Presumably for one week from today, the Green Martian Bodysuit and Purple Martian Bodysuit are both free to pick up from any clothes shop. Hit the cashier to see Outfits, then look under Outfits: Arena War then Bodysuits. They usually cost $358,000 each, which is far beyond ‘impulse purchase’ territory for many. If you lack commitment or just want to start trouble, you can get both the green and purple suits....
LudoNarraCon includes two days of talks, panels, and chats from folks involved with writing and designing game stories. It’s tough to pick favorites as a story game lover but here’s a few for you to consider. This evening sports a talk about games with dark stories, including creative directors Emily Short of Failbetter Games and Thomas Grip of Frictional Games. Those are Fallen London and the Amnesia series respectively. Tonight caps off with a chat between Control senior narrative designer Brooke Maggs and Hades writer and creative director Greg Kasavin....
It’s been one hell of a nostalgia trip watching 343 bring all the old giant space hula-hoops to PC over the past year. But while there’s no chance of Halo 5 joining the bunch anytime soon, I don’t expect the team have closed the book on Chief’s big anthology just quite yet. In this week’s November development update, 343 tackle a number of ideas they have for future MCC updates....
Here’s the launch trailer: It’s worth checking out the development team’s post on Steam about hitting 1.0. Not only for the patch notes about the new release, but also for discussion (and GIFs) of a couple of early prototypes - including one where you were carving up derelict spaceships as they plummeted towards earth. The final reality of Hardspace: Shipbreaker is considerably more sedate. If you haven’t played it: Hardspace casts you as a downtrodden, indebted worker in an orbital salvage yard....
Don’t Nod have always created games with supernatural elements, but the world in Harmony is the furthest they’ve gone into the fantasy sci-fi genre. We follow Polly who returns to her hometown, the fictional Mediterranean city of Alma. Things aren’t exactly how she left them, as an evil megacorp is abusing its power and the people. That’s when Polly discovers the gift of clairvoyance, connecting her to the alternate world of Reverie, which transforms her into the goddess Harmony....
The game’s a mixture of hero-shooter and battle royale, where you must outplay opponents with abilities to survive an ever-closing circle of doom. My favourite hero is Seer, a bloke with a fetching hat who can summon CCTV nanites from his belly that reveal enemies for a brief duration. Caustic is cool too, because he’s a gassy lad whose noxous fumes not only deliver a painful sting, but act as a smog that only – for the most part - he’s able to see through....
In my university years, I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on games. My DS soon became my go-to platform, so I played a lot of the Castlevania games from Koji Igarashi’s team. I was initially excited when Igarashi sat on his throne, yeeting a wine glass in disgust when recalling what publishers thought of Metroidvanias. Ritual Of The Night had teething problems to start with, notably the horrendously dated graphics it had during its first beta, but the finished game was good!...
When some Stardew Valley bug problems ruined some lockdown date nights though, Don’t Starve Together was recommended to me on some internet list as one to try out, and what a recommendation it was. We went into the game with no knowledge of how it works or what to do except the obvious: don’t starve. Well, easier said than done, to be honest. Firstly, being alone in the dark kills you, so you need to light a fire every night....
Thing is, nowadays Factorio is far from the only factory-building game out there. Many have followed in its footsteps - most notably, the excellent Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program. So what keeps me coming back to Factorio after all this time? Ironically for a game that essentially is about destroying an ecosystem for selfish gain, it’s all about the quality of life features. Such a ridiculous amount of time must have been spent at Wube headquarters thinking about how to make life easier for the player....
With a group of burgle buddies called things like “The Cleaner” and “The Gentlemen,” the aim of each level is to break into a building, steal a priceless item, and then get out without creating too much hoopla. Like Dick Van Cheadle being Danny Ocean’s munitions man, each of the playable characters has their own speciality: The Locksmith can open doors and safes more quickly than the rest, The Lookout can see all areas of the map at all times, The Hacker is… good at hacking, basically....
Much like Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, exploring a place where people once lived that is now abandoned is extremely creepy. The silence in Sagebrush is very heavy and loud, and I think the low-fi 90s feel accentuates that. You’re never quite sure if that flicker you see over there is a pixelated bush or the shadow of a person. There are some light puzzle elements in a restart-this-generator or find-this-key kind of vein, but you are mostly reading notes and unscrambling what happened in the lead up to a final and devastating mass suicide event....
Although, auto-runners weren’t exactly in vogue when this was released. What made this one stand out from the pack was how complete it was as a package. Everyone focuses on the music, and I get it: the 23-track offering is full of wonderful, upbeat pop, wispy shoegazing, and driving trance. Songs flow from one to the next, with any harsh deviations feeling like a deliberate jolt to the listener. But I’ve always seen Sayonara Wild Hearts as more of an elaborate stage show, rather than a tightly-written 60-minute album....
As much as I love Shelter 2 (less so Shelter 3, unfortunately), Shelter 1 holds a special place in my heart, mostly because no other animal-focused survival game has come even remotely close to claiming the coveted title of “most brutal animal sim that made me ugly cry.” In Shelter 1 you play as a mother badger who is searching for a new home for herself and her bundle of five badger kits, tasked with making it through the wilderness and protecting as many of your babies as you can....
Enter Vintage Story. Vintage Story was created in 2016 by partners Tyron and Saraty, who, after releasing two popular and successful Minecraft mods, decided they wanted to break free from the constraints of Mojang’s Minecraft and form their own standalone experience. Since then, the content that has been added to this fledgling voxel game has given it a very different feel and tone to Minecraft, with far more of an emphasis on early-game foraging and crafting of everything from tools to campfires and more....
The new aircraft designer tools allow for the chance to muck about creating a variety of different planes. Paradox give the examples of emphasising speed with “nimble interceptors” or ramping up destructive capabilities by crafting yourself a fleet of “durable bombers”. Chocks away, chaps. Hearts Of Iron IV’s three new focus trees are Italy, Ethopia and Switzerland, which could all lead to some interestingly divergent scenarios. You could take on Europe as Mussolini’s fascists or choose to restore the Italian monarchy, or battle the Italians and win as Ethiopia under Haile Selassie....
The theme of the game is “human emotions and passions” and specifically “how they relate to human conflicts”. It’s set during a civil war, where a metaphysical calamity has taken place. There’s a big emphasis on “family” too, as Jacques-Belletête mentions how they’re the ones who suffer the most during conflict. I just hope they portray all of this in a way that doesn’t turn it into a weird sci-fi comedy....
A lot of the game takes place in menus, but god, they’re nice looking menus. I have no particular interest in military machinery, and yet I love tiny switches with red flaps on them. I love knobs and I want to twist them. The video begins with the player scouting for a city on a map drawn in spare lines on an old computer screen. They intercept an enemy signal, and must tune into it by twirling a knob like tuning an old radio, and they eventually reveal an enemy location....
“As a final act, Hitman 3 is as capable and pleasing as its trilogy-siblings,” Brendy said in our Hitman 3 review. “As a trilogy, it is one of the most fun-loving games of the previous decade. It is like Ian himself – reliable, dry-humoured, uniformed. The best murderer money can buy.” Sounds like a good game in itself, and a good part of the trilogy. Shame the way it connects with the rest of the trilogy is hindered by mysterious issues....
Hitman’s store page on GOG had a warning at the top, reportedly added shortly after launch, which noted that “Internet connection is required to access Escalation missions, Elusive Targets or user-created Contracts. Story and bonus missions can be played offline.” Users were quick to point out in dozens of negative reviews that an internet connection was also required to unlock new equipment, starting locations and outfits. Those are pretty fundamental features of Hitman’s excellent murder sandboxes....
And no wonder: it’s a supremely entertaining and pacey gauntlet of cruel traps, wry references and intricate level design, set across various sharp fangame parodies of games like Sonic, Mega Man, VVVVVV and Pokémon, incredibly. Seeing it played is like watching someone simultaneously unravelling a puzzle and telling a joke. “It was exhilarating, watching the game debut,” co-creator Patrick ‘Patrickgh3’ Traynor tells me. “Both the players’ and chat’s reactions were heartwarming, in addition to being on the edge of our seats about things breaking....
