I have a habit. It’s a fun habit, but it’s also a very, very bad habit. It’s buying almost every new game that comes out for the 360, regardless of whether it has a review or not, good or bad. This has cost me dearly in situations where I’ve bought numerous games before knowing anything about how good they may or may not be, only to be left massively disappointed (i.e. Lost Planet 2, Naughty Bear).
This is a habit (addiction?) I’ve been forced to give up, and not because somebody said I should, or because I had some kind of epiphany about how life could be so much more without games. It’s because I have no money…
I’m a chain-gamer, so when I completely finish a game I move right onto the next, and that usually requires a swipe of the old credit card at the local video game shop. But woe is me, as the worst has happened, and I’ve suddenly found myself in a position where funding for leisurely spending, a large portion of which is on video games, is not in a good place. So for at least a month I’m scrimping on all sorts of things, but the main pain comes from not having nearly as much new stuff to play when I’m done with the old.
Thankfully, we’ve all been graced in the last week or so with Alien Swarm for free, and Limbo for only 10 quid – two amazing deals that can hardly be beaten at a time when cash is mostly nowhere to be found.
I also have a fair few games on my Steam account (which I somehow got super-cheap during the summer sale) that I can try and squeeze some fun out of, despite the poor quality and lack-of-upgraded-ness of my PC. I’ve always managed to put up with minimal performance and lower graphics before, so I should be able to cope for now. I do however foresee some awesome upgrades in the near future, as long as I don’t spend all my money on a single 360 game…
Yuh, that’s a joke about how expensive they are.
September could be a bad month financially for me, what with so many potentially awesome games on their way onto retailers’ shelves. Mafia II, Kane & Lynch 2, Ruse, True Crime, and Dead Rising 2, to name but a few. But then there’s also Starcraft II which came out only yesterday, and I’m having to use all my mental strength to resist buying that right this second!
£34.99 for Starcraft II on PC does seem like a rather huge rip-off, considering the average cost of new games is usually around the lower end of £20+, does the gane really need to cost so much? On top of that, I’ve already heard some horror stories about the pain of setting the game up once you’ve bought it. Install this, update that, verify this, wait for that, over and over. I really look forward to playing the game, but I certainly don’t look forward to the ever-increasing amount of hassle you get these days with a lot of PC games.
I suppose I can’t really complain about the cost, mind, considering I’m usually happy to pay £39.99 for a new 360 game like a total chump.
Oh well – roll on, September!
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.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a depressing game. It’s epic and majestic, but undoubtedly bleak. Luckily, it also has some hilarious moments timed with comedic perfection, which somehow never feel out of place. It’s a credit to the writers, and the performances of the voice actors. These are my favourite funny moments of Expedition 33.
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.
It’s difficult to describe the levels of hype that I felt leading up to the release of Half Life 2, and I know I wasn’t alone. This was a generation-defining moment in gaming, the likes of which has never really been replicated, and likely never will, for multiple reasons. Not only was HL2 a huge leap forward for its artistic and technological design, it ushered in an entirely new way to buy games and changed the gaming landscape forever.
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