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Seditionis: Tower Defense reinvents while making love to the classics Seditionis harkens back to classic tower defense games while adding gripping new features—and we can't stop playing.
I’ll come right out and say it. Seditionis: Tower Defense is one of the best tower defense games on the market right now, which is a surprising feat considering it’s from a first time indie game developer in the form of one man. Any good tower defense game must be addictive and rewarding and abide by a few core tropes, but Junson Chan’s game rises above its peers by gloriously reinventing everything else. Yet loading up this game will take you back to a nostalgic past where tower defense dominated the internet and made the other genres hide in piss in pants terror. You see, the game builds on those…
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‘Carrion’ makes you actually feel like a monster Like Alien if you were the Xenomorph.
There’s something therapeutic about Carrion that belies its B-movie subject matter. Despite your role as horrifying Meat Monster, a mass of teeth and tendrils terrorizing unfortunate researchers, this ‘reverse horror story’ doesn’t just revel in its violence. Sometimes, it lets you drop the schadenfreude for a moment, and find a simple joy in taking ownership of its labyrinthine map. Carrion is not a complicated game. It is a simple if satisfying Metroidvania, its puzzles broken up by brief sections of combat marked out by either gruesome eviscerations or tantalizing opportunities for stealth. The star of its show is the player character, the aforementioned Meat Monster. On the surface a deeply…
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The ‘PC Engine Mini’ is a schmup fan’s fantasy This slice of gaming history can finally be enjoyed without hitting eBay and selling a kidney.
There’s something funny about how the modern trend of re-releasing old consoles can reflect something of what those machines were. The NES and SNES Classic were slick, packed full of great games, and flew off the shelves. My favourite thing about the Mega Drive mini, on the other hand, was getting hold of a set of non-functioning accessories to clip onto it: a 32X, a Mega-CD, and a Sonic & Knuckles cart. The Neo Geo Mini? Expensive, desirable, filled with brilliant games I’d never heard of. The Capcom Home Arcade takes the form of the Capcom logo, an aesthetic decision I found bizarre until realising it echoed seeing those same six letters on…
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‘Mafia III’ is a great racism simulator but a crappy game The n-word was rattled off at the frequency of a Tarantino film.
If you are willing to look past poor mechanics and lazy mission design, the premise of this game is definitely worth checking out. But overall, the game just isn’t that great. It follows protagonist Lincoln Clay, a biracial African-American, as he returns from Vietnam to the city of New Bordeaux (based on the real-world New Orleans) and resumes working for the black mob. The story operates as a classic revenge tale after Clay is double-crossed in the introductory mission and his friend is murdered. The story begins in such a captivating way but starts to get bogged down by repetitive gameplay. Mafia tells the story as a documentary, showing clips of characters talking in…
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Jim Sterling: seeking refunds for pile of garbage game is racism Less than a “walking simulator,” Virginia is a “watching simulator.”
To most people, a story-driven video game without any dialogue would be considered limiting. It would be even worse if said game had low-quality graphics, minimal gameplay, and replayability. To journalists who have sipped a few too many times from social justice’s chalice, however, such a game would be considered progressive and game-of-the-year material. Especially if the game’s narrative—what little of it there might be—revolves around social justice. Since gamers are the majority, it’s no surprise that the public feedback to the latest indie darling, Virginia, has been fairly negative. Most feel that the game held the promise of being a lot better than it actually was, but that the completely…
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No Man’s Sky is unbearably boring 18 quintillion planets and not a whole lot to do.
I really wanted to love No Man’s Sky. I was among those who hype overloaded at the 2014 E3 trailer, vowing to get a PS4 for the privilege of exploring a vast, fertile, and strange universe. Living out some kind Captain Kirk aspirational fantasy, with hints of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto. But now I’m bored. I’ve been playing since Tuesday and it’s been a total chore. I feel my hand autonomously pawing at the eject button, fumbling for the Overwatch disc. But I soldier on. Despite No Man’s Sky boasting over 18 quintillion planets, there’s basically only five repetitive things to do on each one. You scan plants and lifeforms to add to a database, find monoliths to…
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The No Man’s Sky leak is a darkly amusing outragefest A leaker’s early review dashed hopes for those who expected No Man’s Sky to be the gaming messiah.
No Man’s Sky fans, to put it lightly, have been quite spirited surrounding the release of the innovative space explorer. When the game’s creator, Sean Murray, previously announced delays, he was bombarded with death threats along with a Kotaku reporter who wrote about it. No Man’s Sky fans have projected ungodly levels of hype onto a game they knew little about, as the game appears to offer a completely unique procedurally generated gameplay experience, something extremely rare for major releases. And now with a little over a week before the game will finally be available to the hordes of rabid fans, leaked copies are creating all sorts of drama. More death threats, denial, a whole…
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‘Cobra Club’: an amazingly weird celebration of dick pics (NSFW) In Cobra Club you play a man stood in his bathroom taking pictures of his penis. It's deeper than you think.
In Cobra Club you play a man stood in his bathroom taking pictures of his penis. Mechanically, there’s not much more to it than that. You can apply different filters to your photos, zoom in, change your character’s skin color, and (in what is potentially the best slider ever featured in a game) adjust your character’s erection. However, as you take photos of yourself, chat windows start to appear. Other users of Cobra Club start conversations with you, asking whether you want to see their unbound trouser snake. They’ll send you pictures, you can comment on them, and send back some of your own. The game is all about questions…
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10 reasons Alien: Isolation is the greatest survival horror game ever made I really loved about this game. But I’m writing this with all the lights in my house on.
You might be wondering why I’m writing this with all the lights in my house on. Or why I take a break from writing after every few sentences to check that there’s nothing under my bed or in my wardrobe. Firstly, how can you see me? Secondly, I’m doing this because I just recently finished The Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation and am now afraid of the dark again. Having been severely burned by last years Aliens: Colonial Waste of Time, I was slightly nervous about this game. However, as it seemed to be going for a more Outlast/Amnesia approach to Survival Horror over the gung ho-ness that has become a…
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Hyrule Warriors is junk food gaming at its absolute finest Sometimes the very best kind of game is the one that doesn’t challenge you at all.
While all games exist for you to have fun, there’s often a whole lot more to it than that. Some games provide a mental challenge, some serve as a simulation of an activity you are otherwise unable to do, and recently many others strive to position you in an adrenaline loop that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Sometimes though, the very best kind of game is the one that doesn’t challenge you at all. These games exist purely to entertain, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Hyrule Warriors is a massive deviation from what you think when someone tells you they are playing a Zelda game, but…