Interesting Things on Steam
Warshift is Battlezone reimagined. And it looks great. I especially love the ino-exo vehicles. However, it is very ambitious and it is still very early in development and it is being made by one man. Not one man and some contributors. Not one man, an artist and a musician. One man! So, if this doesn’t crash and burn, I predict it’s going to be one of the most talked about games of 2016 or 2017 (whenever it really comes out). Now in Early Access. XCom 2. It is now “Steam Official”. Coming in November 2015. Keen Dreams is… it’s Keen Dreams. A.K.A. Keen 3.5, it’s the weirdest of the bunch and now it comes with achievements and leaderboards. Coming on the 30th of September. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime has been showing around for a while now and it looks great. It works single player but it’s designed as a co-op action game in which two people pilot a strange ship with lots of interesting weapons and tools in a very dangerous world. I’m really looking forward to it. And it’s coming 9th of September. The Flame in the Flood is a rogue like survival game with some interesting mechanics, shifting the pace and flow of the genres into something quite different. And it’s made by Bioshock, Halo and Rock Band veterans so it has some merit from the start. This will surely be interesting. In Early Access “soon”.
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News by Eran with comments disabled.
Interesting Things on Steam
Hard West looks like a weird western themed isometric roleplaying game with, maybe, some tactical elements. Not a lot is shown about it so far, there isn’t even a video on that page, but it looks good and interesting and a weird western take on this genre might be a vital shot in the ass. Coming this Autumn. Shift Happens looks like it was conceived at the same time and from the same juices as Shiftlings although the production values seem lower and it’s more cutesy. It’s get some room and time to grow so we’ll see. Early Access on the 19th.
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Interesting on Steam
Submerged is a beautiful, water-world-esque exploration puzzle game. I’m not really sure how the main mechanic work because what I’ve seen thus far is mostly traversal and exploration but it looks interesting. Though, if you’re not automatically hooked, better wait for reviews. Available August 4th.  Empyrion – Galactic Survival is, from what is available now — which is not a lot, Terraria if it was fully 3D and also in space. It looks very ambitious. It looks very early in its development. It looks like it still needs a lot of work. But if they can bring this up to snuff, I might opt for this over Star Citizen or No Man’s Sky. Early Access August 5th. Geocore is another Descent wannabe and it looks very very basic but it is early in development by a two man team. It’s all very early so I guess I’ll have to see about this one but I would love a proper Descent reimagining. Early Access July 31st.
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Interesting on Steam
Nomad Fleet looks like finally someone is trying to make another, different Homeworld and not half-ass it. This one looks good, it looks interesting. I’m not entirely sure about the grid and the controls but I hope it comes out good. Early Access now for 13$. Contradiction is a full video point and click murder mystery and it looks like they went all out with it. Every section of it is full video. They claim that you have complete freedom inside the game scenes and the every movement is possible. The video also looks very high quality. It might not be exactly my thing but I put it on my list just for the novelty. Available now for 10$. Into the Stars is a space exploration and survival game that gives the player the role of the ship’s captain while actually still being the captain. That is, giving orders and seeing systems and not micromanaging everything. And it looks very good. Early Access now for 20$. Rocket League is football with freaky, rocket propelled cars and a big giant ball. And it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Out now for 20$.
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From Stretching to Grind
It is a common practice in game design to try to stretch out the length of a game by padding out the content. This could be done by insidiously layering out difficult, repeating levels or by simply varying out the already introduced elements into new configurations. I’ve recently thought about this after seeing a few new puzzle games. I have quite a low tolerance for those unless they introduce something really interesting (i.e. Ronin) and even then, they should probably be short enough to not over stay their welcome. And so, when looking at those puzzle games, I played two or three levels, understood what they’re doing with it, and decided it wasn’t interesting enough to invest time in. The problem is, again, a conflict of expectations, exacerbated by the sheer quantity of quality games out there. Meaning, if I’m playing a game that I’m not enjoying as much as I thought I would and I know I have other games that will be at least as enjoyable if not more, why should I keep playing? I’ll take a look at it using three examples I think, at least in my case, symbolise different levels of padding/grind vs my innate interest in those genres of play: The role of grand strategy game will be played by Civilization: Beyond Earth. The role of the endless runner will be played by Relic Run. And the role of the Action RPG will be played by Path of Exile. Grand Strategy /Â Civilization: Beyond Earth Continue Reading →
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Interesting on Steam
Lego Worlds is Lego Co. dive into the Minecraft clone business and they might be big and tough and interesting enough to actually make it. Now in Early Access. Trove, at first glance, looks like a generic Minecraft clone among all the rest trying to claw out some room. But what’s different about this is that they’re going massively multiplayer and, unlike Minecraft, they’re taking the gaming side and running wild with it. So, I’m looking forward to it. Out 9th of July. Interstellar Rift looks like a space simulator built out of LEGO bits and the best parts of DF-9 and I have to say that, as an avid space simulation fan and a typical builder/explorer personality, I’m quite looking forward to this and hope it comes out good. Early Access on the 23rd of June.
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Interesting on Steam
Act of Aggression is a spiritual successor to Act of War and its expansion pack. Those two have been on my list for a while because they looked awesome – though I have yet had the pleasure of playing them. Act of Aggression again promises to take us back to the old school RTS games only in glorified modern graphics and experience. So my thought is to quickly get to playing Act of War and then eagerly await for this. Coming in June. Victory Command by looks and definition is a modern military, squad based, 5v5 battle arena. Meaning, it works like a regular MOBA except you control modern military units, each player has a small squad of units, you can costumise  your layout of units and you can control each of them individually and it looks like it’s very well made (from people who were on the Command & Conquer team, they say). Well, that looks way more interesting to play than another fantasy/genre confused regular MOBA. If they nail a story to this, I’m betting it’ll take off like a #@#%@#^##&)!#. Now on Early Access. Space Rogue looks like a cross between an expanded and revamped FTL and Galactrix… maybe. I’m not sure from what I can see and so I’m not sure if I should be excited about this or not. So, best to reserve judgement. But it looks nice. Early Access on the 14th. ARK: Survival Evolved looks like Jurassic Park if it was Rust – it’s multiplayer and every player Continue Reading →
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The Kill With Skill Debate
Or “Why Wolfenstein – The New Order is better than Bulletstorm in making players do things a bit differently (Except, maybe, driving a dinosaur into combat)”. What’s the deal with that headline? One of the tag lines for the 2011 Bulletstorm was “Kill with Skill”. It was a core mechanic of the game. It’s something that garnered a lot of praise for the game. And it was one of the things that annoyed me the most about it. No, I meant, what the hell does it mean? Oh. In Bulletstorm, you get points for killing fashionably. When you shoot a guy in the face, that’s a couple of points. If you pull him towards you, kick him back, blast him in half with the shotgun and then shoot the pieces with the rocket launcher. That’s a heck of a lot of points. And these points are your currency in the game. Ok… What’s the problem with that? It sounds cool. It sounds cool. And that’s about where it ends. In Bulletstorm, ammo and health drops are scarce. You get most of your boosts from some sort of recharge station you find all around and they only accept those points. Otherwise, you can’t get ammo. And that’s annoying. So, what’s the big problem? Just kill the stuff the way the game says. It gets tedious. Extremely tedious, extremely fast. You know how when everything is special, nothing is? Well, when every kill needs to be fancy, then no kill is. And some Continue Reading →
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Interesting on Steam
Cineveo – Virtual Reality Cinema is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a Rift DK2 application that plops you down in the middle of a cinema (There are several to choose from) and allows you to view your movies as if you were sitting at the movies. A popcorn bucket is not included but it says you can control everything hands free, you can link up with others for multiplayer viewing and you can drop in a view from a webcam to still keep in touch with the outside world. This just seems so cool I want to buy a Rift for myself. Available now for 10$. Mighty No. 9 is an action platformer from the guy who thought up Mega-Man. And, with respect, I don’t see why there’s so much hype around it. It looks nice enough but I see no reason to get excited about this over any other platformer. In fact, I’m much more excited about Trine 3. Coming in 15th of September. Exanima is a kind of dungeon crawling action RPG but with a heavy stress on attention to detail across the board. It’s pretty, looks compelling as hell and as far as the combat simulation goes, it looks like Dark Souls if Dark Souls was Diablo and I’m looking forward to it. Now in Early Access. Break_In looks like the last piece in an iteration process that started with the Castle Doctrine, proceeded through King of Thieves and now has reached this, the first person shooter version of Continue Reading →
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Interesting on Steam
Magicka – Wizard Wars is the PvP arena version of the wonderful Magicka. Last time I checked, I still didn’t like the simplification of the spell system but I do appreciate some of the design choices they made. It’s still nice that it’s finally official, now that Magicka 2 is almost here. Anyway, if you like Magicka and you like PvP action, you’ll probably enjoy this. It’s free to play. The costs are the different robes you can play. Kalimba is a cute puzzle platformer reminiscent of ibb & obb where you have two characters that need to cooperate in strange ways to get through a level. I like ibb & obb and will probably play Kalimba with Maayan too so this is in our future. Available April 22nd. Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power is the third installment of the wonderful puzzle platformer and while the game has always looked amazing, this time they’re going complete 3D with it and I’m very excited to play it with Maayan. Early Access on April 21st.
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