Have You Played? >is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.>
If I had infinite lives, I’d waste at least one of them playing Tom Clancy’s The Division. (more…)
Oooh, now this is intriguing – The Ship: Remasted devs Blazing Griffin are taking another stab at their ‘murder party’ formula. Today they announced Murderous Pursuits, a game about hunting (and being hunted by) other players. You have to sneak up on your quarry by pretending to be one of the AI characters milling around, just like in the old Assassin’s Creed multiplayer modes but without all that silly jumping. It’ll be out in March.
What’s new this time round? Well for starters, you’re on a flying boat that’s packed with alternate reality Victorian time travellers.
Electronic Arts quietly notannounced a new Battlefield game during their conference call last night, alongside notdelaying BioWare’s Anthem. They said very little about it, because they acknowledge its existence but haven’t formally announced it, see. Will it be set in the past, near-past, present, near-future, or future? Battlefield 5? Bad Company 3? Hardline 2? 1944? 2143? Hut hut! It’s all a big mystery for now. Assuming EA follow their traditional Battlefield behaviour, they’ll likely formally announce the game in May or June then release it in mid-to-late October. (more…)
Freeze! Put your hands on the keyboard! That s it, nice and slow. What? No, I won t show you my badge. I m a certified law officer, I ve played several hours of police management sim This Is The Police. And you know wh– hands on the keyboard please, sir you know what else? A sequel is coming out. This Is The Police 2 is due for release “later this year”, say the developers. It s set in a cold, northern border town and puts you in the role of a new sheriff called Lilly Reed. Here s a trailer setting up some of the characters and, uh, the tone? (more…)
My dad used to take me and my sister badger watching. We’d head out into some nearby woods and spend the day building a hideout from sticks, then camouflage it with ferns and settle in until dusk. What we didn’t do is set up a camera system and camp out night after night until we’d uncovered their secrets, as is the aim of free squirrel surveillance game Nuts.
That squirrel has a stash, you see, and it’s up to you to track it down.
As rumours predicted, Electronic Arts have delayed BioWare’s sci-fi online shooter doodad Anthem into 2019. It was previously slated for autumn of this year. Anthem is BioWare’s shiny new persistent-world multiplayer shooter which… given how little they’ve shown and said about it, let’s say it resembles Destiny but with Iron Man armour and more spacejungle. Despite the delay, EA say Anthem is not delayed. It’s just that they’re holding it back to space it apart from the yet-unannounced new Battlefield game they’ll release this year, okay? (more…)
Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser s making his very own RTS faction in Petroglyph s Forged Battalion.>
The drones swoop in first, dropping gas bombs on top of unsuspecting mech pilots. The rest of the horde soon follow, announcing their arrival by launching toxic grenades that slowly corrode their victims, accompanied by the traditional wall of missiles. Anti-tank mechs tear into the defending artillery while buggies with rocket launchers strapped to them round up the stragglers. The base is torn down. These are my babies.
Games often feel doomed to be defined either by the games they’re inspired by, or the games they go on to inspire. After all, this is a space where certain games loom so large that we’ve named entire genres after them. So it can be tough to sneak out of the “x meets y” framework we use to describe games.
Spark the Electric Jester wears its influences openly. By its own description it’s a platformer inspired by several games from the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, and it’s clear there’s a love here for Sega’s high speed hedgehog. Spark’s creator, Felipe Daneluz, better known as LakeFepard, created several well known Sonic fan games, and there’s plenty of blue skies and high speed loops to hint at that history. But while retro style games are often content to imitate older titles and rely on the collective nostalgia for them, Spark the Electric Jester builds its own identity. (more…)
‘Waking the Tiger’ is not a ho-ho-hilarious euphemism for onanism, unless you want it to be, but rather the next Hearts of Iron IV expansion. It’ll focus on making China more unique in the WW2 grand strategy game, complete with several possible political paths the country might have gone down, along with expanding other systems in the game. Paradox are taking their time with this one as, after announcing Waking the Tiger way back in November 2017, they today announced plans to release it on March 8. For now, here’s a new dev video going over some of its additions: (more…)
Hopefully this is a sign that the long-awaited fifth and final episode of the incomparable, theatrical road trip adventure Kentucky Route Zero is not far away. Devs Cardboard Computer last week snuck out another of their brief, experimental ‘interludes’, free game-ettes which also act as as previews and alternate perspectives on scenes and themes in forthcoming episodes. Previously they’ve done VR theatre, mystery phone calls and installation art, and now ‘Un Pueblo De Nada‘ adds live-action TV into the beautifully unpredictable mix.