I’m currently enjoying getting down and dirty with nature. Taming dinosaurs in Ark: Survival evolved is exciting and frustrating in equal measure. Exciting because I’m taming friggin dinosaurs. Frustrating because bigger dinosaurs keep eating them… And when I’m not playing that, I’m exploring the freezing mountains in Rise of the Tomb Raider – seriously, I have never felt so cold playing a videogame. It’s the way Lara hugs herself in the chill wind as the snow clings to her jacket. It’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve seen in a long time.
Ark: Survival Evolved
This game has so much potential. It’s taken over as my favourite survival game (previously held by the Arma 2 mod version of DayZ, which I have brilliantly fond memories of (haven’t played the standalone release though)). Take a huge tropical island setting, throw in over a hundred different types of animal and donosaurs, make them all tameable and add a good slice of base-building and you have Ark. It’s in Early Access on Steam right now, and is very playable. It’s also a bit of a graphics hog, which my nVidia 560 GTX can barely handle, but if you have something remotely newer, it’ll be fine.
I’ve clocked about 20 hours so far and have managed to tame a Dodo, a Dilophosaurus, a Parasaur, a Phiomia and even a Raptor. All of them are dead now, however. I seem to be barely capable of keeping them alive, and it’s horribly frustrating. This game would be wonderful with a bunch of friends, as the numerous YouTube videos prove. Seriously, look it up and watch in awe at some of the tribes out there with their fully self-sustaining castles with fertilised greenhouses and huge dinosaur pens. It’s incredible. And with constant updates, its only getting better.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
My good friend Steve recently had a spot of luck when he noticed Gamespot selling the Pc version for a stupidly marked down price. He kindly bought me a copy and I’ve been playing it for the last 2 days. It starts out a bit linear, to get you used to the controls but it doesn’t take long before you’re thrown into a bigger hub area, and set loose. While its not an open-world game, its game world feels refreshingly big and begging to be explored. Lara Croft has never looked better, the graphics are stunning. She also looks more like a real person – gone are the days of her exaggeratedly gigantic breasts. She moves with intricately detailed animation and is voiced with charm and grace by Camilla Luddington.
There’s animals to hunt, collectibles to find, puzzles to solve and yes, tombs to raid. The optional tombs are some of the best moments I’ve seen so far, requiring a bit of thought to solve and giving you a satisfying sense of accomplishment when you do. They also look really pretty. The only thing I’m finding a bit tedious is the hokey story. Something about an immortal prophet and some mystical mumbo jumbo. These games have always had that in them, and i’ve never really cared for it, but I don’t play these games for the story. I play them for the platforming, puzzle solving and environmental exploration. Very much enjoying this one so far.
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.
Format: Sega Mega Drive
Year: 1992
Another rare game in my long list of memories that include my brother, Sam, is Streets of Rage 2. It was the best in a trilogy of side scrolling beat-em-ups on the Sega Mega Drive. (Genesis in America). We would always play as the same 2 characters: I was Axel, and my brother would be Skate. He loved the agility and bombastic acrobatics that the tiny skater dude could pull off. Many of the boss fights would end with Sam leaping onto their necks and pummelling them in the back of the head. I liked Axel’s swinging flaming punch, and his multi-hit special combo. It’s a simple but satisfying game built around stylised hand to hand violence.
Now and then one can’t help climbing aboard the hype train. You work yourself up into a frothing frenzy in anticipation of some new game whose trailers and screenshots make it seem like the best…thing…EVER. That’s how I felt about Conker’s Bad Fur Day when I first read about it in N64 Magazine (before the internet butchered the magazine industry). They did several preview write-ups about it in the years before it was released, and it changed from being a cutesy 3D adventure, to merely looking like a cutesy 3D adventure plastered with a layer of adult filth. I couldn’t have been more excited to play it. Did it live up to my expectations? Hell yes.
Fighter Ace was a free-to-play Second World War dogfighting game. You just logged in, spawned in a big sky with about 20 or 30 other people and shot the shit out of each other. It taught me that the Japanese Zero was one of the greatest fighter planes of WW2. Sure, it was lightly armoured and went down easily with just a few direct hits, but it was so manoeuvrable, so fast and agile that it could take on pretty much any other plane and come out on top.
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