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.
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.
I don’t get on with the Souls games at all, but I really wish that I did. For me, the combat was just a little too clunky and, oh, you know, fucking difficult.
Format: PS1 & PC
Release date: 1997
I’m not sure what to tell you about FF7. Simply put, it’s one of my all-time favourite games, and the hordes of fans it has makes me feel like a bit of a cliché to even include it in this feature. But I have to. It changed my life, I think. Before this, I had not played a game with such a deep and engaging story, an epic tale about a host of very likable characters, all unique and fleshed out with interesting back stories. It’s just wonderful.
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