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.
I was not a fan of Uncharted 3, but this new ad for Nathan Drake’s supposed final adventure is only 30 seconds long and somehow managed to tug my heartstrings… I wish I had a PS4.
It’s safe to say that Fumito Ueda’s third game was one of my most anticipated titles of the previous generation. Announced in 2009, I eagerly watched every gameplay trailer and read up every snippet of information I could. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus remain two of my most beloved games, and I found the idea of another game by the same studio a mouth-watering temptation. A multitude of delays and long periods of silence from both Sony and the developers led many to believe it would never see the light of day, not to mention the troubling news that Ueda himself had left the project due to creative differences with Sony. The game lingered in development hell for several years and its fate was uncertain. Ueda and his team remained with the project as consultants and the game eventually had a release date set for December 2016. My excitement rekindled and I wondered how it could ever live upto 7 years of anticipation. So, was it worth the wait?