Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City has gone all action…
By Paul Blackburn
April 15, 2011
… and Leon Kennedy looks really shiny. There’s another Resident Evil game with a rather uninspired name on the way, and it looks like we’ll be playing it as a whole new cast of multi-lingual super-secret Umbrella soldiers – also they don’t seem very nice.
I’m honestly not sure what I think about the look of this new Resident Evil, but then again I was never sure what I thought about Resident Evil 5 either. It was a great coop experience, and there was a lot of fun to be had shooting zombies and other such things with a friend online or via split-screen, but it was definitely more action-based than fear-based, and unlike its classic fixed-position-camera predecessors, I wasn’t scared by it once.
While it’s clearly set in the original location of the series – Raccoon City – we’re going to be seeing it from the perspective of these brand new characters, who seem to have an interweaving story to that of Leon Kennedy’s in the time of Resident Evil 2. It kind of looks like they’re pushing even further in the action gameplay direction with this new game, too. However, at least it doesn’t appear to be all bright, sunny, day-time weather in this one:
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.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein introduced me to the world of PC gaming. I have my uncle Dave to thank for this. He used to play two games, Wolfenstein and Fighter Ace, and I loved going round his house because he had a gaming PC, curiously built by a company called Gateway… The PC was something so alien and awesome to me that it made my N64 seem like the toy it always was (I still love you, my 64). Wolfenstein became Enemy Territory, a free standalone multiplayer component, but it was the ‘original’ Return to Castle Wolfenstein that dragged me into PC gaming, and I’ve never looked back since.
Don’t kill people. That’s the ARC’s job. Make no mistake, I ain’t no softie. Just coz I won’t attack you first, don’t mean I won’t defend meself from a rat bastard who likes the look of my backpack! The rustbelt is a volatile place. I’ve seen what it’s done to us. What it does to the mind. But we gotta stick together, fight for humanity, and focus our efforts where it truly matters – FOR SPERANZA!
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.