I never actually played the original StarCraft, and so I’m not that excited about the ridiculously-long-awaited-and-hyped-to-shit sequel, but any follow-up to the game that became a national sport in South Korea is worthy of attention, especially since it’s out on Tuesday. That, and I’m a sucker for Blizzard’s truly masterful CGI animation, of which the newest trailer is mostly made up of.
Blizzard have apparantly banned any reviews of this being made public until the game is officially out. This has been happening a few times recently (APB did it last month). There’s definitely something dodgey about not allowing any reviews to be released before a game comes out. Since this is Blizzard, it’s a damn safe bet the game will be highly polished and is gonna sell by the bucketload, so theres very little risk of them losing much money due to a couple of negative reviews before its launch, but the principle of physically trying to control what critics have to say about a game always makes me a bit suspicious. Blizzard’s justification is due to their BattleNet service not going live until the game is out, so anyone with an early copy who attempts to play the game before then won’t be getting the genuine experience they would if they did have access to all the features of BattleNet (in fact, I don’t think anyone can play the game at all right now, until they flick the big red ‘on’ button). This makes sense to me, but is it naive to wonder why they couldn’t just open up the service a few days before, allowing reviewers and whatnot to try it? It’s pretty common practice to see a heap of reviews for a game out there on all the regular sites a few days (sometimes weeks) before a game comes out, and a lot of people rely on them to decide whether or not to buy a game in the first place.
But then this is Blizzard, and we all know they can do whatever the damn hell they like, so who’s gonna argue? That, and I’m positive StarCraft 2 is still going to be an awesome game. Drool at the lovely CGI below:
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.
Last night I finished Firewatch. It’s a first-person mystery game, being rudely dubbed a ‘walking simulator’ by some of the reviews I’ve seen elsewhere. While it’s true, the game has you fulfilling various tasks in a forest in which you navigate solely by hiking, that description completely ignores the beautifully told story and the reason you are there at all. Having completed it, I want to recommend it to everyone because it’s fantastic. I also would say that the less you know the better, so don’t read the rest of this review, just go and get it.
Format: Sega Mega Drive
Year: 1992
Another rare game in my long list of memories that include my brother, Sam, is Streets of Rage 2. It was the best in a trilogy of side scrolling beat-em-ups on the Sega Mega Drive. (Genesis in America). We would always play as the same 2 characters: I was Axel, and my brother would be Skate. He loved the agility and bombastic acrobatics that the tiny skater dude could pull off. Many of the boss fights would end with Sam leaping onto their necks and pummelling them in the back of the head. I liked Axel’s swinging flaming punch, and his multi-hit special combo. It’s a simple but satisfying game built around stylised hand to hand violence.
I recently played through Cult of the Lamb, a satirical take on the concept of running a demonic cult. It turns horrific things like sacrificial rituals, cannibalism and straight up gaslighting abuse into hilarious amusements by filtering everything through its cartoonish lens. You are a sheep, after all, and all your followers are sycophantic anthropomorphic […]
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