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.
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.
Don’t kill people. That’s the ARC’s job. Make no mistake, I ain’t no softie. Just coz I won’t attack you first, don’t mean I won’t defend meself from a rat bastard who likes the look of my backpack! The rustbelt is a volatile place. I’ve seen what it’s done to us. What it does to the mind. But we gotta stick together, fight for humanity, and focus our efforts where it truly matters – FOR SPERANZA!
I’ve got an enormous backlog to catch up with, so my gaming time has been pretty varied lately as I jump from one thing to another. I’m squeezing every spare moment I can in between work, life, and fatherhood duties, and enjoying some side-scrolling platform action, blasting zombies in one of the best remakes around, and scaling a literal mountain.
I don’t know many people who played Quantum Break, and nobody ever talks about it anymore, so it must have been rather forgettable for those who did. Even as I write this, two days after blasting my way to the end-credits of the 2016 bombastic time-travelling action romp, I am struggling to remember some of […]