SKALD: Against the Black Priory – C-64 retro RPG prologue

Demos – how I both love & hate this concept. It’s always nice to get to try the game you are looking forward to, but if it’s good, you are in for a brutal time of waiting since you know what you will be getting and being held backed from. SKALD is one of these games. While I grew up during the popularity of Commodore 64 – I don’t have much of a connection to it beyond playing the random game on its system at a friends house. So, this graphical throwback is not doing much for me from a nostalgic standpoint, regardless I do think the graphics look charming without having the needed nostalgia glasses.

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Alpha Polaris – The Crevasse of Madness

Alpha Polaris is a point & click adventure game from the Finnish studio Turmoil Games, their first, and unfortunately only game. From what I remember reading about them, they had no idea of the work they took on when creating this game. They thought it was going to be a relatively easy thing, but as it turned out making games is a tough job. This regrettably led to Turmoil Games disbanding (from what I know!), and while Alpha Polaris is a fine piece of entertainment it does fall apart a bit at the end, as in it comes a bit fast. Even so, I find it an awesome tale, and as it is known, adventure games live or die depending on the setting and story.

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Operation: Black Mesa – More non-Valve Half-Life

This title caught my eye the other day, and perhaps it wouldn’t have if the remake of the original Half-Life wasn’t as good as it was. I’m of course talking about Black Mesa, which in my personal opinion was a fantastic re-imagining, and throwback to the classic game. So what is Operation: Black Mesa, then? Well, it’s a remake of the expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force that were released for Half-Life back in the day as additional content expanding on the lore.

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Hell Let Loose – What could have been?

While Hell Let Loose is not a bad game per se, I can’t help to think – what could have been? Going way back to their Kickstarter, and pre-early access release on Steam, this game showed so much promise! It was going to be the ultimate WW2 tactical multiplayer shooter, taking notes from all other similar games before them, and expanding on it. It was going to be huge, with you, and your team required to work together, securing zones for precious resources to be able to call in the heavy stuff – like tanks, and artillery. Some of this remains in the game to this day, of course, but it’s just a shadow of what was proposed. 90% of the players don’t care and don’t know about this function, and to be fair it usually doesn’t really affect the game in public matches since in the end it’s not required to win.

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White Pond Games (Urban Strife) – Interview

The isometric turn-based tactical game, Urban Strife, is one of my most anticipated upcoming games this year. It’s basically Jagged Alliance 2, with updated 3D graphics, set in the zombie apocalypse. So, what’s not to like? It’s made by the Romanian studio White Pond Games, and I managed to score an interview with the crew over e-mail. Down below, you can read some hopefully interesting tidbits about this upcoming title!

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