If you take the art director of Half Life 2, mixed him with one of the game designers from Deus Ex, and slapped them into the team who made Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, you apparently end up with the wonderful looking steampunkish game Dishonored. Its looking very good, and is quietly creeping up my anticipation-o-meter the more I see it.
The visual design does indeed remind me of Half Life 2 – the car being driven by the uppity snob in the trailer looks vaguely similar to a Combine truck to me, and of course those ominous stilted dudes are reminiscent of the good old strider. Then theres the whole oppressed citizens in a run-down city theme. As grim as it looks, its most definitely a world I want to explore.
Also, you will apparently be able to possess rats for sneaking purposes. Oh, and fish. How can I not be excited for this game?
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.
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.
Here’s another game that was introduced to me by my uncle Dave (who to this day, does the best impression of the monk from the first game out of anyone I know – “WOLOLOOOH!”) Anyway, I learned more history from playing Age of Empires 2 than I ever did in school. I experienced the brutal horde of Attila the Hun as he ravaged old Europe. I followed the rise of El Cid, and helped Ghengis Khan flood across Asia. I can’t remember much else actually, because my mind always turns to making a plague of Persian elephants to send at my enemies, crushing all of their puny houses and stamping their cities into the dust, mwhahaha! Ah man, it’s an absolute classic game, the first strategy game I ever played and thanks to the recent HD remake, is still a lot of fun even 18 years later.
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.