Category: Tier One

The Dragon’s Dogma starting village is the first game town that has ever felt real to me.  As I was walking between two buildings, I suddenly realized that this felt exactly like walking around an old, eastern European town that’s been built and rebuilt since the middle ages.  Besides the layout, being able to enter any building is always nice – buildings aren’t just placed to make the place feel large.  But then, I realized I had to climb on top of a building for a quest and I was very, very happy.  I’ll take this game over “We place half our guards on the roofs because reasons” Creed any day.  Even with dragons, magic, and companions that literally fall out of thin air, it feels more realistic than Italy during the renaissance.

Continue reading “Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen” →

As of this writing, Darkstone is an 18 year old RPG.  And it definitely looks it.  But so far, the voice acting and atmosphere have kept me wanting to play.  For now, Tier One – even if I can’t take screenshots.

Shadowrun Returns is the sort of game I really want to play when I’m not playing games.  When I actually sit down to play it, though, I just never find the motivation.  That’s the curse of RPGs.  There’s actually not much more to say about Shadowrun.  It’s a true pen-and-paper RPG translated to cRPG – the Baldur’s Gate of Shadowrun.  If you’ve not heard of the Shadowrun setting, it’s based on the premise that some time in the near future, magic returns to Earth and transforms a percentage of the population into orcs, elves, dwarves, and the like.  It’s high fantasy crossed with cyberpunk.  It’s quite good, as is this computerized version.  Tier One.

Steam link

Fantastic advice by the first shopkeeper in the game, right there.

Continue reading “The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky” →

I take back what I have said about rhythm games in the past.  About the genre, I mean. BIT.TRIP is still a terrible game.  But Thumper … Thumper is not a game you play.  Thumper is a game you feel.  And it feels very, very good.

My complaints against BIT.TRIP were mostly about requiring perfection.  This is not true in Thumper – you have an armor system, short levels, checkpoints, and more – all with no need for a complicated interface (the above is in the middle of a boss fight).  With the armor system, you get one “mistake” per section.  But at the end of each section (and sometimes within), you can regain your armor.  This is good design – prove you can do better, and you are rewarded.  The tutorials are well thought out and integrated into the gameplay.  A sign that you’ve done extremely well is that the controls feel natural – and once you get through the first section or two, they feel fantastic – added to by the perfect timings of audio cues.  My only true complaint is that I couldn’t take good screenshots since there’s never enough time except between sections.

There’s certainly a degree of bias here – they combined my love of fast racing, psychedelic visuals, and drum beats into a truly wonderful game experience.  But if I’m having fun, that was sorta the point – and I simply can’t wait to try it in VR.  Tier One.

Steam link

I started playing Subnautica with the intention of spending an hour on it and then going to watch the West Wing.  I ended up spending several hours on it and I plan on going back as soon as I finish this review.

In what started as a very familiar intro, the spacecraft I was aboard broke apart and I got to one of the last life pods – no other apparent survivors.  I crash land in the middle of an ocean, and start looking around for ways to survive.  Unlike The Solus Project, my survival seems to be the main objective.  Unlike FarSky, surviving and progressing is actually difficult and interesting, and the wildlife don’t all immediately attack you (well, except for Crashfish – Crashfish are jerks).  For now, Subnautica is a solid Tier One (though I am just now feeling the pain of not having enough storage space, which turns a few things into a bit of a grind).

Steam link