon the gameplay for possibly the best Samurai Warriors entry yet.
Operation Babel is a sequel to Operation Abyss, and I'm not sure whether I'm pleased or disappointed, considering everything I loved about Operation Abyss is back. But so is everything I hated, too.