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The Blood of Dawnwalker Review
The Blood of Dawnwalker is built around a limitation that most open-world RPGs spend their entire campaigns trying to avoid. Coen, a young man living in the plague-ravaged region of Vale Sangora, has thirty days and nights to save his family from Brencis, a powerful vampire who has taken control of the region. After being transformed into a Dawnwalker, Coen exists between two worlds, relying on his human abilities during the day and drawing on vampiric powers at night. There is no expectation that everything on the map will be completed before the final confrontation. In fact, the game is designed around the opposite idea: some things will have to be left behind. That decision gives Rebel Wolves’ first game its strongest characteristic. Quests, character development and other important activities consume portions of the limited time available, so deciding what to do becomes part of the role-playing experience. A quest is not simply another piece of content waiting to be cleared from the map. It is an investment, and choosing to pursue it can mean giving up another opportunity. [Read more…]
How to Fish is built around a simple idea: catch fish, sell them, buy better equipment and use that equipment to make your way home. The difference is what happens between catching something and getting paid for it. Fish do not simply disappear into an inventory. They remain physical objects in the world, and the player is free to deal with them using increasingly ridiculous methods. Fishing rods eventually share space with knives, brass knuckles and guns, while trick shots turn catches into opportunities to earn more money. There are quests to complete, bosses to defeat and several islands to work through, giving the game more structure than its deliberately silly premise initially suggests. The game begins with the player stranded on a small island after a drunken boating accident. The objective is to find a way home, and the route forward involves learning how to fish and earning enough money to improve the equipment available to you. Dazed Games has clearly designed the game around short, uncomplicated sessions rather than a large-scale adventure. The official Steam listing describes it as a one-to-four-player physics-based fishing simulator, and that description is useful because it places the emphasis where it belongs. How to Fish is less interested in simulating fishing than in using fishing as the foundation for a physics-driven co-op game. [Read more…]
Star Wars Zero Company Review
Star Wars has covered almost every major video game genre, but turn-based tactics has remained one of the more obvious gaps. Star Wars Zero Company finally fills it, putting a small team of mercenaries in the middle of the Clone Wars and giving players control over their movement, abilities, equipment and relationships. Developed by Bit Reactor, a studio founded by veterans of the modern XCOM games, Zero Company clearly understands the tactical formula it is working with. It borrows familiar ideas without pretending that they are entirely new, then builds enough of its own systems around them to give the campaign a distinct identity. Players take the role of Hawks, a former Republic officer who leads Zero Company, an unconventional group operating from the Den, a decommissioned cargo freighter permanently docked at the Ring of Kafrene. The company takes on contracts while becoming increasingly involved with the Infinite Coil, a Separatist-aligned paramilitary cult led by Kundri Fathom. Rather than building the campaign around established heroes from the films or animated series, Bit Reactor has created an original cast whose members come from very different backgrounds. That gives the story room to explore the Clone Wars from the perspective of people who are not necessarily fighting for the Republic out of duty or following the usual heroic path. [Read more…]
No More Room in Hell 2 Review
No More Room in Hell 2 is a cooperative zombie survival shooter that puts more emphasis on staying alive than on killing everything in sight. Ammunition is limited, useful equipment has to be scavenged, objectives take time to complete and extraction is never guaranteed. It is a slower and more deliberate experience than most modern zombie shooters, with its best moments coming from the decisions a team makes when resources are running low and the safest option is not always obvious. The 1.0 release gives the game a considerably stronger foundation. The finished package includes Objective and Survival modes, nine maps, 38 weapons, 10 zombie types, four difficulty levels, expanded progression, infection and extraction systems, a new tutorial and Solo Mode. It also represents a major technical improvement over the earlier version, with substantial work done on performance, visual effects, audio, loading and stability. [Read more…]
Mortal Shell II Review
Mortal Shell II is a striking example of a sequel understanding exactly what was worth keeping and what needed to change. The original Mortal Shell had an excellent central idea in its Shell system, but that idea was surrounded by a game that often felt smaller and less developed than its ambitions. Six years later, Cold Symmetry has taken that foundation and expanded it into a much more substantial action RPG, with faster combat, a larger interconnected world, deeper character development, more weapons and considerably more freedom in how you approach its challenges. The result is not a perfect Soulslike, and the increased scope introduces some problems of its own. The open world can make navigation unnecessarily confusing, some progression mechanics take time to explain themselves, and the sheer number of systems occasionally makes the game feel less focused than its best individual parts suggest. There are also camera problems and some technical oddities that are particularly noticeable because precise timing is so important during combat. Even with those shortcomings, Mortal Shell II is a confident sequel that succeeds because it develops the series’ own ideas instead of simply trying to reproduce what other games in the genre have already done. [Read more…]