Rise of the Triad is one of those success stories that just don't happen enough in the gaming industry. Essentially a fan game, it was created by people who loved the original Rise of the Triad (released in 1994), people from across the world who worked from their homes, put money in just for the love of the project.
Shadowrun's last appearance in video game form wasn't that pretty, leaving fans disappointed that Microsoft decided to turn their cyberpunk, urban fantasy pulp RPG into a multiplayer shooter. Thankfully, the mastermind behind the franchise, Jordan Weisman, headed to Kickstarter in order to fund a project designed to take the series back to its roots: Shadowrun Returns.
Prehistorik, when it was originally released back in 1992, got decent enough reviews and something of a following. What's interesting is how quickly it aged, though. Reviews from 1994 spoke of it as if it was an old fashioned retro game, a game that had aged beyond playability.
Nicolas Eymerich, the main character of The Inquisitor, is not a nice man. While the likes of Guybrush Threepwood and Eric Idle's Rincewind kept us playing with their fish-out-of-water optimism, Nicolas has already seen it all. He probably yelled at it as well. He does a lot of that. He's a very angry man. And while I can't help but think that the developers hoped his anger and intelligence might inspire ...
Releasing games in chunks similar to a TV show seems to be a growing trend among developers, thanks in part to the success of Telltale's The Walking Dead. German developer KING Art, notable for their award-winning title The Book of Unwritten Tales, has opted to go for the episodic route with their latest adventure game, The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. This first chapter sets the stage for their throwback ...
Mind Games is a DLC that adds a slew of new content to Sword of the Stars: The Pit. It includes new levels, new weapons, new items, and new enemies. But, the most exciting addition is the psionic powers, along with 2 new classes: the ranger and the psion.
You are the last hope for mankind as a deadly plague is killing your world. Your mission is to travel deep into an alien facility that may or may not have the necessary resources to create a cure. This place is called The Pit and all who have entered have never returned. Can you survive the dangers that lurk within, or will death take you?
The combat in Dark sucks. By extension, this means almost all of Dark sucks, as it's built, by and large, around this idea of combat. You see, it's a little known fact that vampires can only clumsily walk up to enemies, bash them over the head or suck their blood, making loud slurping noises like granny at Christmas and alert everybody within a five mile radius.
Pester is a top-scrolling shoot 'em up where you fly your ship against tons of enemy fighters, dodging an occasionally absurd amount of enemy fire, grabbing power-ups and wiping out as much alien scum as you can before you lose all your lives. It's as simple a concept as it ever was, with the arrow buttons controlling your movement.
While not without its hangups, Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition is a solid fighter that takes the franchise back to its roots while pushing it forward at the same time. The fantastic campaign, combos that require more skill than luck and clever new additions not only make this one of the best Mortal Kombats in years, but it's also one of the best fighters on PC.
Final Fantasy VII is a classic. Its story, its score, its mechanics - for many this was the game that defined what RPGs should be. With another re-release, this time on Steam, Square Enix proves time is no barrier to a decent game, although a little polish might serve to get rid of the dust.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is perhaps Sierra's most notorious adventure game. While it's not as crafted as their later work, creator Al Lowe managed to make it and its sequels cult classics in the eyes of the many that played the series of adventure titles released in the late 1980s and throughout the '90s.
I love when great games are born from mods. Take Day Z for example, originally a mod for Arma II and is now getting its own standalone title because of its popularity. Cry of Fear is a mod of Half Life 1 but, unlike Day Z, it has its own complete style. What I mean by that is Team Psykskallar, the developers of the game, only used the Half Life source engine and basic code to make Cry of Fear. Everything else in ...
It seems like every game they release these days calls itself a 'survival' game. How many of them actually are? To me, if you are calling a game a survival game, that implies consequence. If you are playing a game and the only consequence of failing to survive is that you have to go back to the last checkpoint, then what you are playing is not a true survival game, in my opinion. I can say one thing with ...
High Moon Studios, most notable for their Transformers titles, have taken it upon themselves to finally give Deadpool, Marvel's infamous antihero, a starring role in his very own video game. It's a game that certainly captures the redeeming (and some not so redeeming) qualities of the crazed mercenary, but suffers from design decisions that, while heavy on “brakkabrakka!”, are dated and lack style. Somebody ...
While I've thoroughly enjoyed playing Borderlands 2 like a fiend the last ten months, I never found myself to be fully satisfied with the game. Sure, it feels great to get all the uber-rare weapons and mods and take on all the raid bosses and whatnot - I'm talking about emotionally: if there's one way Borderlands 2 disappointed me, it was how it mostly wasted its opportunity at creating a resonant narrative: ...
Knights of Pen and Paper is a game designed to take you back to a time when a group of likely slightly smelly individuals would sit around a table, getting engrossed in a story of their own creation. By lovingly combining table top RPG with the gameplay devices of late eighties/early nineties, Behold Studios have created a game that is both nostalgic and fresh, seriously fun and, at times, frustratingly true to ...
Each and every year sees the release of dozens of sports management simulators, and the vast majority of them are extremely niche. While the likes of Football Manager destroys millions of man hours each year, similar games are often completely overlooked, panned or even mocked for their apparent lack of interactivity or their place in the sports hierarchy.
Taking cues from Portal, 3AM Games' debut title is one of the many physics-based puzzlers that have been emerging as of late. Initially conceived on Kickstarter, Magrunner: Dark Pulse uses magnetism as its core game mechanic and has a heavy focus on narrative. Regrettably, this ambitious project is held back by some pesky flaws.
With light beams shimmering around sails, and the deck glistening with a mixture of rain of seawater, the opening gameplay of Jack Keane 2 is a more cinematic adventure than you’d expect from point and clicks. You might be fooled into thinking you’re playing a genre where the main mechanic isn’t clicking randomly on everything in sight.
The Dracula franchise started as a PS1 game back in 1999 and a mere three sequels have been released since, with each subsquential title being made by a different developer each time. This time it's the turn of developers Microids to try breath some life back into a dying franchise. The Bram Stoker story of Dracula should be excellent material for a pretty good video game. Blood-sucking vampires, gothic fantasy ...
Sonic After the Sequel is a fan made retro-inspired Sonic game set between Sonic 2 and 3 that was released as a free download this week. It's not a hack or a rebuild of something SEGA decided to ditch, but a full game designed and made from scratch, with new levels, new opponents, new obstacles and new music. If you didn't know much about Sonic history, you'd be forgiven for thinking this game is some long ...
As a manly man, I like my games to be very manly. But every now and then I'll set aside my lumberjack simulators to play something on the girly side. Among the girliest of games was American McGee's Alice which came out as a PC exclusive over ten years ago. After a decade of fans demanding more, Electronic Arts finally relented and released the much-anticipated sequel. That was two years ago, when fan ...
Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is a game by Spicy Horse, originally released as a web browser title and now available for early purchase as a downloadable on Steam. It's still in development, with new features on the way over the next few months, so this probably isn't the last time we'll take a sojourn into historic Japan. An action-RPG of sorts, Akaneiro's beautiful art style covers limited, repetitive gameplay ...
Since releasing Title Bout Championship Boxing 2.5 back in 2008, the boxing simulation series has laid dormant, as Out of the Park Developments shifted their focus full-time to their baseball management sim, finally selling it to frequent collaborator studio P.I.S.D. Ltd. back in May. Hand in hand with that news came word that the long-awaited Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013 would be released - and it ...
Facepalm Games is a small developer that's had some buzz surrounding them ever since they debuted The Swapper a couple of years ago. Since then, the game has received plenty of accolades and awards in the indie scene, and those that have heard of the game have been anticipating its full release.
How can God be omnipotent and benevolent yet the world be filled with constant war and unending suffering? Perhaps there is a greater god out there who wants nothing more than to sit back and watch as humanity wages meaningless conflict just for the amusement of a callous divine being! That's basically the premise behind Skyward Collapse, a new turn-based strategy game from Arcen Games in which players control ...
Back in the days when 64 kilobytes of RAM was impressive, there was the Commodore 64. Released in August 1982 (with a price tag of $595), the Commodore 64 brought 16 colors, three-channel sound, and it's iconic blue start up screen to American households, and quickly dominated the home gaming market with titles like Last Ninja 2, Maniac Mansion, and Sid Meir's Pirates! (plus it had awesome peripherals like the ...
Fez was a long time coming, and even longer if you didn't own an PC. Although it was discussed, at length for many years, legal and personal problems constantly delayed the original 360 version and Fish's outspoken relationship with gamers and with the industry at large kept him in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Despite that, Fez was released to high praise and has sold incredibly well.
For many, science is frightening. For all of the wonderful and amazing things it's capable of, numerous people fear that in the wrong hands science can, and will, be used for evil. To be sure, this has happened before, and since humans are skeptical by nature, it's no surprise a lot of us feel this way. It's these worries that are the reason why science fiction like Remember Me exists. The very thought that a ...
