Team Fortress just went Free-to-Play. Forever. If you’ve never played the ultra-violent cartoon shooter before, now you have absolutely no reason not to. My Steam profile claims I’ve poured over 40 hours into this, but I know its at least double that in reality because I was there from the very first beta. I’ve seen it evolve from the beginning, with constant free updates which have added new maps, new weapons and yes, hats… it really is amazing how much Valve have added to the game over the years and now its available completely free. Also, Meet the Medic below.
Its some of the most fun multiplayer carnage you can have on PC, and I often dip into it to see what new stuff they’ve added from time to time. Its over four years old now and still looks fantastic, the graphics style being the most memorable thing about the entire game. Then there’s the characters, so full of personality and humour, it just doesn’t make sense that this is a multiplayer shooter.
To top off the news that the game is now completely free, they’ve released the latest ‘Meet the…’ video and its undoubtedly the longest and best one to date. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Medic…
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.
Fighter Ace was a free-to-play Second World War dogfighting game. You just logged in, spawned in a big sky with about 20 or 30 other people and shot the shit out of each other. It taught me that the Japanese Zero was one of the greatest fighter planes of WW2. Sure, it was lightly armoured and went down easily with just a few direct hits, but it was so manoeuvrable, so fast and agile that it could take on pretty much any other plane and come out on top.
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 […]
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.