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 lately. I’m squeezing every spare moment I can in between work, life, and fatherhood duties. Right now I’m enjoying some side-scrolling platform action, blasting zombies in one of the best remakes around, and scaling a literal mountain.
I played Resident Evil 4 waaay back in 2007 on the Nintendo Wii, using its infamous motion controls. It was brilliant back then, and I’m happy to report that Capcom’s recent remake of it is capturing the feel of its brutal, disgusting nightmare of a story really well. It looks gorgeous, as you’d expect from an RE Engine game – this is the same engine that the new Monster Hunter games are built in. Apparently it can render claustrophobic castle corridors and grotty rural villages just as good as the open plains and forests of the MH games.
Combat is brutal and cathartic, even if the enemies feel a bit bullet-spongey. Leon Kennedy moves slowly and deliberately, and blasting the Las Plaga zombies heads off with the variety of guns you get from the mysterious trader mostly feels great. Speaking of which, the trader has become extra-British, and spotting his signature purple flame brings joy every time, as you know you’re at a safe spot to hide for a moment with some good banter, as if he’s one of your mates down the pub.
I love the Prince of Persia games, and have in fact played nearly all of them to completion, which is a huge testament to their overall quality – there’s not a dud among them (even you, Warrior Within). In recent years, several new developers have had a go at returning the Prince to his 2D roots – 2024’s The Lost Crown was absolutely brilliant, despite its poor sales and tragic dissolution of the team behind it. And hot on its heels is another version, appropriately doing its own thing – The Rogue Prince of Persia.
It’s a roguelike (ah, I see what they did there) with meticulously detailed hand-drawn art and animations that feel directly inspired by its 3D ancestors. Somehow, they’ve managed to capture the sense of movement of wall-climbing and leaping over enemies’ heads to slash a sword down their backs from the old trilogy of 3D games, and make it work in 2D. The devs even admitted that this is very much intentional in this video. I’m only a few hours in, but I’m impressed so far. I’m yet to get past the first miniboss, but the challenge feels just right, and I can’t wait to see more.
I think this is the best climbing game ever made. Admittedly there isn’t that much competition, but Cairn manages to make the somewhat gimmicky idea of controlling each individual limb feel intuitive and elegant. This was a day 1 purchase for me, and I’m approximately 6 hours in so far, and loving it.
It’s one of those chill-but-challenging games you sink into after a long day’s work. You find a rhythm, put one hand and foot in front of the other, and navigate your way up a long series of vertical cliff faces. And it just keeps going, in one almost seamless level (give or take a few scripted cutscenes).
It’s also doing something I’ve yet to see in any other extreme sports games, which is to ask questions about its protagonist. Why climb? What sort of person needs to conquer mountains? What drives them? How do their loved ones feel about them risking their lives every day? Can we ever understand it, looking at them from the outside? Aava is the vessel all of these questions are aimed at, and as you climb, you get snippets of her reasoning and slowly learn more about her relationships with the people she knows, who are communicating with her via the helpful ‘climbot’ who accompanies you. It evokes the same sort of feelings as documentaries like Free Solo and 14 Peaks (both highly recommended too, coming from someone who doesn’t really know much about real life mountain climbing).
And she expresses the same frustrated noises I make every time I slip and fall! It’s really engaging, and I think I need to go play some more of it right now.
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.
One of my all-time favourite gaming memories is playing Haunting Ground with my mates at the flat in Baldock for 16 hours straight. It was me holding the controller for almost all of those 16 hours. It’s a bit obscure, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a survival horror game by Capcom, in which you play as a pretty little fragile girl called Fiona, who must escape from a huge labyrinthine castle. Oh, and you can’t fight. Your only option is to run away and hide from the nasty people that are out to get you. You do have a companion throughout though, the best dog in gaming, a white German Shepherd called Hewie.
Format: PC
Year: 2000
It may look clunky as hell thanks to the original Unreal engine, but Deus Ex was a pioneer in videogames because it gave the player so many choices to make. It resulted in one of the deepest gaming experiences of the time, because it went to great effort to show the consequences of those choices. The story was spread across many ‘hub’ levels, giving you total freedom to approach your objectives whichever way you wanted, aided by an RPG style upgrade tree that you invested in as you played. Wanna finish it without killing a single soul? That is entirely possible. Prefer to tool up with a rocket launcher and just murder your way to the end? Nothing could stop you. Your NPC allies would respond differently back in the Unatco base, depending on what you did out in the field. This level of responsiveness was unparalleled for a long time, to the point that even if you walked into the ladies toilets, your boss would scold you for it during the mission debrief later on. It was many little moments like that which made the game so memorable for me.
The following took place in 2012, in the beta version of the DayZ mod for ARMA 2. It recounts the story of how I survived the zombie apocalypse by eating 87 cans of baked beans.
Chernarus is not a welcoming place any more. The lush green fields are now infested with hordes of shambling undead. And if the zombies don’t kill you, other wanderers surely will. Being alone is risky, but trusting the wrong person could cost you your life. In this harsh new world, you won’t get far without friends.
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