Shadow of Mordor is now considered to be one of the best games of 2014 but it was dismissed by many at first because it looked like a generic action game crapping all over the Lord of the Rings IP. I ignored it myself because it looked like a poor clone of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. But after reading reports that it’s closer to WB’s own Batman games, which I’m a big fan of, plus it adds a significant new innovation to the genre, I bought the GOTY edition.
I pretty much only bought this game because I saw screenshots of it on a forum and was totally entranced. Later, I regretted this a bit when its Polish developers came out as being pro-GamerGate. This is a bit weird since it actually most resembles games like Gone Home and Dear Esther which gators love to deride as being not real games. But they don’t seem to have similar problems with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Note that I played the original version and not the Redux version because I didn’t realize that it was available as a separate download for free.
I’m actually a Kickstarter backer for this so the reason why I’m slow to play newly released games isn’t always because I’m a cheapskate who buys games only when they’re on sale. Of course, the good thing about this is that I only play them after they’d been more or less fully patched and Pillars of Eternity is a game that had more than its fair share of bugs when it first launched. It’s worth noting however that even now it still has more bugs than I’d expect though they are minor ones that don’t really affect gameplay such as error messages in the textbox and getting exploration XP over and over again at a specific location. The most annoying bug I had is how the dialog buttons disappear from the save game menu after you’ve been playing for a while.
This War of Mine earned some pretty impressive kudos when it came out. That’s no surprise given its premise of playing a group of civilians looking to survive a siege of their home city. Heck, the developers even partnered with a charity for children who are victims of war for authenticity. Looking at the screenshots, I also found the two-dimensional cutaways of buildings with lots of elements that you can interact with to be very appealing.
Koei seems like a company that makes a living making nothing but games based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I’d played both its signature strategy game as well as stuff like Nobunaga’s Ambition early in my PC-gaming career, but I’ve never actually played anything in its Dynasty Warriors series though I understand that this is where the bulk of their sales in the modern era comes from. Since a PC port of one its newest versions is now available on Steam, I thought I’d give it a shot.
I’d bought this one as part of a package with The Longest Journey and I always play all of the games that I buy. I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about it as my reaction to the first game was distinctly lukewarm but my completionist instincts insisted that I at least give it a go. It helps a great deal that even though it’s still dated by modern standards, the graphics are much better and gives a proper sense of wonder and awe to all of the places you find yourself in.
This was a Steam sale impulse buy, prompted by a realization that the most fun that I have in shooters is when I snipe the enemy with impunity from far, far away. I’d never played any game in this series before but a game with large levels, lots of long distance sniping and realistic ballistics sounds good to me. That it’s set during World War Two is a plus for me, with so new shooters going the high tech route.