Category: PC

Everything PC. The main machine for gaming.

Aliens: Dark Descent – The Lethe Bug Crisis

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. 

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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. 

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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!

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Miasma Chronicles – Quick Impressions

I was going to do a proper review of Miasma Chronicles since the combat and the world seemed interesting enough. However, the further I got into the game, the more apparent it becomes that it suffers from some seriously baffling design decisions. This cut my game time rather short as I just can’t be bothered with this type of gameplay anymore. I will explain.

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Stasis: Bone Totem – Atlantean Rumble

What do you get if combine meaty body horror, Lovecraft, and Atlantean mythology sprinkled with Blade Runner, The Descent, and Alien? Well, you get Stasis: Bone Totem. This is the Brotherhood’s third game in the Stasis franchise – a point & click horror adventure series that doesn’t shy away from showing the macabre and the gruesome in all its glory. So far, so good, and you can read the thoughts of the developers in an interview I made with them here. However, it saddens me to say, that there are some problems with this title. While it maintains the horror in both atmosphere and story, the game falters and stumbles in the feature most critical to gaming: the gameplay.

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