Quantum Break [official site] has finally received a proper PC release via Steam (although sadly only Steam so far), rather than the ridiculous Windows Store. (A store that hides where it installs games on your PC, which isn’t something you’ll want with a 70GB game!) I’ve played it through for the very first time this week, and can tell you wot I think of this time travelling multimedia caper.
Alice and Pip have been off wandering their way through digital worlds from Proteus to Sacramento and are now hobbling towards a shared definition of a walking simulator. Find out what conclusions they’ve reached and why their definition categorically does not include Dear Esther!
Pip: Alice, when I asked you to recommend me your favourite walking simulators so I could go on some digital expeditions what would you say were your criteria?
Alice: That… they surfaced readily in this trash heap of a memory? Which meant they struck me for some reason. I think I picked walking simulators with a spread of form and tone, all quite differently but all games where all you can do is walk around. Some fun! Some colourful! Some spooky! Some so linear they’re literally on rails.
Congratulations, you’ve made it through September, the month that swiftly dashed our hopes of getting a relatively flawless Bioshock Remastered collection but then almost made up for it with a fairly decent PC version of Forza Horizon 3 and an intensely bizarre trailer for Nidhogg 2. It also gave us a bunch of the lovely things you see below you in this very post, so let’s cut to the chase and take a look at the past week’s best deals, shall we?
Endless Space 2 is warping into Steam Early Access next week, but since I’m not a particularly patient intergalactic conqueror, I got my hands on it a wee bit early. Already, I’ve gobbled up countless star systems and found myself in plenty of scraps with space-faring ne’er-do-wells. Last night, I gave my entire empire pets. This morning, I harvested the life-force of a planet full of peaceful aliens.
In the 100 turns on offer, there are already a lot of diversions and meaty choices to chew your lip over, and it makes for a compelling glimpse of the bigger picture.
We talked about Burly Men At Sea‘s [official site] absolutely charming art and animation at length yesterday, but I wanted to make sure we also covered how the game is to play. Can the experience of heading out to sea with the hopes of filling the empty-at-first chart match the strength of the aesthetic? With that in mind, I set sail for adventure! Here’s Wot I Think:
I used to record a podcast, at the end of which we’d take questions submitted by listeners. Somewhere early on we were asked the question, “What game does everyone else seem to like, that you wanted and tried to like, but bounced off?” We then spent the next two years ignoring the question as it was submitted again and again, by people who presumably did not know we’d already answered it.
If it’s a popular question to ask, maybe you’ve all got answers. So I’m asking: what game does everyone else seem to like, that you wanted and tried to like, but bounced off?
Dishonored 2‘s fourth mission is supposedly about infiltrating the home of Kirin Jindosh, a sadistic inventor who must be bumped off or “neutralised” before he unleashes an army of automatons upon the world. But what you’re really doing in the Clockwork Mansion is invading a brain. Having already seen excerpts from a developer playthrough, I had a sense that the building’s rearrangeable mechanical layouts might reflect the character of its architect, much as Bioshock and Portal’s labyrinths do GlaDOS and Andrew Ryan. I was unprepared, however, for how extravagantly Jindosh’s neuroses infest the place, or for how cruel it feels to slip through the cracks in his amazing creation – past the velvet drapes, beneath the lacquered facades and into the whirring schematics of his subconsciousness.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Vietnam wargames that feel like just like WW2 wargames but with helicopters and more trees, don’t last long on my hard drive, especially now I own Johan Nagel’s mesmerising Vietnam ’65. … [visit site to read more]
Former Failbetter Games creative director Alexis Kennedy is hoping to release his Cultist Simulator [official site] around Halloween next year, he’s said. Since leaving the Sunless Sea and Fallen London studio, he’s signed up for gigs including writing on Stellaris and for BioWare, but bless ‘im he can’t resist the call of unspeakable horrors from beyond the stars. Cultist Simulator is a singleplayer digital board game about dreams and hints of dark gods, rituals, research, recruitment, and slowly losing your grip on anything resembling a normal human life. Always a splendid idea, that.
I’m glad Strategic Command 3’s camera is a tad myopic. Not being able to see the Panzers parked in Parliament Square… the SS Sturmgrenadiers marching down The Mall… Mosley and Hitler shaking hands on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, means I can push north towards unconquered Scotland with a spring in my goose-step. … [visit site to read more]
Amazon have announced three PC games being made by their own games studio: a multiplayer sandbox world, a MOBA-ish 4v4 mythological murdersport, and some sort of class-based Battle Royale ’em up. That sandbox ’em up sounds like it might be interesting, at least. As Amazon also owns Twitch, all three games have bits to entertain livestream viewers or let them fiddle with what’s going on. Let’s look at New World, Breakaway [official site], and Crucible in decreasing order of interestingness.
GIANT MACHINES!
HONKING GREAT HONKERS RUMBLING TO A PC NEAR YOU
MEGA-MINERS! DONKING DUMPERS!
DEVOUR MOUNTAINS! SCHLEP SPACE SHUTTLES! DEMOLISH DEMOLISH DEMOLISH!
G I A N T M A C H I N E S
