Wow, this is a nice surprise! Valve just announced that on Monday we’ll be getting a new game – for free! Alien Swarm was originally a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, and it was bloody fantastic. Featuring 4 player co-op, it was a top-down 3rd person shooter, in which teamwork was the only way to survive through the campaign. As the title suggests, the meat of the game was in fending off waves of nasty beasties with sharp claws, but there were also objectives to complete and a story to fight your way through. I have fond memories of being scared shitless trying to hack through a door while my friends shouted “they’re coming! oh god theres THOUSANDS!” down their mic’s. Trailer below.
It was really tense in places and had a very unsettling atmosphere. I can’t believe Valve haven’t said anything about this sooner (they hired the original mod team 2 years ago!) and I can’t believe they’re gonna give it away for free. They deserve a hug.
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’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.
The latest trailer for Dune Part Three just dropped. It looks rather splendid.
Beyond: Two Souls is a paranormal action thriller starring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. You’d be forgiven for assuming it’s a Hollywood film based on that description, but it is in fact the latest game from Quantic Dream, the studio behind the equally cinematic Heavy Rain. It’s tempting to compare the two, but Beyond is a different experience, opting to tell a linear story with fewer choices and consequences. As a big fan of Heavy Rain’s dynamic storytelling approach, I expected to be disappointed but as soon as I started playing I realised what writer and director David Cage was trying to achieve and felt satisfied to go along for the ride. Because what a ride it is…
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