IGE's Ten Favorite Games of 2016

2016 is almost over, and that means it's time to look back at the games that stood out, that stuck with me for various reasons. I actually played quite a few more AAA games this year, due to finally getting a PS4, so this list does feature several non-indie picks, but that's only because they were just that good. 

So here's my ten favorite games of year, in no particular order, along with a few honorable mentions. 

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Hitman
Hitman is something rare and special: an honest-to-god comeback, a return-to-form that sets the bar for all future returns-to-form. From a game that made one question if IO had forgotten what made the series special, that altered many of the series' unique features in baffling ways, to a sleek game that pushes the Hitman series to new heights.

But even putting all that aside, Hitman is a triumph of game design, with sprawling clockwork sandboxes just waiting for you to poke and prod and manipulate, each one heavy with atmosphere and clever story vignettes, with so many ways to approach each mission that a single one can last you a dozen hours, and a huge amount of additional content that challenges your assassination prowess in new ways. This is the sequel I've been waiting a decade for.



Inside
At a glance, one might question what exactly makes Inside so special. Its visuals seem muted and dull, strip away everything and it's a game of mostly traversing right and solving environmental puzzles, it's a game where the only controls are move, jump, and grab. But Inside can't be fully appreciated at a glance; it must be played to understand its excellence.

Inside is a bleak crescendo of a cinematic platformer, every aspect building upon the other until its incredible finale. The animations, how the boy stumbles and struggles, how he looks with nervous glances or hunches over in tense fear. The aesthetic, rife with countless details and a cohesive palette that accentuates the game's depressing dystopian tone. The sound design, from the subtle heartbeat of a soundtrack to the boy's hurried breathing when stealth shifts to desperate pursuit. Everything coalesces to create an oppressive miasma of unease and tension, where you never feel safe, where every mistake is met with quick ruthless death, and its lean puzzle design is always driving you forward to more haunting imagery and more surreal discoveries.



The Last Guardian
I liked Ico, and I loved Shadow of the Colossus, so I had high expectations when I started The Last Guardian. And somehow, Ueda's vision was able to surpass them. This is an incredible journey of friendship told not through cutscenes or prose, but the medium's most unique element: interactivity. No doubt many great stories in gaming have been conveyed through audio logs and expert writing and compelling voice actors, but The Last Guardian tells the story of boy and beast through gameplay, through Trico's groundbreaking animations, through your petting and cleaning of feathers and removal of spears, through the desperate saves from certain death and the graceful leaps through this world's mysterious architecture.

From that foundation emerges a cinematic platformer that pushes boundaries on myriad fronts: playable set-pieces that rival Naughty Dog's work, tense platforming over vertigo-inducing heights, smart puzzles driven by cooperation, and an gripping ending that won't soon be forgotten



Titanfall 2
My eyes were opened to the joys of online multiplayer this year, first with Overwatch and Rocket League. then Battlefield 1 and Rainbow Six Siege. But I've played one shooter more than all of them, and that game was Titanfall 2. It's a demanding game, where quick reflexes and deft wall-running are your ultimate advantage, so it took a while for me to gain the skills to not get slaughtered. But with practice comes precision, and with precision comes some of the most intense and entertaining action I've enjoyed in a long time. There's nothing quite like wall-running past a missile salvo between warring titans, or sliding around a corner to cut down an incoming enemy, or grapple-hooking an ejecting pilot to deliver a killing mid-air blow. It's fast, furious, skillful, where a typical match can produce awesome emergent set-piece moments.

But those awesome set pieces aren't reserved to multiplayer, because Titanfall 2 also comes with one of coolest FPS campaigns in a while, a lean series of missions that shifts from one cool concept and encounter to the next, all wrapped in the stylish skillful parkour and combat that defines the series.



Oxenfree
The narrative adventure has seen a renaissance since Telltale revitalized it with The Walking Dead way back in 2012. From Dontnod's Life Is Strange to the historical 1979 Revolution, their influence has been undeniable. But while they may be the originator, Oxenfree is the innovator. Harkening back to the Spielbergian adventures of the 80s, this tale of friends on an island where dark forces lurk pushes the genre forward in wonderful ways. Its walk-and-talk mechanic allows for the kind of pacing that Telltale games and their ilk could never do, letting you make tough dialogue choices without breaking away from regular gameplay. And that dialogue is so natural, flows so smoothly, with interjections and interruptions and whatnot, a far cry from the turn-based style of conversation seen in everything from Mass Effect to Fables. Finally Night School found a clever way to do a New Game Plus within the confines of a narrative adventure, giving you another reason to revisit these likeable characters and atmospheric locales.



SuperHOT
It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years. No really, clever joke aside, it is. SuperHOT takes the one hit kills and limited ammo and encroaching enemies on all sides of Hotline Miami, and makes it a pseudo-turn-based action puzzler through its core time-moves-when-you-move mechanic. That simple idea changes everything. It's a game of minimalism and restraint, more time spent side-stepping bullets and planning your next move than attacking. Those methodical minutes-long sequences of time-slowed action only last mere seconds in real time. Every moment is one of careful movement, since every step by you means danger is one step closer. 

The combat in SuperHOT is the stuff of Hollywood magic, scenes that are usually only reserved for scripted moments and set pieces. You snatch a gun out of the air and spin around to kill the enemies approaching from behind. Point blank shots are negated by a katana slicing the bullet in half. You weave between bullets with effortless ease. It's a low-poly dance through a rain of crystalline shards and it never gets old



Stephen’s Sausage Roll
2016 was the year of the puzzler. The Witness, Obduction, SHENZHEN I/O, Recursed, Sethian, Thoth, and more, this year was one with quality puzzle games of all kinds. But none impressed or stumped me as much as Stephen's Sausage Roll. It may not seem like much, a Sokoban-style puzzler with a low-fi aesthetic, but that's where the genius of the games lies. Stephen's Sausage Roll is an ever growing puzzle box of new mechanics, mechanics that were always there, hidden in plain sight through level design alone.

Your basic toolset of rotation and fork is so versatile, allowing for puzzles so satisfyingly diverse and tricky, it is astounding to think back to how the early puzzles were only about rotating and pushing sausages with your fork. This is an ingenious work of level design and clever puzzles that should not be missed.



House of the Dying Sun
At one point, House of the Dying Sun was a bigger game, an ambitious sprawling Mount-and-Blade-style campaign with procedural factions and an open map. But instead the finished game is a lean collection of hand-crafted missions, polished and distilled to focus on one thing: combat. Combat is House of the Dying Sun's core element, each mission dropping you into a volatile situation and asking you to seamlessly manage both intense dogfighting from your interceptor cockpit and fleet tactics from the macro RTS view. No map to travel, no trading or hangars to buy a better fleet, no smaller jobs to build up your reputation, just relentless combat where positioning and expert flight is key to survival.

But it would remiss to not single out House of the Dying Sun's stellar sound design. The audio makes the game. The muted rumble and thuds of your weapons. The rasp of your oxygen mask. The tinny chatter of your wingmen, The mechanical whir when you reload or switch weapons. The sound design draws you into the combat, gives every action an immersive and atmospheric reaction



Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
You know a game is going to be good when a demo shifts your expectations from "Huh, seems interesting" to "I need to keep playing, please release already". In an ideal world, Shadow Tactics will be for real-time Commandos-style tactics what Divinity was for CRPGs. Polished to a mirror sheen, this is a game of weaving through vision cones, of carefully planning out precisely timed distractions and executions, of managing all your of team's special skills and abilities to overcome seemingly impossible odds. A single mission can last 2-3 hours, as you plan and study and observe and act and react and quick-save like a madman. This is one of the best stealth games of 2016, and the best Commandos-like in a long time.



Imbroglio
Michael Brough's games have often hinged on the dichotomy of simple on the outside and surprisingly deep within, a lo-fi aesthetic contrasted by challenging strategy. His latest game Imbroglio is no different; it plays like a distant cousin of his previous roguelike 868-Hack, with a focus on positioning and smart use of your abilities, but expanded exponentially and offering surprising complexity.

Imbroglio is many things. It's a roguelike, as you tactically use different skills and turn-based movement to outlast increasingly challenging groups of enemies. It's a card game, with each class having unique skills and limitations that define the kind of deck you can build. And it's a board game, as you use those cards to build the floor of the board itself, carefully considering synergy between abilities and your health and mana and where enemies will enter the arena. Imbroglio is the kind of simple-to-play yet surprisingly complex game that you'll often find on mobile, and one of the best roguelikes the platform has to offer.

Honorable Mentions:

Sethian
I've never played anything like Sethian. Essentially Arrival: The Game, it's a narrative adventure/linguistic puzzler that challenges you to learn how to read and communicate in an alien language. Wholly unique and very clever

N++
I'd place the physics-driven platforming and slick smooth controls of the original N up there with games like Super Meat Boy as one of the forefathers of the indie precision platformer, and N++ is the culmination of 12 years of refinement on that original game, with thousands of smartly-designed stages that wringe diverse platforming challenges from a simple moveset.

Devil Daggers
If DOOM was the modern update of the old-school shooter, Devil Daggers is the other side of the coin, distilling the genre to its leanest form. You, your weapon, an arena, a cacophonous onslaught of eldritch horrors, now survive. An oppressive symphony of distorted shrieks, skittering legs, guttural roars, echoing moans brings to life a bestiary of bone and flesh and too many appendages. Devil Daggers' sound design is some of the best you'll hear this year

Thumper
The most intense, most satisfying, and most draining test of reflexes since Super Hexagon, Thumper is equal parts simplicity and excess, easy-to-understand but challenging-to-master gameplay within a sensory overload of movement, color, and sound. If Super Hexagon was hypnotic in its shifting twisting geometric minimalism, then Thumper is 2001's mesmerizing mindfuck given metal life.

The Witness
Jonathan Blow's seven-years-in-the-making magnus opus is a puzzle game masterpiece, a vibrant Myst-like that wordlessly teaches you to understand its expansive repertoire of mechanics

DOOM
You are not a one-man army. You are a god of death, a bringer of ruin and slaughter to the forces of hell. They fear you and rightfully so, as you unleash unstoppable fury upon them through relentlessly fast first-person shooter action

PC Review #153: Thumper

Title: Thumper
Developer: Drool
Platforms: PC, PS4
Price: $19.99
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Would it be hyperbole to say that Thumper is the most intense, most satisfying, and most draining test of reflexes since Super Hexagon? Much like Terry Cavanagh's infamously challenging arcade game, Thumper is equal parts simplicity and excess, easy-to-understand but challenging-to-master gameplay within a sensory overload of movement, color, and sound. If Super Hexagon was hypnotic in its shifting twisting geometric minimalism, then Thumper is 2001's mesmerizing mind@!%$ given metal life.

From the first section of its nine levels to its last hellish stage, Thumper hurls you into a kaleidoscopic tempest, your chrome beetle racing along twisting tracks and claustrophobic tunnels as eldritch beings of light and metal twist and unfurl within the void. It's a visual gut punch of an experience, that I can only imagine is enhanced to eye-bleeding levels in VR. But even with headphones and a regular screen, Thumper's intensity is peerless.

Imagine those classic inputs of a Guitar Hero or Rock Band - tap and hold to the beat at the right time - and you can grasp Thumper. Strip away the speed and visual chaos, and Thumper is as easy to understand as those games. Thump down on markers, turn and grind against the turns, hover over spikes and through rings. Even as more elements and nuances are introduced, the game remains a mechanically lean test of focus and reflex.

Success in Thumper is draining, exhausting, exhilarating. Like some cyberpunk birdcall, you answer the music's beat with every shockwave of your thumps and spraying sparks of grinds, until you're conditioned to react to each signal and tone with practiced skill. Success requires you to act on the fine line between focus and near-clairvoyant intuition, that zone and flow that the best in the genre let you enter.

Success in Thumper is tactile and physical in ways that few games can tout. You feel every thump, every slam into a turn, every missed beat. Your fingers hurt, you feel your heart thumping in your chest, your vision is locked on the road ahead, you twist and duck in sync with the serpentine track. Thumper is a chemical reaction in game form; every action has a reaction, that flares and explodes and flashes and shatters in response.

I've never been able to get into the music/rhythm genre. Even my favorite - Crypt of the Necrodancer - is enjoyed more for its clever roguelike design than its music game elements. But that's only a testament to Thumper's masterful design and audiovisual hellscape. It's one of those special games that can cross genre lines and even appeal to those who wouldn't normally be interested. Moving to the rhythm has never been this relentless and satisfying.

Thumper is available to purchase on Steam, Humble, itch.io, and Playstation.

PC Review #151: Clustertruck

Title: Clustertruck

Developer: Landfall Games

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4

Price: $14.99

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Clustertruck is an exercise in simplicity. Strip everything away, and you're left with a frantic game of first person platforming across a dynamically shifting path. It's how developer Landfall Games builds upon that foundation that Clustertruck truly impresses, delivering a chaotic rush of aerial acrobatics, insane wrecks, and unpredictable levels.

In this self-described "truckformer", every stage begins the same way: you, on top of a truck, amid a convoy of similar trucks driving forward. For a split second, all is calm...and then Clustertruck's brand of chaos ensues. Drivers weave and crash, trucks tumble and jackknife and barrel onwards with reckless abandon. Somewhere up ahead lies your goal, and you must navigate these high-speed pile-ups to reach it. That alone would be a satisfying challenge, as you leap off trucks in mid-air, wall-jump off siding, and truck-surf through the chaos. The dynamic nature of the convoys makes success a matter of a keen eye and fast reflexes, as you use any truck-based surface to maintain your forward momentum.

But Clustertruck's levels aren't asphalt straightaways. Across themed worlds that range from steampunk to sci-fi, these levels are mad gauntlets of hazards and chasms and multi-tiered environments. Massive hammers smash trucks into the void. Lasers and barriers force you to evade with precision. Huge drops send you plummeting to roadways far below, aligning your descent to land atop more trucks. Gravity wells send trucks and yourself flying across levels, long soaring seconds of airtime that often challenge you to leap from truck to truck.

It's this variety in dangers, terrain, and level design that turns Clustertruck's already-intense style of first-person traversal into a wild test of platforming prowess. Every level and region introduces something new, be it a shift in how levels are designed or some new obstacle, sometimes for only a single stage.

Death is frequent but rarely frustrating, since instant restarts and relatively short stages let you quickly get into a flow of "try again and improve" on even the most hectic levels. But once you've survived the game's 90 levels, what other challenges could await a truckformer-ing master? Speedrunning and earning points by pulling off tricky maneuvers is one avenue, but more importantly is the collection of skills and abilities waiting to be unlocked, that completely change your approach to your levels.

Slow-motion alone grants you more precision and air control to deftly dodge and stick landings, the grappling hook lets you latch onto trucks and the scenery to zip forward, and unlocks like the jetpack and double jump drastically increase the distances you can leap. Additional unlocks turn the game into a truck-filled version of SuperHOT where time is linked to your movement or add additional explosions and danger for a score multiplier.

It's choosing your loadout of unlocks that flip Clustertruck on its head. Leaping from truck to truck is crazy enough, but hooking on a truck as it tumbles through the air then slowing time to leap off the truck with perfect precision to reach the end of a level is another level of satisfaction. It combines the fast-paced traversal with an element of experimentation that changes how you look at the level architecture and truck placement. Trucks in mid-air are grapple anchor points, a tunnel lets you bounce a truck spawn pellet down the track, and so on.

Clustertruck takes such a simple premise and just wrings every possibility from it, as truck-surfing evolves into daring leaps over missiles as those trucks fly across huge gaps. If the developer's levels are this insane, one can only imagine what kind of gauntlets the community will create through the in-game editor.

Clustertruck is available on Steam, GOG, and the Playstation Store. The game is coming to Xbox One soon.

SitRep: Broforce (Post-Release)

Title: Broforce
Developer: Free Lives
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4
Price: $14.99
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It's been a few years since I last covered Broforce, so long that the game has since left Early Access and been expanded and updated in myriad ways. The most recent update grew the already diverse broster with three more heroes, building upon an already engaging foundation.

The quite fitting July 4th update introduced the fearsome trio of bros stylized after Bruce Lee, Dirty Harry, and Tank Girl. As usual, each adds their own unique strengths and attacks to your arsenal, from Lee's famous fighting skills to Tank Girl's own personal tank to obliterate mooks. Other post-release updates injected some electric action into the mix, with the combined power of Highlander and Mortal Kombat-alum Raiden.

You can test your skills with these new bros, and the rest of the game's line-up, in new single-character Tactical Missions, and unleash powerful perks with useful Supply Drops that can boost your abilities or distract aliens, among others.

Broforce is available on Steam, Humble, and the Playstation Store.

PC Review #144: Enter The Gungeon

Title: Enter The Gungeon

Developer: Dodge Roll

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4

Price: $14.99

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Perhaps the most apt and concise description for Enter The Gungeon would be the lovechild of The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne. The crazy weapons, stacking items, weird enemies, and random loot of the former, the fast-paced, hectic, evasion-heavy action of the latter. But on the other hand, that label is a disservice to Enter The Gungeon. While it certainly has the DNA of those other titles, the game most certainly has an identity and style all its own.

The Gungeon awaits. A mysterious temple, where many venture to seek out the ultimate treasure, a gun that destroy their past, where lead cults and ballistic inhabitants thrive, an ecosystem in its own right. As one of four heroes -the Convict, the Marine, and so on - you descend into the randomly generated depths, armed with only a mediocre starting loadout and your skills to survive.

Skill is perhaps the most crucical aspect that elevates Enter The Gungeon above other entries in the action roguelite/shooter subgenre. When loot pickups fail you, when you're having bad run, when you're low on heath or getting surrounded by bullets and enemies, you can always rely on the dodge roll. With precise timing and leaping at the right angle, you can dodge anything, from masses of bullets to screen-slicing lasers. Combined with limited ammo and the need to reload, Enter The Gungeon is easily the most skillful game of its ilk.

But dodging will only get you so far. And thankfully, as you might expect from its title pun and its firearm-themed stages, Enter The Gungeon offers a vast and varied selection of weapons and items to find. While the basic AK-47s and sawed-off shotguns and machine pistols feel satisfying to use, they can't compare to weird wacky weapons you'll find in chests or buy from shopkeepers. One gun fires an egg bullet that unleashes tiny homing baby bullets. Another throws out globs of oil that you can ignite when the gun switches to fireballs upon reload. Other guns freeze, poison, set aflame, convert to your side, electrify. And more still throw off t-shirts and bees and junk mail and other exceedingly silly ammunition. Each weapon feels unique, some designed for specific situations while others are room-clearing monsters that can end a boss in seconds.

Items, both active and passive, only add to that variety. Much like Isaac, the stat increases and weapon buffs can stack in myriad ways, from swapping out your dodge roll for a jetpack to increasing your movement speed to more unique effects such as linking bullets with chain lightning and causing ice shrapnel to shred the room when you get damaged.

As you progress, you'll encounter NPCs hidden in the dungeons, trapped in cages, waiting to freed. Once rescued, they'll show up in levels or back in the hub area, opening new shops where you buy items and weapons to add to the randomized loot pool or shortcuts or offering side challenges for money and rewards.

But more than the weapons and the items and the dodge roll, it's the little touches and environmental details that make Gungeon's combat so satisfying. The way dead enemies and debris can flung aganst the walls by the force of explosions. How book pages flutter and drift across the floor as you fight in a library, How oil stains the ground and leaves scorches marks in carpets once a fire dies down. Your reflection in pools of water. The puffs of smoke and particles from bullets hitting the walls and barriers. 

Enter The Gungeon takes the best elements of the subgenre - the fierce combat, the thrill of uncovering new weapons and discovering powerful synergies between items, the sense of mastery and progression - and blends it all together in a single polished package. You can find the game on Steam, Humble, GMG, GOG, and PS4.

The Watchlist: 2Dark

Title: 2Dark
Developer: Gloomywood
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing 2016
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A unique mix of stealth, horror and adventure game conceived by the creative force behind Alone in the Dark

Games have taken us to all manner of terrifying places, filled with every kind of monster. The twisted fusions of human and machine deep under the sea in SOMA, the ravenous undead of Resident Evil and fungal infected of The Last of Us, the psychological scars made flesh in the fog-choked streets of Silent Hill. 2Dark revolves around a very different horror, almost banal in comparison to the creatures and places of other games: serial killers and kidnapped children.

2Dark picks up 17 years after the protagonist Mr. Smith lost his wife and children in a brutal attack. Hardened and devastated by the incident, he's now a broken man driven to hunt down the sadistic killers inhabiting the streets and outskirts of Gloomywood, But these aren't your everyday realistic human monsters, but more akin to the psychos found in an episode Hannibal or Dexter or lurking in the alleys of Gotham. Killers with grimy vermin-infested buildings, murderous clowns in dilapidated carnivals, pig-headed butchers.

Scared children hidden away in cages await in the lairs of those killers, and that's where 2Dark combines its dark disturbing horror with stealth, strategy, and action. Creeping through the shadows, you'll need to avoid attracting the attention of killers, their henchmen, and other dangers, avoiding line of sight, and carefully using lights to find your way through oppressively dark basements and corridors. A gun is your last loud resort, so evading or hacking enemies into bloody voxel pieces with a blade and blunt objects are the best options.

But getting in is the easy part. Getting out leading a group of terrified children is quite another challenge. This is where 2Dark introduces some puzzle and strategy aspects to the stealth horror, as you plan the most efficient exit, trying to avoid gruesome sights or the gory remains of your kills as not to cause the kids to scream and cry in horror.

2Dark is expected to release later this year; you can learn more about the game here.

The Watchlist: Neon Chrome

Title: Neon Chrome
Developer: 10tons Ltd
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Android
Release 2016
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A ruthless cyberpunk top-down shooter

Two years ago, 10tons surprised me with their blood-soaked dual stick Crimsonland, a furious shooter that throw massive hordes of enemies at you and mixed up the action with weapon unlocks and perks. Neon Chrome follows the same basic structure of dual stick action, unlocks, and sci-fi, but with a new focus on cyberpunk megacorps, stealth, and a more cautious approach before the explosions start.

Waging war against the massive tower of the titular megacorporation and its Overseer, you remotely control augmented "assets", divided between classes like assassin or hacker. As you battle through each procedurally-generated levels, you unlock new cybernetic enhancements, more weapons, and skill buffs, to face survive increasingly dangerous defenses.

I've been playing the beta for the past week or so, and Neon Chrome feels like quite change from the instant non-stop action of Crimsonland. The pacing is easily the biggest difference, as enemies aren't aware of your presence when you first arrive, If you're a hacker, you might be able to disable some lasers or turrets, while an assassin with a cloaking augment could even the odds before going on the offensive. New enhancements, ranging from an armed drone to stronger melee and increased speed, can be chosen as you move between levels, while more offensive power-ups let you unleash area-clearing lasers and missile strikes.

You'll need those tools because the enemies in Neon Chrome are more advanced than the charging hordes of Crimsonland. Rotating turrets, mines, and security drones defend rooms, and heavily-armed soldiers patrol, wielding shotguns, machines, or even riot shields which force you to flank and attack enemies' exposed backs. Alerted foes can call in devastating reinforcements that only give you a couple of seconds to prepare, and powerful bosses will test your shooting prowess.

Neon Chrome is still in beta, and will be releasing later this year. You can learn more about the game here.

The Watchlist: Anew: The Distant Light

Title: Anew: The Distant Light
Developer: Resonator, LLC
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
In development
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An open-world, dual-stick action game which showcases a beautifully painted, storybook world

From Limbo to the upcoming Orphan, there's something compelling about a child enduring a harsh and dangerous world. Anew: The Distant Light follows a child on a distant moon, light-years from home and on a critical mission.

Set on a sprawling world, extending from rocky barren surface to subterranean lakes, you'll shoot and leap your way through dangerous beings and deadly hazards. A high-tech suit enhances your mobility, granting you the skills to gracefully dive beneath the water or use jet boosters for augmented jumps.

As you explore farther, new technology will expand your options, letting you solve puzzles and speed across the moon in alien vehicles. But agility alone isn't enough to survive this ruthless landscape, and an arsenal of powerful energy guns, grenades, and more lets you hold your own against hordes of alien creatures, lurking predators. and heavily-armed inhabitants. 

Anew brings this alien moon to life with a vibrant art style and smooth animations. Snow coats the dimly lit surface around your landing site, water sloshes and splashes as you fight under the surface, and lasers fly across the screen in furious neon streaks.

Anew: The Distant Light is still early in development, and is slated to release on PC and consoles. You can learn more about the game and find more screenshots here.

The Watchlist: Consortium: The Tower

Title: Consortium: The Tower
Developer: Interdimensional Games Inc
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing late 2017
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The ultimate single player first-person immersive sim. Explore, talk, fight or sneak through The Churchill Tower in 2042

The immersive sim. It's a small subgenre of games, an eclectic mix of themes and gameplay all bound by a goal of letting you role-play as a character in believable reactive worlds that mold to your choices and actions. Deus Ex, STALKER, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a few others, but perhaps most recently, Consortium. An ambitious sci-fi game set in the confines of a single plane, yet feeling like an expansive experience thanks to the depth of its narrative, relationships, and gameplay freedom.

Now developer IDGI is back with Consortium: The Tower, an even more ambitious sequel that takes what worked in the first game and evolving those elements on an impressive scale and scope.

Consortium: The Tower takes place in a near-future London, in the massive Churchill Tower, now controlled by a mysterious terrorist faction. You play as Bishop Six, an agent of the titular organization, on a mission to observe, report, and handle the situation. How you accomplish those goals are up to you. The tower is home to a whole array of different groups -  terrorists, police, civilians, Consortium and other more enigmatic individuals - each with their plans and agendas. You can sky-dive to flank enemies from above and unleash devastating firepower, cloak and sneak through unseen, explore the tower for better routes and hack into terminals for useful data and hidden secrets.

But Consortium wouldn't be an immersive sim if it doesn't offer choices beyond the shooting and sneaking. The spoken word here is as powerful as any weapon or piece of technology; in fact, it'll be possible to be complete a playthrough without firing a shot. Find yourself in a tense standoff with an enemy squad and you can press the talk button (that lets you engage in conversation anytime, anywhere), throw down your gun to defuse the tension, and convince the group that you're not a threat or even to fight alongside you.

Going further than that, disobey your orders, go against the Consortium's wishes, and you're be disavowed by the agency. In another game, that would be a game over, but here, The Tower continues along, except now you're a rogue agent. That status may make you very valuable to other factions and individuals in the game.

While the game is already ambitious, the developers have even bigger plans if budget allows. Their vision for The Tower is one of a nearly fully-explorable environment, with areas ranging from malls and apartments to museums and industrial areas, essentially what you'd imagine an actual skyscraper of this magnitude would contain.

Consortium: The Tower is expected to release late next year and is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. You can learn about the game here.

The Watchlist: Song of Horror

Title: Song of Horror
Developer: Protocol Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing 2017
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Story-driven third person survival horror

Developer Protocol Games first revealed Song of Horror earlier this year. Unfortunately, their first attempt on Kickstarter failed, but now the game is back, Greenlit on Steam and slated for consoles, and looking even more terrifying.

Song of Horror is a survival horror game that promises to blend the old-school fixed angle horror of classic Resident Evil and Alone In The Dark with a modern approach. You control the fates of 16 characters, all haunted and stalked by an insidious eldritch Presence, a cast of normal men and women against an ancient cunning evil.

While the characters in Song of Horror are weaponless, they aren't defenseless. You can run, and hide, slow its advance, avoid its shadowy clutches by carefully watching and listening for clues, But if the Presence does kill you, the story isn't over. Similar to games like Heavy Rain and Until Dawn, Song of Horror features a narrative that molds around character deaths.

I was able to try out an early demo of the game, featuring the first chapter set in the Husher Mansion. (Each chapter takes place in a different location.) For a game that still at least two years away, Song of Horror already feels polished and promising. Don't expect many jump scares; the tension and dread here comes from knowing you're not alone; that you're being stalked by a force that can kill you in a moment anywhere anytime; that can't be stopped, only slowed and avoided. The experience is one of measured pacing, cautious careful exploration, and moments of desperate flight as you try to outrun and delay the Presence.

Song of Horror is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter, and is expected to release in mid 2017. You can learn more about the game here; the demo should be releasing publicly soon.

PC Review #132: Galak-Z

Title: Galak-Z
Developer: 17 Bit Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux. PS4
Price: $19.99
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I had been anticipating Galak-Z for a while. The fluid combat, the bright flashy visuals, mech mode, roguelike elements...all signs pointed towards a fast-paced frenetic dual-stick shooter with screen-filling missile barrages. And Galak-Z definitely has all those things and more, but what I wasn't expecting was a deliberately-paced shooter with a focus on stealth and cautious exploration. It was a welcome surprise.

As ace pilot Atak, you alone must take on the might of the Empire. But while you may be outnumbered, you aren't outmatched; your fighter is an agile weapon, able to strafe and reverse direction with ease. Part of the challenge and fun of Galak-Z is mastering its movement, learning to handle momentum and thrust, how to dodge over bullets and circle around enemies.

Modulating your thrust is crucial, because despite its frenetic appearance, Galak-Z actually has a large focus on stealth. Reminiscent of Mark of the Ninja, enemy light of sight is visually represented on screen, and the sound of engines displayed as a circle around your ship. Enemies will investigate suspicious sounds, become alerted if they catch a glimpse of you. You only have a few health and shield points, and enemies attack relentlessly, so hiding and flanking and attacking when you have the advantage is key to surviving.

But when combat does finally erupt, it does so in a spectacle of swooping missiles, colorful explosions, flaring thrusters and neon bullets. Galak-Z certainly doesn't disappoint in the action department. Weaving between lasers, unleashing a flurry of missiles, then boosting out of sight to flank your enemies is always satisfying. Mods and blueprints found through each stage can upgrade your ship with extensive array of bullet types, shot speed and range, and enhancements like immunity to lava.

Sometimes your arsenal isn't enough and Galak-Z features emergent gameplay elements that allow for more strategic depth. Enemy factions fight each other, so leading a fleet of Empire ships into a nest of space bugs is always a viable tactic. The environments are filled with hazards that can be used against enemies, from lava pools and drifting debris to alien growths that unleash shield-draining spores. Choosing where you fight can be just as important as how you fight.

But no element is Galak-Z is as stylish as its seamless mech transformations, At the press of a button, your ship shifts into a sword and shield-wielding robot that can slash through a squadron, or grapple an enemy and fling it into an asteroid. Fluidly switching between ship and mech mode, along with stealth and environmental hazards and your arsenal, lets you turn the tides against the game's challenging enemies and bosses.

The PC version of Galak-Z features a new Arcade mode, to complement its original roguelike structure. The threat of permadeath looms over every encounter in Galak-Z, but Arcade mode lets you save your progress and restart stages without losing all your upgrades.

Galak-Z is available on Steam, as well as PS4

The Watchlist: Indivisible

Title: Indivisible
Developer: Lab Zero Games
Platforms:PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing 2018
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Indivisible is a side-scrolling RPG in the vein of Valkyrie Profile, spanning a huge fantasy world inspired by our own world’s various cultures and mythologies

Lab Zero's Skullgirls was a gorgeous fighter with incredible hand-drawn animations, and now they're applying that artistic approach and polish to the RPG genre, with their next project Indivisible.

Indivisible follows young Ajna on her journey to learn the truth behind both a devastating attack on her home and a mysterious mystical ability awakened within her. Ajna's quest will take her across the globe, through lands inspired by Japanese, Central American, and other mythologies and architecture.

Indivisible is split between two types of gameplay. Exploration revolves around Metroidvania-esque platforming, as you wall-jump and dash through towns, temples, and other varied locations. As you progress, Ajna will gather new items and skills to traverse the environments in new ways, from clambering up walls with your axe to swinging across gaps with a rope dart.

But you're not the only one roaming these locations; dangerous enemies lurk as well. Running into them or getting attacks seamlessly shifts the gameplay to Valkyrie Profile-inspired combat. Ajna has the ability to absorb special individuals and manifest them as incarnations in battle.

From the master archer Zebei to the sword whip-wielding Tungar, you'll be able to fight alongside three companions, each tied to a face button. Like a fighting game, combat features combos and specials, blending each incarnation's moves to stun, slow, and damage your foes. Lab Zero's signature art style brings those battles and locations to life with beautiful details and fluid animations.

Indivisible is slated for release in 2018 and is currently seeking funds on Indiegogo. You can support the game, and download the surprisingly lengthy and incredibly polished prototype, here.

The Watchlist: Sharp Flint

Title: Sharp Flint
Developer: EATMEAT Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One
In development
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A survival/hunting game where you can chase and hunt mammoths, wolves, and other titans of the ice age

Sharp Flint takes the popular explore/survival/crafting genre and strips out the zombies, the post-apocalyptic settings, the alien worlds, the isolated islands or voxel landscapes in favor of a low-poly experience set in the prehistoric era.

Across sprawling forests and plains, your goal in Sharp Flint is simple: survive and hunt. Inspired by games like Monster Hunter, you'll carefully traverse expansive maps filled with dynamic herds, prey and predators, and both random and scripted events.

Hunting in Sharp Flint will be more complex than simply throwing a spear at a mammoth. Wind and scent will play a role in tracking and stalking herds, and you'll need to use the environment to your advantage to craft new clothing and weapons. Hazards like quicksand and rock slides can hurt you or be used against fierce predators.

But be careful, because your life is not the only one at stake. You need to gather food and resources to support your family and clan. While the game isn't a roguelike, it will feature a lives system based on the number of children you have. Upon death, you'll take control of your oldest child and inherit your father's equipment; when you run out of characters, you'll need to start a new game. This lives/family management adds a persistent element to Sharp Flint's ice age hunting and gathering.

Sharp Flint is still in development, and is aiming for release on PC, Mac, and consoles. You can sign up for a newsletter on the game's site, and follow its progress on Twitter.

PC Review #127: SOMA

Title: SOMA
Developer: Frictional Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4
Price: $29.99
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Amnesia: The Dark Descent is considered by many to be one of the scariest experiences the medium has to offer. The supernatural game forced the player to flee and hide from monstrosities whose mere visages tore at your character's sanity.

SOMA sheds that game's Lovecraftian trappings for a research station on the ocean floor, but the horror and the oppressive atmosphere remains, anchored by a compelling and thought-provoking story influenced by the works of Harlan Ellison and Philip K. Dick.

Soma puts you in the frightened and confused shoes of Simon, a man trapped in the sprawling underwater facility known as Pathos-II. Horrific things roam the dank dilapidated corridors, monstrous fusions of flesh and machine, and like Amnesia, hiding from and sneaking around these creatures is your only course of action.

Saying anything more specific about SOMA's engrossing narrative would do a disservice to its carefully-paced reveals. But rest assured, it's a journey filled with haunting moments, interesting sci-fi concepts, and compelling questions about humanity.

"Haunting" is probably the most apt way to describe SOMA's atmosphere. While there are enemies in the game, encounters are sparing, which, in turn, makes each one more memorable and unpredictable. The horror in SOMA comes less from its terrifying creatures and more from the atmosphere, the themes, the sound design and setting. Every moment is fraught with tension, enhanced by the music and the groaning of metal being crushed by the immense ocean pressure. The game is a slow-burn experience, letting the unnerving uneasy implications of grotesque sights and of your actions stew in your mind.

SOMA's sci-fi horror is spread across 8 to 10 hours of thought-provoking narrative, cautious exploration, puzzles, and desperate stealth around bio-mechanical monsters. If you're looking for a horror game that's focused on dread and vice-like tension and story rather than jump scares, or are interested in high-concept science fiction stories, SOMA is a must-play.

You can purchase SOMA on Steam, GOG, and PS4.

The Watchlist: Hello, Neighbor

Title: Hello, Neighbor
Developer: Dynamic Pixels
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4
In development
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A first-person tactical thriller puzzler with a tricky self-studying A.I. as an opponent

I remember the first time I encountered the concept of an adapting AI in games. It was playing the freeware shmup Warning Forever; that game pit you against a single boss that adapted to your tactics, eventually growing into a screen-filling monstrosity bristling with lasers and armor. It's a fascinating concept, which is why the upcoming Hello, Neighbor caught my attention.

Reminiscent of movies like Hitchcock's Rear Window and Disturbia, Hello, Neighbor puts you in the shoes of an man living across from a suspicious neighbor. And like those movies, your goal is to figure out your neighbor's secret and eventually make your way into his home. What could he be hiding in the basement?

But there's one significant obstacle in your way, and that's the fact your neighbor is no ordinary scripted NPC. He's powered by AI that will learn from and adapt to your attempts and tactics, fortifying his house, setting traps and preparing in ways that counter your methods. The developers state that the longer you play, the more dangerous and intelligent the neighbor becomes. You might enter his home to find the floor littered with bear traps...

The prototype footage showcases the game's interesting stealth-based gameplay, as you lure the neighbor outside by throwing a tomato at his window and turn the TV on as a distraction while you hide in a closet. Once seen, a desperate chance ensues, as the neighbor smashes through a window to cut off your escape. Fleeing back into the house, you find the back door barred shut; trying to pry off the wooden boards with a hammer, you're captured and awaken to your doomed fate.

Hello, Neighbor's concept of stealth-puzzle tactics against an adaptive AI looks very promising. A Kickstarter is slated for October; you can learn more about the game here.

The Watchlist: GRIP

Title: GRIP
Developer: Caged Element
Platforms: PC, PS4
Releasing late 2016
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Inspired by the classic Rollcage games, with a lethal mix of heavy weapons and ferocious speed, GRIP is a new breed of combat racer.

There's nothing quite like a good arcade racer. Burnout 3, Motorstorm, Need for Speed. More recently, the indie revival seen with Distance, Drift Stage, Power Drive, and others. The arcade racer is synonymous with high-speed action, over-the-top tracks, fun handling unmoored from realistic physics, and GRIP promises all that and more.

A spiritual successor to the PS1 Rollcage series, GRIP isn't concerned with realism. It's about combat racing at incredible speeds, taking out rivals with a vast array of weaponry and pick-ups ranging from missile barrages and railguns to manually-directed shields and EMPs. Across unique alien landscapes, your big-wheeled armored car can throttle up walls and ceilings with reckless abandon, evading obstacles, maneuvering around vehicles, and taking physics-defying shortcuts.

Other racers aren't the only targets for your powerful arsenal. The tracks, set in futuristic cities, alien jungles and sprawling deserts, feature destructible environments to crash through and obliterate. The chaotic high-speed action will be spread across a career mode, an arcade mode with numerous modifiers, and time trials. And if blowing up AI racers gets boring, you can blow up your friends in GRIP's local and online multiplayer modes.

GRIP is slated for potential release in late 2016, and is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. You can learn more about the game on its website and Facebook/Twitter pages.

SitRep: Twin Souls

Title: Twin Souls
Developer: Lince Works
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing mid-2016
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Last time I wrote about Twin Souls, back in June 2014, the game was in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately Lince Works didn't meet their funding goal, but despite that setback, development continued. Now over a year later, Twin Souls is looking better than ever and is even coming to consoles.

While the core concept of a revived assassin who can control the shadows remains the same, Twin Souls has evolved in every other aspect. Aside from creating shadows to aid stealth, your powers are more versatile now, from the ranged Kunai shadow dagger and explosive Shinen trap to creating decoys with your Sakkaku ability, among others. You can devour your foes with shadow dragons and serpents, erasing their bodies from existence, or emerge from ceilings and walls to strike. A cover system and crouching compliments your powerful abilities.

However, your enemies are also better equipped to deal with your shadowy tactics. There are light barriers and runes that can block your path and make it harder to sneak around. Guards can wield light-imbued swords, use light spells to illuminate the darkness, and fire light arrows from a distance.

Twin Souls' gameplay isn't the only element to receive an upgrade. Your protagonist Aragami was given a complete re-design, now sporting a more colorful, form-fitting outfit, and brought to life through motion capture and cloth physics. The cel-shaded visuals are more vibrant and vivid, thanks to new shaders, lighting, and other graphical effects.

Twin Souls is aiming for a mid 2016 release, and is currently playable at Gamescom. You can learn more about the game here and follow development through its TIGSource Devlog and Twitter page.

The Watchlist: BitUp

Title: BitUp
Developer: Cosmogonia
Platforms: PC, PS4
Late 2016
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Think Samurai Shodown meets Megaman...[with a] 3D-Impresionist look inspired by early 90's games

Within a world of pixels, a digital inhabitant searches for answers about his existence. You are Bit, a futuristic samurai exploring the sprawling environment of the forgotten game in which he resides. From dark forests to mountain ridges, you roam a vibrant cubist/impressionist world, hacking and slashing through the myriad enemies along your journey for the truth.

BitUp will be a side-scrolling hack-n-slash game; collecting pixels from defeated enemies will allow you to upgrade your arsenal, manipulate the world, and unlock new paths. New weapons and gear is critical to defeat the varied robotic foes you'll face, from sword-wielding ninjas to bladed drones.

BitUp is still relatively early in development, with a tentative release planned for late 2016. Recently the project shifted from Unity to Unreal Engine 4. You can learn more about BitUp here, and follow its development on the Cosmogonia blog and TIGForum devlog, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

PC Review #117: Hand of Fate

Title: Hand of Fate
Developer: Defiant Development
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One
Price: $24.99 (PC), $19.99 (Consoles)
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I've never been a fan of card games or deck-building; usually the inclusion of the mechanics are a turn-off for me. But Hand of Fate combines card game, dungeon crawler, and action RPG/brawler to deliver a brilliant and incredibly addictive hybrid of an experience.

It all starts with the cards. In Hand of Fate, you have two decks: the equipment deck and the encounter deck. The equipment deck contains all the items you've acquired: weapons, armor, shields, helmets, special abilities, and so on. On the other hand, the encounter deck contains all the potential events and situations you'll face during the game. Deadly trap mazes, ancient alters, rivers to cross and deserts to get lost in, bosses to face, and much more await you in that deck.

When you start out, you only have basic equipment, but you gain more powerful cards to add to your deck. Know you're going up against undead skeletons? Add more holy weapons and armor to your deck. Likewise, you can also choose what cards are in the encounter deck. However, this doesn't mean you can only add easy cards and make the next playthrough a walk in the park. Certain encounters provide tokens when you successfully complete them, and those tokens unlock new cards, thus new equipment and weapons to add to the decks. On top of that, the nefarious Dealer will include unique cards of his own into the game decks, adding more challenges and unpredictable encounters.

Those cards, laid out on the game table, essentially make up the tiles of a dungeon level. With each move, you deplete your limited food supply and if it runs out, you lose health until dying from starvation. This balance of risk and reward is the crux of Hand of Fate's dungeon crawling. Do you explore every card, or take a more straightforward route? You might get lucky, and find a shop or a priest or some new encounter that nets you a better weapon. Or you might find yourself cursed, or making a wager with a tricky Devil, or have goblins steal some gold, or get ambushed. Some encounters play out through choose-your-own adventure-style text; the choices are dictated by the items you might have or the effects of other cards.

Or you might be very unlucky and the Dealer will draw cards from the monster desk. Combat in Hand of Fate is modeled after the popular system seen in the Arkham games, down to counter icons over enemy heads and a shield bash that acts the same as Batman's cape. While the fighting can't live up to its inspiration in terms of animations or fluidity, it excels in other areas. Your early-game rusty axes and swords and light armor are soon replaced by more exotic equipment. Hammers that unleash lighting blasts, swords that set the undead aflame, armor that slows surrounding enemies, helmets that increase your movement speed. Magic abilities let you imbue your attacks with fire or send out magic blades in all directions or freeze enemies in the vicinity. All buffs and abilities stack, allowing you to tailor your play style as a damage-dealing powerhouse or a magic-enhanced tank. And at its core, combat is just fun, as you deflect fireballs from lizardmen, evade bandits, and face powerful Lava Golems and Mages.

All in all, that's the word that best describes Hand of Fate: fun. Other games may have more complex card mechanics or better combat, but combine the addictive nature of the gameplay with the engaging deck-building, the varied locations, and the excellent voice acting from the mysterious Dealer, and you have a compelling experience that you want to dive back into again and again.

Hand of Fate is available on Steam, GOG, Humble, PS4, and Xbox One.