I can't get Fish Sticks out of my head. Not the food, but the stray cat with a squished face and stubby legs that I wrangled into my shack in Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s new roguelite strategy game, Mewgenics. The shop, the pub, the dentist; no matter where I go, I…
I was, like so many of my 1990s-born peers, a huge Sims girlie. I spent hundreds of hours as a teen and young adult making people I knew, characters from shows I was obsessing over, or original characters I wanted to experiment with, and diligently following their life paths and…
I’m 32 puzzles in, and that’s taken me a good long while. That there are 68 more of these to go, plus another 60 that have been released since the game’s initial release, makes me a very happy little man.
Regardless of its limitations, Exodus still deserves its place among its underground comrades. In many ways it’s better, and I’m very glad they didn’t just repeat the same subterranean journey again.
It reeks of development hell, as demoralising to play as I imagine it was to make. Yes, clearing a map of its icons can be readily distracting, and it fulfils this role at least.
For less than a couple of quid, this is well worth it. Randomly generated puzzles, so you won’t run out, plenty of options, and that bonkers triangle mode for a real head-scratcher.
But besides all this, it is simply a good time. And there is an unmistakable, open-hearted joy to fixing problems for people as an intimidating agony uncle. Even if it usually involves hitting them with a bike first.
Just a few weeks ago I wrote about how I wished more games would embrace the absurd, and that’s exactly what Away: Journey To The Unexpected set out to do. It succeeded, but oh boy did it fail.
Dumb, funny, exhilarating, varied and full of stupid explosions. Like the drones it summons, Ace Combat 7 is not exactly self-aware. But it is close enough, judging from the humour of its over-the-top action. And it barely matters anyway, because it’s a damn fun videogame.
Newcomers to the genre may find it tedious despite these improvements, but if you’re all about that renovation grind, My Time At Portia is one of the most modern takes on the genre I’ve seen in a long time.
Is this particular endless space war worth enlisting in? If you’re looking for an incredibly deep 4x – no. If you’re up for some big, beautiful, dramatic RTS campaigns with weighty, satisfying combat, and don’t mind waiting for a patch to iron out a few creases – then yes.
That’s where Resident Evil succeeds. Not in the drivel spouted from its character’s mouths, but in the bullets spewed from their guns. Or better yet – the clicking of empty chambers, or the spine-chilling scratches of scrabbling overhead. I may hate lickers, but I’m also a little bit in love.