Zeno Clash is on a sale over at Steam this weekend. The indie FPS melee brawler set in a tribal punk fantasy world features some of the most brutal and satisfying melee combat in any modern game. The tale it weaves is surprisingly charming too, featuring a host of weird characters and some gorgeous visual design. The developers, Team Ace, have a new game out soon too, and its about a giant rock bowling through time and smashing stuff up. Talk about a change of pace…
Built in the Source engine, Zeno Clash has the proud honour of being absolutely nothing like a Valve game. The locations you pass through are constantly stunning and I was really impressed with how much detail went into its world – for example, you won’t ever see a duplicate character, save for a few animal enemies. Almost every humanoid character you fight with is uniquely modeled, which is extremely rare for a game thats been built by such a small studio. It’s full of humour too, some of it deliciously twisted and dark. And I can’t praise the brutality of the melee combat enough – new games like Dead Island look disappointingly flimsy when it comes to FPS melee combat, so why is it a small indie team managed to get it perfect 3 years ago? Definitely check it out: for just under 3 quid, its a real bargain.
But if you’re curious about this rock bowling game, there’s a trailer below. It looks like marble madness crossed with a tower defense game full of the crazy physics destruction of a FlatOut race. It looks original, at least.
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.
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
The successor to Goldeneye, Perfect Dark improved every possible aspect of the classic shooter and created an original masterpiece. 4-player multiplayer game modes, with the option of adding 8 extra bots made matches frantic chaos and endless fun. The singleplayer was fantastic at the time, featuring such state-of-the-art features as realtime lighting, blood spatter effects, and fully voice acted cinematic cutscenes. It even let you play the story in local co-op with a mate – player 2 got to be Joanna Dark’s weird-looking blonde sister – the first game I ever encountered with a co-op singleplayer mode.
I was not a fan of Uncharted 3, but this new ad for Nathan Drake’s supposed final adventure is only 30 seconds long and somehow managed to tug my heartstrings… I wish I had a PS4.
Portal is one of those games that sprang out of nowhere, taking everyone by surprise and causing a storm all across the internet. With almost no hype, and zero expectations, it came bundled as a throwaway extra in The Orange Box, arguably the best game bundle ever made.
