As mentioned in the previous installment of Experience Points: CO, the most vocal fear in any Free-to-Play game is the Pay-to-Win occurrence. I wrote how being a freeform character, which is exclusive to Gold players, compares to being an archetype, but I didn’t address the actual microtransaction store and its relevance in the “Pay-to-Win” argument.… Continue reading Experience Points: Champions Online – Part 3: C-Store
Review: Inside A Star-filled Sky
Inside a level While the inspiration behind a game can be anything, there is often a core concept used as the starting point. The more you built upon an idea, the more likely you are to deviate from it. Adding new elements that don’t contribute to the core idea are also common and while we… Continue reading Review: Inside A Star-filled Sky
Review: inFAMOUS 2
The only word that could possibly describe the way I felt after playing inFAMOUS in 2009 is “thunderstruck”. Once I’d finished it I was left craving more and, now, a little over two years later, the next in the series has been released. The sequel takes the greatest ideas of the first and amps them… Continue reading Review: inFAMOUS 2
How Gideon Got His Groove Back – Magic The Gathering and Me
Card games are the most widely understood, if not always the most widely played (though it wouldn’t surprise me), form of tabletop gaming most people will ever encounter. Though there exists a constantly shifting market of different games to play, new indie titles being a regular (albeit short-lived) occurrence, one has always and very probably… Continue reading How Gideon Got His Groove Back – Magic The Gathering and Me
Carpe Fulgur Announces “Fortune Summoners”
Carpe Fulgur, localisers of indie hit Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, announced earlier this week that they’d be taking Lizsoft’s “Fortune Summoners: Secret Of The Elemental Stone” to the Western world as their third project.
Darkest Fantasies
So far this year I have played two brand new games with a very noir vibe. I bet you can guess one of them, but what about the other?
Review: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D
How do you approach reviewing a game like Ocarina of Time? How do you review a game so universally acclaimed by critics and loved by fans? If you’ve been gaming for any length of time then certainly you’ve heard the crazy amounts of praise the original game has received, and rightly so, it brought an… Continue reading Review: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D
Experience Points: Champions Online – Part 2: Gold and Silver
Until recently, Free to Play MMOs have had a really bad reputation. Technically, they still do among some folk, but considering all the “free to play” announcements in the industry the past few weeks, I’m guessing things are slowly changing. One of the major gripes people have with F2P is the (not very witty, but… Continue reading Experience Points: Champions Online – Part 2: Gold and Silver
Take a Musical Detour
Indie strategy game Detour is out on Steam, and it’s pretty fun. We will, however, reserve definitive judgment for our full review coming soon; in the meantime, the soundtrack has been made available for free.
Review: Celestial Mechanica
A trailer is a powerful thing. It can hype you up for a game so much that it can be detrimental to the actual product. I have to admit, when Kyle first linked me to Celestial Mechanica’s trailer, my reaction was “OH MY GOD WHY DOES IT LOOK SO AMAZING?!” It hit all the right… Continue reading Review: Celestial Mechanica
Friday Freeloader: Super Crate Box
This week’s Friday Freeloader thinks inside the box. I would like to assure you that today’s featured game, Super Crate Box, is of much higher caliber than that awful pun, for which I would like to sincerely apologize.
Review: Critical Mass
To avoid repeating myself from my DotP2012 review with “I’m a sucker for…” I’ll go with “I appreciate good puzzle games.” Although I would hardly qualify as an expert player, I’ve played a good deal of Bust-A-Move, Puyo Puyo, Magical Drop, Columns and (of course) Tetris. The first thing I thought of when I saw… Continue reading Review: Critical Mass
Interview: Final Form Games Talks Jamestown, Hoagies
Final Form Games is a small startup indie development studio that recently released Jamestown, an insanely fun pixelart shmup, on the PC platform. We got a chance to ask them their thoughts on the game, the industry in general, and of course, sandwiches.
Review: gShift
In the vein of recent perspective-shifting games such as VVVVVV and And Yet It Moves, gShift tries its hand, and mostly succeeds, at creating an engaging platformer with a unique twist. I like it. I like it a lot.
At A Glance: Europa Universalis 3
As someone who’s not a huge fan of strategy games, there’s something strangely alluring about Europa Universalis 3. Whether it’s just the sheer volume of what’s going on within the game (and there usually is, whether you can see it past the Fog of War or not), or the amount of scrutinising over decisions that… Continue reading At A Glance: Europa Universalis 3