So after writing about buying Assassin’s Creed: Unity all the way back in March, I’ve finally gotten around to playing it. As I’ve mentioned I bought this even though I’m pretty burned out on the formula because I couldn’t resist the idea of playing through a map of Paris. As it turned out, I really am very bored of the basic gameplay loop but I enjoyed it anyway due to the map and appreciated most of the mechanics updates.
This one was a strong recommendation by a Broken Forum member who is absolutely insane about space-themed games. Its developer is the small and independent Soldak Entertainment. I’ve never played any of their games but they made a name for themselves a few years back with their action RPGs set on a procedurally generated maps. The really big deal however was that unlike traditional RPGs in which quest givers are content to wait around forever for the player to get around to doing them, in these games the world moves on even while the player does something else and quests can become irrelevant. There may even be other agents moving about the game world doing the quests if the player doesn’t get around to them in a timely manner.
So obviously people are already playing the sequel but I’ve only just got around to playing this first title despite having owned it for a while. To tell the truth, I was rather surprised by how quickly the next one came out since this one was only released last year. Apparently it’s more of a standalone expansion than a sequel so playing this one right now is still okay. I had held off on playing this for so long because I’m still feeling burned out on the Total War formula. Back in the heyday I was one of those who thought that this property was a natural fit for this style of video game but now that it’s here I find that even the pausable real-time gameplay is a bit much for me.
Once again I find myself playing a game just when its sequel is coming out. It’s debatable whether or not this game was fully completed when development on it stopped due to some kind of dispute between the developer and the publisher. Since then they’ve patched things up and are now about to release the sequel but this version hasn’t been updated since. Anyway the tutorials are certainly insufficient and I found it impossible to understand what you’re supposed to do without referring to a fan-made guide online. But content-wise, I think this game is more than adequate and can provides many hours of gameplay provided you are patient enough.
Like everyone else I played Duke Nukem 3D back in the day but for some reason or other never got around to playing the original Shadow Warrior. I didn’t play the reboot either but noticed when it was released for free and thought I’d give it a shot when I saw a friend of mine playing the sequel on Steam. I had thought it to be a fairly light game I could slot in between more hefty ones but it turned out to have substantial content and was a more difficult action game than I’m used to these days.
This looks like a tiny, simple game that seems like it should belong more on a phone than a PC but I heard about it on Broken Forum and wasn’t disappointed at all. It also has an interesting story behind it in it that it was headed towards being a failure until a critic drew attention to it, at which point it became a respectable success. In fact, its sequel is slated to be released later this month!
So I finally got around to playing this, hailed by many as perhaps the greatest RPG ever made. I held off for a long while because of the high recommended technical requirements for the CPU and I only just built a new rig a few months ago. It’s a massive undertaking and according to Steam, I spent over a 130 hours on it without any big DLC content. In fact, I’m so tired out after this that I probably won’t buy and play the DLC stuff even though they’ve been well reviewed.