So Battlefield 3 is out soon, but we just got hold of the Vietnam expansion to Bad Company 2 and had a three hour blast on it last night. Hughie’s, flamethrowers and NAPALM. Oh yes.
Paul
I have Battlefield fever and I had a severe urge to shoot lots of (virtual) people online. Vietnam is an awesome expansion to BC2, but christ is it difficult.
Matt
We were unfortunate with the teams, not to mention being rather late to this particular party. We had no idea what any of the maps were or where to go, or what good guns were…but I’d forgotten how much raw fun you can have just by squadding up and going for it.
Paul
It’s certainly a different experience when you make an effort to sneak around, picking off targets carefully, instead of attempting to impersonate Rambo. It took me about 100 deaths to realize it wasn’t working.
Matt
Ha, yeah, running across open rice fields is a sure way to get sniped. Some people have godly skills with that thing. You haven’t lost your touch with flying choppers – mowing down Charlie with a mounted m60 on the side of a Hughie hasn’t been this much fun since the original Battlefield Vietnam…
Paul
It’s a pity the snipers you mentioned also had the sickening ability to shoot us out of the cockpit or passenger seats of the helicopters, regardless of how fast you’re flying.
Matt
At least you get a nice view as you fall to your death. This game is gorgeous. Hill 137 looked particularly spectacular – it put Black Ops Vietnam level to shame.
Paul
Was that the one with the incinerated jungle, scorched to oblivion by the napalm bombs? I was astonished by that level, the change from the first segment of lush green foliage to charred, black, burning hillsides had me looking around longer than I was fighting. It would explain my extremely poor performance.
Matt
There was a moment where we both crept around by the river, and looked up at the hill as two jets flew past. We literally stopped and both gawped at the horizon as it lit up in a bright flash, and smoke started to rise. The next section of the map was set in that utterly destroyed jungle and it looked amazing. Even if it wasn’t dynamic level changing, it did an awesome job of convincing me otherwise.
Paul
Absolutely. The new selection of weapons available in VIetnam have given us so much stuff to play with that I still haven’t even used it all – in fact I haven’t even driven a tank yet.
But the flamethrower. Oh god, the beautiful flames. Sneaking up on two enemy soldiers camping at the top of a hill and then burning them alive with a hose of firey liquid death was extremely satisfying, but also kind of.. horrific. (Note: I am not nor have I ever been an arsonist in real life)
Matt
It’s the best flamethrower since Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It’s safe to say we like Bad Company Vietnam. It’s the perfect way to kill the time between now and Battlefield 3.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
It’s safe to say that Fumito Ueda’s third game was one of my most anticipated titles of the previous generation. Announced in 2009, I eagerly watched every gameplay trailer and read up every snippet of information I could. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus remain two of my most beloved games, and I found the idea of another game by the same studio a mouth-watering temptation. A multitude of delays and long periods of silence from both Sony and the developers led many to believe it would never see the light of day, not to mention the troubling news that Ueda himself had left the project due to creative differences with Sony. The game lingered in development hell for several years and its fate was uncertain. Ueda and his team remained with the project as consultants and the game eventually had a release date set for December 2016. My excitement rekindled and I wondered how it could ever live upto 7 years of anticipation. So, was it worth the wait?
Hades is a great example of a coffee break game. You can play through a single run within 30 minutes, but if something comes up and you have to stop mid-run you can save and quit in whatever room you’re in and continue later. As the father of a toddler, I find this particularly appealing these days. I like to squeeze in a quick game during my baby girl’s nap time, and since I never know exactly how long she’s going to sleep for, I need games that can be played in short bursts. I’m starting this new mini-feature series with Hades, because you’re almost always guaranteed to have a good time, no matter how long you play for.
Doki Doki Literature Club has dug its way into my chest and ripped me apart over the last couple of nights. It’s a free visual novel game where you get to know a bunch of girls in an afterschool book club… except not really. It looks exactly like any other tropey Japanese dating sim type game, but what lurks underneath this cutesy exterior is something really quite sinister and thought-provoking. The game’s tagline does a good job of reminding you that all is not what it seems: “This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.”
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