Monolith – Abandoned Planet

It’s time for some classic point-and-click adventuring in the form of Monolith. It’s made by the German team Animation Arts that in the past has created games such as Secret Files: Tunguska (which I have reviewed here on the site). Now the question is, does the team still have it in them to produce something truly special? Well, I’m happy to say, they absolutely do. While I didn’t find Monolith as humorous and exciting as Secret Files, it’s still a nice addition to the point-and-click adventure genre that probably won’t disappoint if you enjoy these types of games.

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Star Trek: Infinite – Resistance Is Futile

In preparation for Star Trek: Infinite I played a couple of different civilizations in Stellaris with all the minor and major DLCs. While I think it’s a pretty good game, especially now that it has been expanded through countless patches and expansions, I always seem to run into the same issue: total statement and lack of a real purpose. After a while, the galaxy just seems to stop, and kinda “settles in” with nothing major going on, and with that stopping your own civilization’s purpose (this is with roleplaying in mind). The sandbox nature of the game can only take me so far, and I can’t say the silly randomly generated civilizations you meet help much with this. This is where Star Trek: Infinite comes in.

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UnMetal – The Army of Mikes

We are back with another action-adventure game by Unepic fran. The last one I played from these guys was Ghost 1.0, which I thought was an excellent metroidvania. UnMetal is this game’s name, and while it manages to stand on its own, it’s a comedy spoof of the Metal Gear games and takes a lot of its content from them. From the sneaking and knocking out guards, to long inane conversations with villains with questionable motives. Not even the main guy is safe, as both mannerisms and visual appearance are very similar to the number one chain smoker Solid Snake. Now copying mechanics like this would be considered a bit weird, however, UnMetal takes the themes and makes one hell of a parody of it—and not only in writing: the gameplay is stand-out too!

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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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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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