Remedy are out, and Rockstar are in. Old Max is out, and bald Max is in. The first gameplay footage of Max Payne 3 has been released, and you can see it below, along with some thoughts…
I don’t know, really. It just doesn’t feel right… Max Payne was always a hard boiled New York cop seeking revenge for his murdered family, and the setting and film-noir style presentation were just so iconic to this story, seeing Max all bald and running around sunny gangland territory shooting up thugs seems like a completely unnecessary change of pace. He is still shooting people though, which was always the best thing about the original games (bullet time, man). And they do at least seem to have the same voice actor, and the somber violin melody from Max Payne 2 gave me a nostalgic shiver.
It’s Rockstar, so I’m confident it’ll be well-made and fun to play. I just don’t expect it to be as good as Remedy’s original games.
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.
There’s not a lot I can say about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that hasn’t already been said, but here’s my take anyway. The game deservedly garnered a heap of attention when it came out for being a fantastic example of a JRPG, that happened to be made in France. Technically, ignoring the fact that the team includes a bunch of ex-Ubisoft veterans, it’s the debut title from developers Sandfall. And what a debut game it is.
I’ve played many versions of Mario Kart, first on the Snes at a friend’s house, followed by my own copy of the N64 version. The Nintendo DS edition got a lot of play during the various anime conventions that I attended between 2006 and 2011, where you could LAN it up via Bluetooth with anyone else in the vicinity. But the version I truly have the fondest memories of has to be Mario Kart Wii.