In space, nobody can fix your bugs. Besides the fairly buggy nature of Aliens: Dark Descent, it is somewhat of an unexpected sleeper hit of the year. The gameplay, and general mechanics work well, and are clearly thought-out, which together with the visuals and audio creates a very nice Aliens experience. It truly feels like the movie when you slowly skulk the poorly lit and narrow space colonial corridors – then for it to suddenly switch from tension to high-octane action when your badass Marines with their cool outfits and iconic weapons open up on the deadly and terrifying Xenomorphs. It actually resembles Aliens to a fault, as it becomes a little too much familiar in the narrative. Seemingly, there is only one way to write games based on the Alien franchise.
Continue reading “Aliens: Dark Descent – The Lethe Bug Crisis”Month: July 2023
Swelter – Out Now!
Swelter, a free stand-alone modification for Half-Life 2 was released a couple of days ago on Steam. I have not yet tried it myself since I have a lot on my plate currently. But I got to say, it looks pretty darn good from what I have seen.
I have been following the project for a while, and if it’s anything like Black Mesa, it will surely provide a fun time blasting Combine troopers. The main difference between these two mods (besides Swelter being free) is that it’s not a remake of anything. It’s set in the same universe, as it is a prequel to Half-Life 2. However, the story takes place far away from City 17 and provides its own narrative. Just keep in mind that’s highly unofficial, non-canonical stuff, yet, it matters not too much in my opinion.
/Thomas
Brutal AI for OpenXcom Extended

I have been following Brutal AI (version 6.6.3) by the user Xilmi over at OpenXcom for a couple of weeks now, and recently I decided to take the plunge myself with the mods from my own compilation The Ultimate X-com Experience. At first, not much is changed, as this modification only makes changes to the AI, mostly concentrated on battle tactics. However, as soon as I got my first ground battle, the AI improvements showed themselves very quickly.
While I find X-com and the OpenXcom mods fun, the AI has always been on the more “predictable” side (to be nice), and this is regardless of the mods I have tried. Brutal AI changes all this, and apparently, it works with all modifications from the get-go, which is very impressive.
Continue reading “Brutal AI for OpenXcom Extended”Concerns regarding Jagged Alliance 3
Jagged Alliance 3 is set to be released in 11 days from today (14 Jul, 2023), and I am of course excited since it seems the developer Haemimont Games wants to make a true sequel to Jagged Alliance 2. However, I do have some serious concerns with it.
My first issue is that burst fire will only do 50% of the normal damage. From what I understand, it was made like this because they couldn’t figure out a good balance for it. It was apparently too easy to just run up to enemies and unload on them. Now, that is worrisome by itself – are there no interruptions? Do the enemy NPCs don’t defend themself in any way? My main issue with this, though, is that it kinda tramples the whole simulation aspect into the dirt. There is absolutely no reason for a weapon to ever do less damage because you fire more bullets. It’s a very gamey thing, in something that wants to take the simulation approach. Or at least, we are told that it wants to do that.
Continue reading “Concerns regarding Jagged Alliance 3”Star Trek: Resurgence – Alien Diplomacy R Us
So, how about this! A new Star Trek game that is actually good. Well, as far as the story goes at least, and the presentation overall. It is lacking in the gameplay department, but what else can be expected from a studio consisting of former Telltale employees? Star Trek: Resurgence is Dramatic Lab’s first game, and to nobody’s surprise the gaming aspect remains as mentioned limited, however, it comes with severely upgraded visuals. Gone is the heavily penciled-in comic book style and is now replaced with full Unreal 3D glory with a semi-realistic approach. To truly enjoy Star Trek: Resurgence it all comes down to personal expectations (as usual), so the sane approach (which I took) is to leave any form of system interaction at the door going in. And if you can do that, you are in for a pretty good time!
Continue reading “Star Trek: Resurgence – Alien Diplomacy R Us”



