Star Trek: Away Team – Vulcan nerve pinch to Victory

When I was younger I loved Star Trek: Away Team, but with age, my taste in games has changed – well, at least certain time-consuming mechanics, like games resting on endless save & reloading. It’s still somewhat of a charming experience playing it now, however, being a Commandos clone there is A LOT of trial and error involved. That is not all, as this title also has a bit of a quirky and archaic control system. It undeniably adds up when half of your attempts fail due to control issues. Yet, as mentioned, it’s still appealing since it’s set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation timeline (best timeline), has nice looking retro graphics, excellent voice acting and presentation, and a pretty good story to boot.

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Watch Dogs – Who watches the watchers?

I decided to give Watch Dogs another go after playing the DLC Bloodline for Watch Dogs: Legion which has Aiden Pearce as the main lead. Simply, I wanted to know more about him and to see maybe if I had misjudged Aiden, and the game itself. The short of it is… yes! Yes, I had. While it does have some gameplay issues, the story, world-building, and characterization of Aiden are the most interesting parts – that now in retrospect make more sense in the Legion expansion.

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Watch Dogs: Legion – Bloodline

The original Watch Dogs: Legion (Watch Dogs 3) was a bit of a hit or miss. It had serious potential with its sandbox nature of recruiting whoever you wanted off the street to work for your little hacker revolution. However, the implementation wasn’t great. It suffered from weird randomization, like having characters’ looks not matching the voice, massive story issues, and the lack of a central protagonist. The near-future City of London was and still is awesome. It has this cool dystopian feeling to it, with high surveillance and military-esque police patrolling the streets. It got a surprising number of things right. For example, the checkpoint system that now is a reality in London – all for the concerns of the mythical “environment”. All in all, a realistic depiction of the WEF future we all have to look forward to, so what’s not to like? Everyone enjoys a good despair from time to time.

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Assassin’s Creed Mirage – Arabian Nights

The only reason I got this game was the promise of the franchise going back to its roots. While that remains true to a certain degree, it’s not the long-lost promise land of Grandpa’s old-school Assassin’s Creed gameplay. It’s mostly a mix between the original games in the series, and the RPG take on it that started with Assassins Creed Origin. I mostly blame this half-hearted attempt on the engine itself, since Assassin’s Creed Mirage shares that with Origin, Odyssey, and Valhalla. It looks pretty, there is no denying that, but everything that involves the player, as in parkour and the combat feels very floaty, just like in those titles. It has much less of a “simulation” approach than the former games which leads to the setting feeling less grounded and realistic. More on that down below.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link is a stand-alone (if we go by the original release) expansion for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In the Director’s Cut version of the game, this expansion is integrated into the main campaign of HR, not without some issues, though – bug and pacing-wise. The story of The Missing Link takes place during the campaign when Adam Jensen leaves the Hengsha harbor in a stasis pod. In the HR storyline, Adam is unaccounted for three days, and in this expanded narrative, we get to experience what happened to him during those missing days. Like the main game, this expansion is made by Eidos Montréal.

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