Late to the Game(s) - Retro! Reissued! Remastered! Oh my!

 Modern old-school RPG free on Epic store this week Obsidian entertainment are hardly neophytes in the gaming industry. The studio has worked on a number of licensed RPG (role-playing game) properties since opening its doors in 2003, including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights 2 , both sequels of BioWare games; Fallout: New Vegas , a spin-off of the Bethesda properties released between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 ; and South Park: The Stick of Truth , an irreverent turn-based RPG title published by Ubisoft.  In 2015, however, the studio was looking at developing its own original IP (intellectual property) and turned to Kickstarter to fund it. The resulting game – Pillars of Eternity – was a smash hit, earning a Metacritic score of 89 and spawning expansions and sequels of its own. The real-time turn based RPG, with its overhead isometric view and gameplay that allows you to pause the action while you issue individual orders to your party,...

Battle Planet – Judgement Day a fun and challenging rogue-lite shooter Sometimes you want a deep story in a video game. Sometimes you want a challenging puzzle. And sometimes, well, sometimes you just want to shoot things and watch them blow up. If that's what you're looking for Battle Planet – Judgement Day – a twin stick shooter, top down, rogue-lite – delivers in spades. The game isn't hard to grasp, but it does take time to master. Different game modes require the player to wipe out all the enemies on the screen, fend off enemies while defusing bombs before they can blow up a significant portion of the plant, or to beat bosses at the end of a planet level. Along the way you pick up various power-ups and weapon mods that can help you stay ahead of enemies or wipe them out in large swathes of death and destruction.  Boss fights are how you unlock new characters, like the Spy. The level-end boss fights, which pit you against various types of new and unique enemies while a...

Fullbright Company's exploration adventure game, Tacoma , free this week The space station Tacoma, from the game of the same name.   When I taught a game documentation class as an adjunct at Shawnee State, one of the things I tried to get my students to understand was the way video games have changed over the last 40 years. Many of us older gamers remember the games on our Atari and Nintendo systems as being extremely difficult. There was a time when I thought that was just me being a kid, but going back and attempting to play those games confirmed that – nope – it wasn't just me being a kid. Those games are insanely difficult!  There is a reason for this. The developers of those early home console games were coming at game design from a completely different angle than many modern game designers. When they started developing games, the market was made up of arcade machines. Machines that the proprietors of those arcades wanted you to keep pumping quarters into. Wha...

Broken Lines brings engrossing TRPG to PC and Switch Just because it's available on Nintendo Switch doesn't  mean    Broken Lines   is  a  kid-friendly game.  The game  play, dialogue  and  story are aimed at adults. Tactical role playing games (TRPGs) are an interesting genre. Usually aimed at the “hard core” gamer demographic, at higher levels and harder settings they can require chess-like planning, forethought, and troop coordination. Resource management, party makeup, and terrain advantages can all play into a successful campaign, or lead to a crushing defeat. It's the kind of game that appeals to those who love to crunch numbers and consider strategy. These aren't the types of games where you go in swinging a sword and screaming “Leroy Jenkins!” You have to think about how a fight could play out, and set it up in advance so that it plays out to your advantage. Sometimes, though, you just want to see a story play out and ...