I downloaded the Bulletstorm demo the other day and had a quick run through, because I was certain it was going to be awesome fun. With phrases like “dick-tits!” and “son of a dick!” uttered by the NPCs every now and then, how on Earth could it not be fun?
Whipping people into the air with an electric slow-motion inducing whip, kicking them in the face and/or crotch, shooting them in the face and/or crotch, and firing bizarre weapons such as two grenades attached to a small chain that wraps around any part of someones body (like the face and/or… leg) before it then explodes them into bloody chunks of limbs and other such important body parts, has never been appeared to be quite such mindless gory fun since the sticky grenades and assault rifle mounted chainsaws of Gears of War 2.
Though you only get three weapons in the demo (five if you include the whip and mega-tough foot you kick with) each of them has some kind of insane alternate attack as well. For example, the bog-standard assault rifle shoots your average, everyday bullets – but click the alt-fire button, and suddenly you will be ready to fire a red-hot rod of steel that disintegrates your enemies. Take the typical handgun weapon, hit the secondary fire mode, and suddenly rather than ordinary lead, you will fire an exploding flare that sets fire to everyone it explodes next to.
The whole point of the game is being sold as ‘killing with skill’, and from my experience of the game, and after watching trailers, you are simply expected to put together the most creative, absurd, gory, painful looking kills known to man. Whether it means strangling a man with your grenade chain weapon, whipping him into the air with your electric whip, and the kicking him crotch first into a wall of spikes, only to be impaled a second before he explodes everywhere into nasty bits of human remains, or any of the other countless ways to destroy your enemies, this game seems like it’s going to be a complete and utter brain-fuck, head-blast – and it’s definitely going to be a day-1 purchase for me.
Watch the trailer, it’s awesome:
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.
Years: 1996 – 2003
To this day, the N64 holds my fondest gaming memories on a console. The PC may have stolen my heart eventually, but I’ll never forget the fun of my childhood, playing multiplayer games on my N64 with a bunch of mates after school, and during sleepovers.
The successor to Goldeneye, Perfect Dark improved every possible aspect of the classic shooter and created an original masterpiece. 4-player multiplayer game modes, with the option of adding 8 extra bots made matches frantic chaos and endless fun. The singleplayer was fantastic at the time, featuring such state-of-the-art features as realtime lighting, blood spatter effects, and fully voice acted cinematic cutscenes. It even let you play the story in local co-op with a mate – player 2 got to be Joanna Dark’s weird-looking blonde sister – the first game I ever encountered with a co-op singleplayer mode.
You might have heard of Pokémon. I can’t quite believe that date. 1996!? Holy crap. 21 years ago, apparently, I got well into this strange Japanese game about collecting made-up animals, stuffing them into balls and training them to fight each other.
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