The only reason I know the name of Prototype 2’s protagonist (Sgt. James… hang on, let me be sure… yeah, Sgt. James Heller) is because I just Googled it. I think the story involved the playable goodie from the first game turning bad and infecting people with some type of supervillian zombie disease. Also your wife… and daughter (?) are dead.
Hallo again, and a happy new year to you! We’re slowly rousing from our slumber before RPS returns on Monday the 4th but while I’m briefly up to grab a wheel of cheese to gnaw on in bed, I may as well ask: what are you playing this weekend? New year, new games? New gaming habits? Though I understand old habits die hard, I say after falling back into The Binding Of Isaac over the hols. But enough about me, officially I’m not even here; what’s up with you?
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Q: What do hulking space soldiers use to freshen their breath between blood-drenched skirmishes with horrid aliens?
December has provided a bounty of games at the long-awaited death of a hideous year, but its greatest and most unexpected treasure is already clear to me.
Suzerain is the modern successor to Hidden Agenda, an ancient political simulator I once described as “possibly the greatest political simulator ever made”. A fictional nation still bleeding from civil war has just overthrown a dictator, and elected you to lead it into whatever future you think is right, just as the world begins to light up with the countless devastating proxy wars of the 1950s. It is superb. The game, I mean. Not the wars. Those are very bad.
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Q: How do vets in dystopian future London diagnose skin conditions in poorly hounds?
I’ll always make it my business to check out a game if music is meaningfully integrated. From Crypt Of The NecroDancer‘s beat-hopping and Vib-Ribbon’s path-generating, to the Rock Bands and DJ Heros that clogged up all of our attics with plastic instruments, I love it all. Well… not all>.
I don’t need to tell you that Harmonix are the superstars of this world. They’re the ones that gifted us the cultural phenomenon of toy guitars, so you better believe I’ll be paying attention to whatever they release. It’s like that chart-topping act you had plastered all over your walls 20 years ago: they don’t get radio play anymore, but you’ll always give their new stuff a spin.
We are living, we are constantly told, through unprecedented times. Years like 2020 are the kind of years that make me think things like “woah, we are living through history, like, all the time>“, like a stoned 20-year-old gap year dude coming to self awareness for the first time in his life.
In Mesmer you get to be the history maker, in an old-world, European-esque city that is ruled over by a corrupt monarchy. Leading a revolution and storming the castle is, as it turns out, quite difficult, and requires a complex balancing act.