Two fiendish physics puzzlers come together today in Bridge Constructor Portal, challenging players to build bridges that shuttle vehicles through deadly labs with the help of Portal‘s teleportation portals and gels. And, of course, Ellen McLain returns to voice the dastardly AI GLaDOS and taunt us. I have enjoyed the recent resurgence of bridge-construction games, carefully balancing beams and lacing cables then watching it all go wrong, and I’m feeling about ready for one a little different. Observe: (more…)

Tragic teen tale Life Is Strange: Before The Storm has concluded with the launch of its third episode last night. Before The Storm is the prequel to 2015’s wonderful third-person coming-of-ager, doing away with the time-travel powers as it focuses on wild rebel Chloe and her gal pal Rachel Amber. It’s a story whose final ending was already known, but I’m told life is about the journey not the destination. A bonus episode is still to come, reuniting Max and Chloe and their original voice actors for a prequel to this prequel, but that’s separate from Before The Storm’s story – and only for Deluxe Edition owners. For now, let’s see what Chloe and Rachel are up to in episode 3: (more…)

This week s Premature Evaluation sees Fraser swap a regular Scottish winter for an eternal, supernatural winter that has destroyed humanity in survival sandbox Fade to Silence. Festive!>

I really should be playing games about sunshine and whimsy with warm colour palettes and chipper NPCs — here, in the depths of winter, it s gloomy enough as it is. Fade to Silence has huskies though! Well, they re wolves, but they do pull sleds. Isn t that lovely? Winter s not all bad. Yes, Fade to Silence is a relentlessly miserable survival game set in a post-apocalyptic frozen hellscape, but I ve always wanted to ride a sled, and I like to think that I m not the sort of person who would let the end of the world stand in the way of his dreams.

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After five months of scrapping through early access, Fire Pro Wrestling World has launched in full. If you’re looking for a game to transpose the traditional Christmas dinner arguments into a friendlier arena, boy howdy Fire Pro is certainly a game that’ll let you recreate the nuances of your family’s verbal fighting style with wrestling personas. At the very least, it’ll make them all turn their ire on you; what a selfless act of yuletide martyrdom that would be. (more…)

The molotov cocktails and pixel fires of Riot Civil Unrest have lit up on early access. It s an RTS of street tactics where you control either rioters or the police, seeking to control the plazas and highways of Egypt, Spain and other nations grazed by disorder in the past decade. It focuses on real world popular uprisings and protest movements like the Arab Spring, the Indignados, and the environmental protesters of Italy and Greece. Because of this, you might expect it to be a political powderkeg. But Riot not only manages to say nothing noteworthy about any of these conflicts, it also shows little competence as a game. (more…)

A ghost set me on fire. Earlier, I was beating on a parasite that was hiding inside a metal shell. I found a gelatinous cube that had absorbed so much junk it had become sluggish and bloated. I reached inside it, lost a layer of skin on my hand, but retrieved an ice cream. Don’t laugh. It’s a very useful ice cream.

I’m playing roguelike card game Slay The Spire, and I’ve fought through packs of cultists, slavers and thieves, but now I’m on fire and I can’t do a great deal about it. I burn whenever I breathe. It seems unfair but this is partly a hell of my own making.

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Hand Of Fate 2 is a nail-on-the-head sequel (and one of our 2018 GOTYs), hanging onto what made the first game’s card game/roguelite/brawling combo so compelling while expanding in smart ways that save it from repetition. However, one thing it arguably didn’t do was make the best of HOF’s excellent sneering narrator/nemesis figure The Dealer, who in HOF2 has an altogether more chillaxed thing going on.

The good news is that the game’s first DLC, due out tomorrow and which is also free, is very much Dealer-centric. The news I genuinely> don’t know what to make of is that he’s being cast in a new and very different role from before. (more…)

Behind door nineteen, there is a computer chip. To learn more, you must plug it into one of your ports.

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In its ongoing mission to bring old point ‘n’ click adventure games into an easy, stable, and cross-platform environment, the ScummVM project has launched a hefty update supporting another 23 games. This includes some real heavy hitters, slamming in such wonders as Phantasmagoria and Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. At times I’ve been dismissive of unpleasant and clumsily erotic ‘mature’ FMV games but I have warmed to them over time; they have a certain surreal charm. Oh, and I suppose you might also be interested in knowing the new version also adds support for games like Starship Titanic, Police Quest 4, and Gabriel Knight. But mostly Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. (more…)

Oxenfree is my favourite game of 2016. Unfortunately I didn’t play it until the very end of 2016, so didn’t know to bellow about it when the time was ripe. The time, people, is ripe once more. Oxenfree, the best game of last year, is free right now on GOG! Oxenfree>, you might say, if you were a twerp. (more…)