When Julian Gollop announced he would be making a spiritual sequel to X-com, there was much rejoicing. Unfortunately, the game that followed was lined with controversies like – changing the art style from gritty post-apocalypse to nuXcom-inspired science-fiction with oversized shoulder pauldrons. Dumping the open platform release for EPIC store exclusivity, while simultaneously insulting the Kickstarter base that their investment meant nothing now with EPIC backing them financially. Yeah, it was not a great start, that even had me cancel my pledge…
Continue reading “Phoenix Point – It Came From the Sea”Tag: Sci-fi
Rain of Reflections: Set Free – No Child Policy
Rain of Reflections is a point & click adventure game with combat in turn-based mode. It was released by the Swedish developer studio Lionbite Games back in 2019. It was supposed to be a three-chapter thing, but thanks to low interest, the game got unfortunately abandoned. So we only got chapter one, which of course has the game ending on a major unresolved cliffhanger. I have owned this title for a while now, I think I got it for one euro or something ridiculous like that, and I thought it might be time to give it a go regardless of the finished status. I’m not regretting that decision, the only regrettable thing here is that it wasn’t completed.
Continue reading “Rain of Reflections: Set Free – No Child Policy”Black Mesa – Remake Wonder
Black Mesa started as a free mod back in 2012, unfortunately, I have no experience with the game from that time. Black Mesa didn’t enter my gaming radar until it reached Steam in the form of Early Access, and while I wasn’t immediately impressed, nor interested exactly – I’m glad my outlook changed. Because, as it turned out, the updated version of the legendary game Half-Life is damn good! While I only have admiration for the GoldSrc engine (all those hours in Day of Defeat, and Counter-Strike), it is getting a bit long in the tooth. The Source engine, from Half-Life 2, which Black Mesa uses is technically old too, but it does feel and look more modern, especially since Valve still updates it with new features.
Continue reading “Black Mesa – Remake Wonder”Quantum Break – You Got Time?
Decided to replay one of my favorite, semi-recent AAA-gaming releases – because the last time I played it, the engine the game runs on almost broke my old computer. Now, I’m on a new fresh one – so I thought it was time to play through this science-fiction time-travel epic in full graphical glory, and maximized FPS.
Let us continue on that note. The visuals, all these years later, are still absolutely fantastic beyond just having high-quality textures. With that I mean, lighting, location design, structures, and models, in general, make the game come alive. It just looks great, and realistic, yet, has this slight futuristic corporate vibe to it that is common in near-future settings – a bit similar to the modern Deus Ex games. Unfortunately, even now when I have “up-scaling” turned off, some areas are still looking blurry, which is disappointing. Otherwise, the game runs well on my new rig, but, unfortunately, I get drastic FPS drop in scene-transfers, and when cut-scenes change to gameplay. I don’t know why that is. It’s not too bad I guess, but still an annoyance since it happens fairly often. I assume it’s an issue with the engine, because CONTROL, a more recently released Remedy game, shares the same engine, and I didn’t have these kinds of issues here. The only thing I can assume from this is that the engine got better optimized between the games. Nonetheless, the game looks remarkable still, and will not disappoint on a modern computer with a good GPU.
Continue reading “Quantum Break – You Got Time?”Mirror’s Edge Catalyst – Parkour Bore
I remember playing the first Mirror’s Edge many years ago on the Xbox 360. It wasn’t my favorite game or anything, but I did like the system of movement, and the general atmosphere of the city in which the game takes place. It had this cold, minimalist stylistic corporate vibe to it, that for some reason left a mark on me. So when I saw Mirror’s Edge Catalyst for sale on Steam for 2 euros the other day, I couldn’t help to dive in – I mean, what is 2 bucks even if it sucks?
The first thing that hit me going in is that I don’t remember being thrown in prison from the first game, and apparently I needed to read some kind of comic to understand why I was. A huge negative stain on the game already, and I’m about 5 minutes into it. I hate when games do this, movies too for that matter. Expecting you to find/buy, and read media outside the game to understand the plot. Another thing that messed up my understanding of the story whilst it was ongoing, was that I had no idea that Catalyst is a reboot, and not a sequel, which I thought it was. I didn’t know this until after I finished the game. I discovered it when I was searching for answers to some questions I had about the plot. Apparently, it wasn’t a retcon or two, in the story, the whole thing had been retconned, huh!
Continue reading “Mirror’s Edge Catalyst – Parkour Bore”




