Remember when Phil Fish said that PCs are for spreadsheets? Now that Fez has a PC port, Steam user McKack put a new spin of Fish’s infamous comments with some spreadsheet-based fan art. I love it. The fan art’s pretty good too.
Blog Archives
Divekick (PC) Review: Kick It
Can a fighting game only have two buttons? It doesn’t seem to be a necessary question. Any game can use any control scheme the developer chooses so long as it works.
Don’t tell that to some vocal members of the fighting game community who consider Divekick to be a joke. How can a fighting game only have two buttons, no combos and only one-hit kills via jump kicks? It clearly doesn’t belong in the same category as multi-button, combo-laden games like the Street Fighters, Tekkens, Soul Calibers and Mortal Kombats of the world.
So does having only two buttons make Divekick a sick joke or is it so well put together that it actually pulls off the adrenaline rush of a fight game with a simple facade?
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Papers, Please Review: Glory to Arstotzka
When you think of unexplored genres that would make for interesting games, I don’t think that customs officer simulation would be one of them. Yet, Papers, Please is one of more interesting games that I’ve played in a while… Even if it does seem at time like a desk organization simulator too.
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Dead Island 3 is a Free-to-Play MOBA
Wait. What?
No, that’s not a typo or a joke, I think. Third installment in the Dead Island franchise, to be called Dead Island: Epidemic, will not be a co-op first-person shooter but will instead be Deep Silver’s entry into the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre.
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Remember Me Review: The Memory Remains
A while back, I wrote a column lamenting the loss of new intellectual properties coming from the big publishers. One of the few new multi-platform IPs that is coming out this year is Capcom’s Remember Me. It had an interesting premise and the rare not hypersexualized female protagonist leading the game. For the first few hours, Remember Me was certainly worth my past consideration as a new IP to wake up the industry.
However, the experience doesn’t hold up over time. While there are parts of the game that are very memorable, it’s certainly not the unforgettable rookie developer Dontnod were hoping for.
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Building (Critical) Consensus: Civilization V: Brave New World
I don’t think I’ve ever rounded up reviews of an expansion pack but few franchises are as iconic as Sid Meier’s Civilization series. Civilization V was roundly considered to be inferior to its predecessor Civilization IV by critics and fans alike. The Brave New World expansion is supposed to close the gap between Civ IV and Civ V. The critics say that Brave New World is mission accomplished.
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Fist Puncher Impressions: A Punch to the Face
Normally I review games but sometimes a game just beats me down so badly that I can’t get any further and just can’t compel myself to fight with the game any longer. So rather than call this look at indie brawler Fist Puncher a review, I’ll just call it impressions.
Fist Puncher is a game that likens itself to old-school 2D side-scrolling brawlers like River City Ransom. The similarities are clear in terms of the brawling gameplay and integration of RPG elements. However, Fist Puncher can be downright painful to play.
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Gunpoint Review: Spying Excellence
It’s not everyday that one single indie game, an indie game that’s the first effort of a former gaming journalist, causes the whole of the gaming press to pause and take notice. But that’s what we have with Gunpoint, the rookie effort of now-former PC Gamer writer Tom Francis. I say that he’s now a former PC Gamer writer because the commercial success of Gunpoint has given Francis the financial freedom to pursue game development full-time.
So could the debut effort of a man who hasn’t made a game before and put it together in off-the-shelf game making software be worthy of all the praise it received? Yes. Yes, it can.
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Element4l Review: Slip Sliding Away
Sometimes, I need to play a game that’s on the calm side. As fun as driving cars at speeds approaching 200 MPH and shooting baddies with overpowered weapons is, I like to throw a quiet game into the rotation to mix things up. Lately, that’s been the oddly spelled but appropriately titled puzzle platformer Element4l.
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Game Dev Tycoon Review: The Art of the Deal
Et Gamera Studios was in trouble. A number of recent sequels of previously popular IPs were struggling both with critics and on the shelves. Going from older platforms to new ones or from PC to console with their series just wasn’t working for them or their pocketbooks. Having gotten a high-interest loan and laid-off a third of their staff to keep the developer solvent, they went back to the well for another sequel to the franchise that had saved them twice before…
By now, you’ve probably heard of Game Dev Tycoon. Developer Greenheart Games made waves by releasing a “pirated” copy of the game that caused pirates’ businesses to fail due to piracy. Between the coverage from major gaming sites and personalities, their website was overloaded for most of Monday as a result. Their unorthodox strategy for dealing with pirates made their game a hit. But how is the game?
et geekera 