This year has been unusually rich in the kind of game that I most enjoy: those that are open-ended, or provide a sandbox world for me to mess about in. We usually get a couple of these every year, but in 2011 we seem to have run into a minor bounty of the open stuff, which is good news for explorers and meanderers alike. I’ve gone into a bit more detail about why this pleases me below. >

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After far too long a hiatus, Double Fine Productions unexpectedly returned to PC last week, releasing their year-old, Halloween-themed RPG Costume Quest on Steam. Hopefully the rest of their games will follow, but in the meantime here’s what I made of their dress-up duff ‘em up. >

There aren’t enough costumes! Then again, any number of additional costumes probably still wouldn’t have been enough to dissuade me from using the very first one, the winged, rocket-lobbing robot suit, over and over again. Maybe it’s because it looks a bit like Thundercracker from Transformers, or maybe it’s just because I’m a boy. Boys like machines and violence, girls like pink and unicorns. Those are the rules. (Apart from when they’re not.) Costume Quest does, after all, play unashamedly to the child in us: it’s a celebration of the goofy cheesiness of American Halloween, admirably managing to keep cynicism out while never falling prey to mawkishness. (more…)