[Book Tip] Crysis: Escalation by Gavin Smith

Crysis: Escalation is a novel to bridge the games Crysis 2 and Crysis 3, which is a bit more interesting than Crysis: Legion, since it was just a retelling of the events of Crysis 2. I didn’t dislike that book, since it contained additional lore about the world and characters. However, the general plot didn’t excite me much, as I already knew what would happen going in. Crysis: Escalation avoids this baggage completely by telling new captivating stories about the world of Crysis, and boy if it doesn’t supplement the franchise with a lot of cool additional information. It doesn’t follow one story – it’s a collection of events/tales of the land, eventually leading up to the start of Crysis 3.

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Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of MoonFall – Kickstarter

It’s time to once again promote a Kickstarter. This time, it’s the vampire cyberpunk RPG Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of MoonFall. It seems very ambitious coming from a solo dev, but from what is shown it looks impressive already. It’s a mix of first/third-person exploration with top-down turn-based combat taking place in some kind of cyberpunk dystopian nightmare, with vampires. Right up my alley. I should warn though, there will be explicit sexual themes in the game; in other words hardcore porn. However, going by what the developer told me, you don’t have to interact with that aspect of the game. I’m not personally into sex-games, so I’m glad that the “degeneracy” is a choice! 

You can find the Kickstarter here, and you can find the game’s Steam page here (You must be logged in to see the page, because of age restriction). And by looking at the status of the Kickstarter, it’s more than eighty percent completed already. So, this is most likely a done deal already, but that shouldn’t hinder you from putting in some money, if the title interests you.

AFTER WAR & PATIENT ZERO (more Half-life videos)

After going through a few more videos, here are two more short films (and one bonus) made by fans set in the excellent Half-Life universe. Both are excellent, but very different in execution. I would even argue that one of them is more on the artistic spectrum, while the other is direct in what it set out to depict – a brutal combat scenario between the resistance and the Combine foot soldiers. Enough of me babble, let’s get into it.

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LZ – Sparrow

Got into the mood for some Half-Life action, since the universe Valve created is cool and fascinating – especially from a military sci-fi viewpoint. It also has clear horror elements sprinkled on top, when you consider the zombies, mind sucking aliens and general despair of humanity being on the brink of extermination. Everything to make it as fun as possible in what I would call a good time all around. Well, unless you are one of the characters stuck in this world, like the soldiers in LZ – Sparrow.

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Enoch : Children of Fate – Demo Impressions

How about a dystopian noir cyber-thriller point & click game in the style of the excellent graphic adventure, Technobabylon? Now, Enoch: Children of Fate is not made by the same developer, but the visual style and the moody atmosphere is very similar. And that’s an excellent thing. The demo isn’t long. However, my time spent with it was enough to hook me into the mood for an atmospheric detective story. So, it was a sad thing when the demo finally ended. 

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